What crazy things have you done to make your layout a reality?

For my Bellevue and Schenectady RR, I switched to a tankless Hot water system to eliminate the hot water tank for my Wildwood harbor Scene, its now hanging on wall behind removable backdrop and Crusader Motel in photo for easy maintenance, works great and is more energy efficent. Happy Railroading!!!-Don Klose

My wife takes family, coworkers and friends to see and ooh aah over the RR faster then I do and likes the tankless system of hot water. Happy Railroading!!!-Don Klose

My wife is the same way...she grumbles a bit when the brown truck shows up but runs everyone down stairs at warp speed.  The dumbest thing was letting the mrs see the bill from Lou at ROW.....baaaaaaad idea...

This area houses my HO railroad, but still fits the bill of crazy things I have done to have a better railroad.

We did a house renovation in the summer / fall of 2009 that added about 300 sq ft. to our family room, created an upstairs mud room, new kitchen, redid two bathrooms etc.  Part of the renovation was to put in a basement under the extension of the family room area.  In the pic below, the new basement is to the right of the iron colored I beam. 

In order to get to that new basement, we had to dig out the existing crawl space. 

Here is a photo of the dig.  The Bobcat is sitting in an area appx. right in front of the helix where they punched through the foundation to get the Bobcat in.  Notice the plastic PVC sewer line, it was re-routed above the ducts.  We also relocated the water meter to an area of the extreme right of this photo. 

Here was the outside of the house during this dig.

This photo is the other side of the "island". 

This shot is looking back from the area where the orange super sucker is at.  I've got an O scale mikado and caboose sitting out that I just finished weathering a couple of days earlier.  I believe the shelf concept would have worked well in O too, but I would have been too constrained by the radius at the end of the island, and I want to run large articulated steam.  So, HO is still is.

Once I'm done, I believe the mainline run will be appx. 8 scale miles from staging yard to staging yard. 

Oh, and here is the extension from the outside.  The area under the extension is my crew lounge, dispatcher station, and houses the helix. 

Regards,

GNNPNUT

Wow! Looks awesome, I see you are in Illinois, you are lucky,

here in California, any kind of construction has been out-lawed,

less limb amputaion.

ncng

Well coincidently enough I am currently traversing my wifes washer/dryer with a double track wide shelf along the back edge so the lid of the washer will still open enough for her to use without banging into any rolling stock which may be there. This took negociation and some artful carpentry, but the project also opens up a continuous run capability for me which after much thought I realized I wanted.

Bob

Thats great guys! I love it.....GNN you take the cake....dig out the foundation to accomadate the railroad. Thats classic.....

We had to cut out an old sagging poorly built truss above the garage. Add a temporary support for the garage ceiling.

Install an engineered glu-lam beam, 2 windows and break through the upstairs spare room. Also add A/C, electrical, surround sound wiring X 2 and decor.

I painted myself blue, danced naked around the house widdershins, and sacrificed a chicken to get my layout room finished. 

Well, I put up with 25 years of a rec-room until our daughter graduated from University - Now the room is mine all mine my precious!

Why do I really believe that

We are a a little nuts.

Up and over the washer, paint booth and potty, no problem.

Back behind the furnace, easy.

Moving the hot water heater and softener, not so hard. Yes, there is a removable piece back here.

The big problem was this wall in the basement then held up the other three stories of the house. That had to go without bringing the house down.

And it's gone....  That was the very first thing we did before the layout started can cost, well, you don't want to know.

The Elder Gods are both cruel and demanding; they also seem to prefer KFC.

Selling my current home, buying a farm, putting up a 100' x 65' outbuilding. 

Moved the water heater.

Raised the air conditioning unit one foot on the outside because a pipe from it came inside exactly where the train tracks were to run. 

My trains run over the washer and dryer and under the steps also.

Left out the bamboo forest that the trains were running through and removal of that stray Burmese python...

Removing the bamboo was the sensible thing to do.

I think Dan's photo with with the toilet takes the cake.

There was a local layout where we had to follow the trains running through the bathroom.

Likely you kept the python to control incursions by the neighbors....

Wow I just stumbled across this while searching whether anyone had ever moved their furnace to fit a layout.    Tom Tee did my benchwork but I cannot use it where originally placed and I considered digging out the crawlspace (20k+) or moving the furnace (still looking... I only really need two feet!).    You guys are my heroes!