Building Layouts made famous by others

[asciibaron]

the very first thing i do when i look at a trackplan is to look for a starting point for a train.  is there a yard or staging or some sort of hidden lead?  if not, i know the layout was not designed with operations in mind.  i don't dismiss it outright and will look it over for some ideas, but usually i find them lacking real operating potential.

my current method is rather refreshing.  i have a loose idea of the main - using the twice around up and over style as done by many others.  instead of drawing it all out, i decided how wide i wanted the aisle and then applied that to my space.  from there, i laid out a rough idea of the main in some software and then got to work on laying out the most important piece of my layout, the staging.

i have thought about building a landscape using foam insulation boards and then carving out the ROW, adding fills, bridges and tunnels as needed.  i might do that with a small layout for my son - i think it would be interesting, having the terrain dictate the ROW.  then put an industry in and then have the siding put in.  the ultimate in proto modeling.  anyone have an transit for 1:160 available?

[Zox]

There was no option for mine - I always design my own. (I took the "they publish plans?" option)

Ditto for me--if it's already been done, where's the fun in doing it?

I'll steal inspiration and ideas from just about anywhere, but if I can't create something uniquely my own, I'm not going to bother.

[wm3798]

I think if you're looking at a fairly simple or compact design, such as a door layout, it's a good idea to study what's been done.  Afterall, the options are fewer, and once you find something that scratches whatever itch you have for operating (or not), then all the chin rubbing and head scratching is already done.  Then you can add on the things you want to make it work more completely, as Dave F and Dave V did with the additions of staging yards.

In a room size layout, unless you're room is exactly like the plan you're looking at, you have to customize it anyway.

Lee

[asciibaron]

In a room size layout, unless you're room is exactly like the plan you're looking at, you have to customize it anyway.

my favorite layout from my teen years was based on the Duquense Railroad of Paul Dolkos.  the plan was in the March 1983 issue of MR and i had planned to copy it exactly (i was 13).  i decided to modify the design at the 11th hour and turned it into an around the walls design and it was a ton of fun to operate.  that was back in the colored thumb tack days and spotting cars was fast and easy.  i'm glad i modified the design - it allowed me to add a few more industries and have access to the staging.  even at 13 was was working with an eye toward operations.

[TiVoPrince]

Space
that I have is totally contrary to the linear nature of the SP 'Coast Line' that I would really want on a personal 'givens and druthers' list.  Ten years into this space and I'm still sort of locked up for a design after dozens of attempts.  Since we own the space outright and TiVoPrincess is unlikely to leave willingly, I need to adapt my visions to what I actually have and change to a more urban/switching trackplan in order to 'scratch my itch'.  

How to adjust a David Barrow's 1980 CMSF scenery sensability (soft edges that draw your eye back to the trains) to an more urban setting continues to elude and distract me.  Having an 'impressionist' eye for scenery tends to run contrary to the angular nature of urban scenery.  I'm afraid that placing modern train 'art' in front of a 'Claude Monet Waterlillies' adapted urban backdrop will not be satisfying for photography or for me in the long term visually.

The delaying, dawdling and second guessing that prevents progress goes on...

[sizemore]

Well it's pretty simple. The smaller a layout, the harder it is for me to design a layout. I had the hardest time developing a roundy-round with some switching options for roughly a 6*3 space, so I adopted the Lou Sassi/Dave Vollmer design.

It has the right balance of operations to mainline/scenery. It affords me some switching and the roundy-round I desired as well as the scenery close to what I was looking to build. So I copied the track plan (with the addition of a programming track) and roughly 80% of the terrain. Had this been the "big" layout I would have designed it with prototypical operations in mind resembling some fidelity to the prototype base. The purpose of the current HCD copy is to get a better idea of scenery techniques, get a little deeper on my protolanced road and aid in designing the "big" layout.

The S. 

[cv_acr]

I've built a couple layouts based on published plans when I was a bit younger. They basically followed the plans, with some of my own minor modifications.

In high school I built a 4x8' based on the ancient book "HO Railroad that Grows", and while in university I built a small 2x7' HO switching layout based on a plan for a small urban switching area in an old Model Railroader.

The 4x8' has been torn down, and the 2x7 actually still exists in storage in my parent's garage attic. I answered the "Have built one but torn it down and built my own" although it's not 100% true, since I don't currently have a layout, and technically the 2x7 is still intact. I hope to someday model a prototypical layout based on the Algoma Central, though it may be some time before I have a space to do that. Once I have a little more space, I may design my own layout or resurrect the 2x7 in order to "scratch the itch" (although the club layout works quite well for that too). The future AC layout will of course be based off the prototype locations and definately not based on any published plans.

[Bruce Bird]

What about modeling reality?  Other than selectively compressing distances and probably numbers of track in yards, actually designing and building what we model has worked for me.  And like quite a few others on this list, since I model the ops of the WM I've got a miniaturized slice of reality that doesn't exist anymore. 

I've never copied another's design or standard track plan out of a book.  I guess reading those MRs in my early days that had the Gorre & Daphetid all over it really influenced me to design my own.  I've done five so far and I've really liked them all, given my abilities at the time they were built.  I always like looking at other's designs to try to learn a new trick on improving my own designs, but never 100% copy them.

Wouldn't that be ferreoquinoloplagiarism?

Bruce

[Hiroe]

What about modeling reality?  Other than selectively compressing distances and probably numbers of track in yards, actually designing and building what we model has worked for me.  And like quite a few others on this list, since I model the ops of the WM I've got a miniaturized slice of reality that doesn't exist anymore. 

I've done this quit a bit myself, with the modular Corridor project. Half the fun of it is when people come up to me at the shows, and go "I know where that is!"

The flipside being the challenge of working out how to accomplish switching tasks with the available track, much like the prototype does.