As the title says, I’m asking for some ideas on having a double track layout using O-54 and O-63 tracks. Carl (Moonman) has always opined and helped me in the past, so hopefully he will chime in here.
Reason for the minimum radius is that I’m gravitating towards the larger equipment and the Husky Stack and Auto Carrier cars require O-54 minimum tracks. MTH says that their Bombardier passenger coaches can run on curves as tight as O-42, but I’m not going anywhere that tight and the resulting overhang. I ran my Tri-Rail Bombardier set on the O-72 curves at one of my two LHS (Ready to Roll in Miami) yesterday and those looked just right, it’s just that O-72 track will not fit on a 6-foot wide table, and I wouldn’t want the table wider than that anyway for arm length reach purposes.
We’re going to be moving next month (leaving Downtown back to rent in suburbia) and as such, the ability of me having a layout where I can run trains at home instead of having to go to the club has returned. We’re entertaining the possibility of getting a 4 bedroom so that I can have a hobby room for my trains and plastic model planes and boats. Bedrooms come in all shapes and sizes but I’m hoping for at least a 10x10 minimum on the room size.
My original thought was to have a 6x10 table with a screen divider having a New York City theme on one side and a South Florida theme on the other side (discussed on the 1/43-50 scale vehicles thread) with basic multi-track loops both on the ground and subway levels being the standard. However, recently I’m thinking that the 6x10 table might become a too unwieldy, depending on the size of the room.
So now, I’m leaning towards a Round the Room layout using 24-inch wide shelves for my Mianne Benchwork with the South Florida and New York sections on opposite sides of the room, and have small sidings on the other two sides with 2-3 of the more “realistic looking” operating accessories like the Oil Drum Loader, 264 Forklift Platform, and 23796 American Flyer Sawmill. The great unknown is where the door entry will be. Wherever that is will be a bridge or lift out (I’ve seen images on the internet of the MTH Steel Arch Bridge being lifted on one end).
Either way, one thing is for certain is that it needs to be portable as we’re renting.
I hope that the end result is not me ending up the garage running temporary layouts on weekends (another OGR topic I started in 2017).
I'm heading out to church now so I'll check back in later if there any replies that have questions for me.
Thanks.
