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I am thinking way back when I had my first layout, a 5 X 9 flat table.  If I wanted to change the theme a bit, I would just put in different buildings on a street or siding and change out locos and rolling stock accordingly.  I could go from the 1800's to the 1950's without much trouble.  I could go from a modern city to rural town.  You get the idea.  In my case I would have only had to change out 3 or 4 buildings and go from a steamer to a diesel switcher.  But then I thought about going further into scenic elements and big changes in terrain elevation while keeping the track plan the same.  My idea would be to have a fairly simple track plan like an exaggerated weaving figure 8 and a siding.  The roadbed base, about 6 inches wide, would be installed on 2 or 3 foot risers on the base bench work for the plywood, homasote, cork, and track, to allow for relatively flat terrain or dramatic changes in scenic elevations.  The empty space between the roadbed would be filled in with modular foam chunks of terrain elevations of choice for the theme desired.  In particular, I envision going from a narrow gauge mountain them to a small city scape.  I don't know if this has been done in just this way, but perhaps on modular club layouts it has to some extent.  If so, I would like to see photos.  Just a possibility I have been pondering for a while.

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A good friend with an excellent HO layout has just ripped out all his buildings and trees because he decided to change the layout to a southwestern desert theme, instead of green grass and trees. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

 

What I like about my 3-rail O-gauge "toy train" layouts is the ability to move tracks and buildings around more easily, as compared to the relative permanence of my HO scale layout.

The buildings often last forever, so buildings from the 1880s could still be around in the 1940s or 1950s, etc.  I leave my buildings in place . . . 

 

What I change are the cars.  I don't go back to the pre-auto era, but I have sets of cars to put on the streets for the 1920s, 1940s, 1950s (normally how it is fitting out) and the late 60s.  It is amazing how much just changing the cars and trucks, changes the era.

 

That, and some changes in billboards and tiny details (streetlights, phone booths, sidewalk mailboxes were different, older styles of Coke machines and gas pumps at the stations,  more bicycles and a few horses and fewer cars way back when, etc.) nd I get a pretty good change in "feel" to the era.

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