A few have asked to see pics of my layouts. The idea is to work around the space available in order to preserve the functionality of the four rooms. No way to make these prototypical, and I have hardly the skill that a lot of the guys have. One room is full of cabinets to store all kinds of stuff, one is the basement refrigerator room with more cabinets, the third is the room with computers. The last is a large rec room.
This is the sixth family layout, in the third house, begun by my dad in the mid-50's. He built the first two, we both built the largest one in the attic of my first house, and I have built three in this house. One is a Double-tracked overhead that goes 100 ft around the rec room. Dad wouldn't believe what is available nowadays.
The overhead is a simple DCS, powered by a ZW, running four MTH trains on two mains, with a small yard. The poker guys love watching them go by.
The table layout is the main subject in this post. I just added the two uppermost levels this year. You just can't have enough trains running around at the same time. Powered in two different rooms by a ZW and a Z4000, plus two older and smaller transformers. I usually run eight trains at a time. Two MTH's, three LCP's, and three conventional. A lot of new trains, but, a lot of stuff from the 50's. The captions (bottom) will help you understand what you're looking at.
There's lots more to be done, but, I hope you like these pics. If you have questions, feel free.
Jerry
