Any San Diego forum members with a garage layout?

Hi Don, you may want to reach out to the SanDiego 3 railer club.  They run a 42ft x 44ft 3-rail layout in Balboa Park and I’m sure they can give you some good advice.  www.sd3r.org

Don, I live in south Orange County and have a second home in the city of San Diego. My son lives in San Diego as well as all his in-laws. I am very familiar with the area as well as building restrictions, costs and some alternatives that might not be apparent to someone relocating from Illinois. I came to California from suburban Chicago.

There are many new houses in the area with basements, you just may not want to know what they cost. There are also a number of older homes with dirt floor basements. These are not expensive, at least relative to our typical costs. My uncle owns a house like this in LaMesa, a close in San Diego suburb.

There are also some houses in San Diego with attics that can accommodate a train layout. My home has a floored attic but it is used for storage. Tract houses have truss roofs so they do not have usable attics. Tract houses here also have post tensioned slab floors so the concrete cannot be cut without a lot of calculations and permits. Finding a lot where it is legal to add an outbuilding is possible, but most are a long way from the city. My sons father in law owns a house where the lot is large enough to add a large outbuilding. It is almost an hour drive from the downtown area, not real far but no good roads.

My layout is 17'x21' and is in a spare bedroom. Where my son lives there are mostly one story houses, many have had a partial second story added, that is not too expensive. The housing plan below our home is all one story houses and it is not legal to go up because of view easements. Some of those owners who have remodeled added a basement by excavating under the house. It is expensive but not rare for owners to that.

The city has relaxed some of the restrictions for what are often rederd to as "granny flats". However a viable alternative would be to join the San Diego 3Railers, at the very least it would provide a place to run while finalizing your ultimate plans.

P.S. I live in Escondido, when traffic is good it's about 30 minute commute, but sometimes it can be a lot longer. Especially on I-15 North on Friday night.

@dmestan posted:

Hi all,

It's very likely that I'll be moving from Illinois to San Diego area sometime next year, to the land of houses with no attic/basement/storage.  Having room for a layout in something bigger than a small bedroom is a priority for me as this may be our last home and I want to be able to enjoy my hobby especially after retirement.  Once thought is to build a layout in the garage since there is low humidity and no freezing temperatures.  Another thought is possibly going to suburbs with larger lots and building a man shed or separate garage.  I'd like hear what you guys have done.

Thanks, Don

Hi Don.  I also live in the Escondido area, in north San Diego County.  Or as it's called, North County.  My wife Lynley and I moved out here in September 2017 from the Philadelphia area when she got a sweet job offer.  She had started the new job in May, so we only could schedule a house hunting trip for one weekend.  We finally found a house here that checked all the boxes.  One story, so we don't have to climb stairs as we age, and a nice sized lot on the property to build a train layout building but no basement.  Back east we had a large basement that housed all the train items. No space at all here for that even though it's a fairly large house.  I didn't realize how much I would miss having a basement for a layout and storage!

All the rolling stock and scenery and building items had to go in Pods storage while the locomotives stayed in a spare bedroom.  With all the unpacking and house projects that followed, the train building is on hold, but is still planned.  I had a 52' X 32' layout in our home back east.  I hope the building will approach that size.

In the meantime, my wife says to me, 'Why not build a layout in the living room?  We rarely use it and you can get some trains running." I complimented her on her brilliant idea.  So I'm building a 17'X14' layout in our living room.  I'll mainly use it to do maintenance on the engines to get them all running well before the building it built.  I may do some scenery as I go along.  I don't want to get too deep into it and have a lot to tear down to move into the building.

Although that's not an option for everyone, I can tell you that if you decide to build in a garage that the temperatures in our garage range from 60 degrees in winter to about 80 in the summer on the hottest days.  But it feels much more comfortable without the high humidity.  There are some homes that may be available that already have outbuildings suitable for layout construction.  We viewed several of them, but their locations were a little too far from the highway for travel to work.

Just know when house hunting here that the closer you get to the beach, the lot sizes get smaller and much more expensive.  Also be aware of fire prone areas.  Most of the county is susceptible to wildfires, but some more than others.  However, in talking with neighbors, San Diego County fire fighting has improved immensely that last couple years.  But the weather here is outstanding.  I've heard it said here that once you come to live here, why would you want to live anywhere else!

Welcome to Escondido Brian.   

@Doug W. posted:

Welcome to Escondido Brian.   

Thank you, Doug!

I live in Vista which is also in North County and is halfway between Oceanside and Escondido. If you buy something more inland, summer temperatures go up considerably. Escondido frequently approaches 100 degrees during summer while Oceanside will be in the low to mid 80s.
My house is fairly small but my lot size is 1/3 acre so I have plans to build an out building behind the house. Our backyard needs quite a bit of earthmoving work and retaining walls before a building can be started. We also need to see what permitting will allow.

I lived near LA for a few years and visited the train layouts in Balboa Park several times - what a place!

As others have stated, the climate, traffic patterns, building restrictions, and costs vary considerably depending on the precise location. But the weather in SD can't be beat.

I won't be retiring there - jealous!

Thanks for the replies!

Tom - 17x21 layout in a spare bedroom?  I haven't seen listings in SD with a master BR that big

Brian - Wow 52x32 is huge!  I already know how much I will miss my basement.  Trains in the furnace with room (17x17), main basement area has a 9' pool table (my other hobby) and a bar, another room for gym equip and my work bench.  On top of that we have lots of other storage areas.  Purging our stuff so we can squeeze into a Cali home is going to be the hardest part.  I think many people out there must use the garage for storage and leave cars outside.

Escondido, Vista, Santee, Poway are some of the areas I've been looking at.  Want to be < 45 min from La Jolla where my wife will be working.  But also no too far East - I don't like hot weather.

Don

Don, make sure you get good input from a local person on travel time to La Jolla at the time your wife will be traveling. During high traffic periods it has taken me 30 min to get from one location to another, both in La Jolla. Our SD Townhouse is on the Embarcadero in the city, a block north of Seaport Village. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to get to the Rt52 LaJolla exit off the 5 freeway. From that exit to Prospect street is at least 15 min, sometimes 25 min at high traffic times. It is only 3 miles. Said another way, I can get all the way to the Palomar Airport exit in Carlsbad in the same amount of time it takes to get to a parking garage on Prospect street in LaJolla.

If you select a home in a community that has an HOA make sure you look at the CC&R's closely. Some of these HOA's have very restrictive rules about street parking and leaving vehicles in driveways. Homeowners use offsite storage or PODS service because of lack of storage space. Many two story tract homes in built in the 70's and 80's have a bonus room above the garage that functions like a basement. It was popular then to put pool tables in them.

Our house was built with two masters, we removed the closet to maximize the room size.

Back to your question about layouts in garages. There are many operators who have successfully put their layout in the garage in SoCal. Like some have pointed out, there are a lot of inland locations, generally 5 or more miles from the coast, that see 100deg daytime highs. Layouts usually do not care but the operator might. Garages here are different than where you now live. Any garage attached to the house will be vented. It is a code requirement and the hot water heater will be in the garage. My garage is just under 700 sqft and has about 5 sqft of vent area. This means there will be some dust infiltration and it is a bit harder to control the temperature. Detached garages almost always are vented as well, but a few local codes allowed them to be unvented. I believe any newer detached garages must be vented.

There are a lot of arbitrary rules for lot usage out here, but some communities have almost none. Granny Flats now must be allowed regardless of zoning but the setbacks and lot coverage ratios still apply. The reality is it is now easier to convert a garage to a rental unit but still just as hard to add a separate structure unless the lot is large.

@dmestan posted:

Brian - Wow 52x32 is huge!  I already know how much I will miss my basement.  Trains in the furnace with room (17x17), main basement area has a 9' pool table (my other hobby) and a bar, another room for gym equip and my work bench.  On top of that we have lots of other storage areas.  Purging our stuff so we can squeeze into a Cali home is going to be the hardest part.  I think many people out there must use the garage for storage and leave cars outside.

Escondido, Vista, Santee, Poway are some of the areas I've been looking at.  Want to be < 45 min from La Jolla where my wife will be working.  But also no too far East - I don't like hot weather.

Don

Don, we had to purge a lot of stuff before we moved. Mostly the layout lumber and other things I was going to use for the layout. I also had a pool table in the basement that took up valuable layout space. I even planned to build over it, but then we got the word we were moving. I tried selling the table since it wouldn’t fit in the new house, but places that buy them wanted pennies on the dollar. It was cheaper to leave it rather than have someone pack and ship it.  Even though our house here is a little bit bigger than back East, it has much much less storage space.

In addition to the towns you mention, look in San Marcos too. San Marcos is between Vista and Escondido.

With a comute to LA Jolla, you should probably look first in the Poway, Kearny Mesa, Carmel Valley, or Encinitas areas. Encinitas and Carmel Valley can be pricey areas though. The drive from Vista/Escondido area will be easily an hour or more during normal rush hour traffic.

Don: Welcome to the West Coast. I made this move several years ago. BTW, the San Diego area is the home base of BlueRail Trains. Pay attention to the travel tips.

I live in San Diego as well and am a born-and-raised Californian (although born and raised up in the northern part of the state).  Any advice I would give has been pretty much covered by Doug and others.  Yes the weather here is excellent; we only have 2 types of weather conditions:  Good weather and More good weather! 

Wildfires have been a considerable problem in the state in general.  "Fire season" is considered to start around the months between September/October, but the main issue really boiled down to the fact that we've been paying the price the last two decades of not doing controlled burns as we should have been doing in over more than four decades (to appease environmental concerns).  Unfortunately this just resulted in a high amount of dead undergrowth, making lands ripe for "superfires."  My late grandfather who worked as a botanist at a university as part of his career predicted "superfires" back in the late '70s/early 80s was going to happen regularly within 20 years and he was right.  So the state's found itself slowly being dragged kicking and screaming back into finally adopting controlled burns.  The recent 2018 Camp Fire that literally wiped out the town of Paradise up in Northern California only further served to show the penalty of our lack of foresight.

@BOB WALKER posted:

Don: Welcome to the West Coast. I made this move several years ago. BTW, the San Diego area is the home base of BlueRail Trains. Pay attention to the travel tips.

The BlueRail trains that makes the Bluetooth DCC boards?

Here was the layout tear down.  Lumber is gone and trains are in Pods.... for now.

And here is the start of the temporary living room layout.

Hey all,

Long overdue update.  We bought a house in Tierrasanta, moved in Aug 22.  The downsizing, prepping old house for sale, and move made for a crazy stressful year.  Only 2-car garage but the house has a 15x21 bonus room which serves as my office and future train room.  I don't have anything up yet.  Nor is our living room big enough to even put up my annual Christmas village.  Most of my train collection is still in the garage.

I still have not been to the Toy Train museum, but hope to get there soon.  I did join the AGTTA and attended a few meets, trying to thin my collection a bit.  It is a really small meet compared the Great Midwest train show I frequented for many years.  I sure do miss that.

I'm thinking about putting up a shelf layout around the ceiling in the train room so I can get some trains running, but still not close to starting that project yet.  Until then I'll keep lurking here and enjoying everyone's posts, photos, and videos.  Thanks again to all for the advice.

Don

Visit All Gauge Toy TRain Association  Their portable layout is at the Model Railroad museum on a temp basis.  THey will have a meet at their meeting place in San Carlos on Father's Day weekend (Saturday))  Several members have unusual layouts one being on 3 levels of his home, another with a large Super O  layout

Serra Mesa / Mission Village here. Top of the hill from Snapdragon Stadium.

@Ed Samsen posted:

Visit All Gauge Toy TRain Association  Their portable layout is at the Model Railroad museum on a temp basis.  THey will have a meet at their meeting place in San Carlos on Father's Day weekend (Saturday))  Several members have unusual layouts one being on 3 levels of his home, another with a large Super O  layout

Ed, I joined AGTTA.  I know father's day weekend is one of the bigger meets of the year but that's the same weekend as my daughter's graduation from Stanford so I won't be able to attend.  Priorities

@Gary Yada posted:

Serra Mesa / Mission Village here. Top of the hill from Snapdragon Stadium.

Hi Gary, you're practically next door.  Do you have a home layout?  Do you attend the AGTTA meets?

Welcome to the west with no basements and no room for train layouts. I don't live in San Diego I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. I've lived here for 60 years and love it but we have very little room for model train layouts. Five years ago I decided to add on to our home for the sole purpose of building a train room. We built it and it's fantastic! My layout is 9 feet by 35 feet with lots of room for display shelves. I decided it's now or never and I have no regrets.