Layout 9 - Present Day

David, no, the Miata unfortunately was not low enough, and, if you check out layout 8 and now 9 below, not nearly short enough to avoid hitting the peninsula. And the electronics seem to hold up well, although I do bring the locomotives in the house when not in use. They are all stored in their original jewel boxes. Other rolling stock is all kept in Axian boxes.

This last change widens the peninsula by a foot to accommodate a siding to a grain storage and loading area, and associated farm field and farm buildings. I think that is it for a while.

While I use a lot of license (an awful lot) in depicting my railroad, I remind myself that for every modeler who builds to a prototype and enjoys railroad operations, there is someone like me with much more limited skills and desires in building a layout. The last 3+ years have been great fun, the next several will be spent renewing certain areas, tweaking here and there (I don't have nearly enough people, interior lights, signage, etc. And David, I could not have done this without AnyRail. Besides saving me a ton of time and money (who wants to overbuy track it isn't cheap?) it has been immensely enjoyable tweaking track plans.

I hope others enjoy this thread and it inspires you to post your track plan or ideas if you are just starting out.

Cheers. Ron

Layout 8 - May 2025

I made a big decision to sell my Miata in October 2024. It was a really tough decision. It was my 4th Miata (I've owned all 4 generations plus an S2000) since 1994. I've raced (SCCA and NASA) 2 of them, and tracked them all for pleasure. However, my eyesight, although more than adequate on the street, presents a hazard to myself and others at speed. However I have come to grips with the decision, and have no regrets. And I have more opportunities for the layout, as you can see below.

The peninsula accommodates the Kirkwood Lumber Company in Kirkwood Illinois, about an hour outside of Chicago. Also the town and passenger station. Metra even goes there now (on MY railroad).  And the bridge across the garage door area is now double tracked, and there are 2 main perimeter lines. I went through quite a few iterations in Anyrail to get to this result without reversing sections.

So now the layout is almost complete. There will be a minor addition, which I am currently working on (who can stop?) as Layout 9, the last one I will post at this juncture.

Nice story, good writing 

Isn't it too damp for all the electronics in winter, or do you at least take the engines into the house?

And is the Miata not low enough to go under that bridge?

Layout 7 - September 2024

No, the Miata still occupies the center of the garage. The single track bridge to complete the mainline entirely around the garage perimeter is a liftout, about 92" long. I used an adjustable length piece of Unitrack at each end (Kato PN 20050), which are retracted when the track is removed, and extended into the adjoining trackage when in place.

Layout 6 - April 2024

I found additional unused room for more benchwork to enable me to extend the yard to a turntable. I installed the Kato turntable and wired in a polarity reversing circuit. The mainline now extends around to every available wall space. The garage overhead door is at the bottom of the layout to the left of the turntable. Some garden tools are still hung on the wall to the left, and my workbench on rollers is usually parked there. This scheme still allows me to (carefully) park my Miata in the center of the garage.

Layout 5 - December 2023

Just in time for Christmas and Bernice' visit. Changes to the track plan since October include the obvious addition of the staging yard (I did the best I could with the space I had and... did not want to use any #4 turnouts). Now the layout is as long as it is wide (17.33 x 16.75). The yard generally represents the 12th/Canal yard south of the Chicago loop, but I used a lot of license with the size and location. But hey, its my layout as they say.

On the other end, the inner main line extends north to the other side of Papoose Lake. The outer mainline now has a run of about 85', or about 2.6 n scale miles.

Bernice and I had a great time watching trains run, and she gave the bells and horns a workout. But, more work to do...

Layout 4 - October 2023

It was when I added this extension of the main line that I finally realized that the layout would eventually consume the entire perimeter of the garage. I wasn't quite sure when that would happen, I just knew it would. The extension on the right (where the workbench once stood) now includes an apple orchard, a dairy farm, and a wheat farm. Consider this rural Will or Dupage County outside of the urban area. On the left, the mainline has been expanded an additional 18" north, separated from the refinery by a hilly treed ridge. Within the loop lies Papoose Lake, a favorite picnic/hiking area from my youth. Please don't challenge me to be geographically accurate as to its placement, suffice to say it IS in the southwest suburbs.

This version of the layout would last a whole couple of months. We were anticipating the first visit of my granddaughter Bernice since she was 4 months old (now would be almost 3 in December) and I had been grooming her to be a train lover ever since. So I wanted something spectacular.
 

Layout 3 - June 2023

It is amazing how much unneeded sh.. (stuff) one can dispose of when properly motivated. Sacramento provides, 2 times per year at no cost to the homeowner, a free junk pickup with very few limitations (no flammables, no electronics, no iron pipe over 48"). They will take everything I can put at the curb in a 48x48x108 inch space. So my pile was almost as dense as the earth's core, and freed up a multitude of room in the garage. So much so that I was able to extend the layout an additional 4 feet to the garage wall. The layout now stood at its final and current width of 17.33'. What remained on the west (right) wall was my 36" high workbench. But plans were also afoot to store seldom used gear under the layout, which stood to 44" and offered plenty of room. So layout 3 as depicted below. I enjoyed building out the scenery here for about 4 months, when I realized that my workbench needn't be fixed and attached to the garage. God (and Amazon) made casters for a reason...


Since I like scenery, this new area consisted of forested hills and a water feature (lake). More puffballs and really decent and cost effective trees from EveModel in China.

Layout 2 - January 2023

Layout 2 represents the first major expansion. I widened the layout 48" after I figured out how to remove the built in shelving without the entire garage caving in. This allowed me to add a diesel maintenance yard to the layout. I also lengthened the left leg by 12" and installed trackage to support the Clark Oil refinery. The center of the layout depicts the suburb of Orland Park, Illinois, one city where I grew up in the 1970's after college. The far left and down to the refinery is all forested hills, representing the Cook County forest preserves which were prevalent in the SW suburbs. I enjoyed building out and scenicing this layout for almost 6 months before Horace Greeley reminded me to go west. So I did.

Layout 1 - November 2022

My first running layout measured 9.33' by 7.00' around the left rear corner of my garage. I went to great lengths just to make room for this layout, and the rear width was limited by built-in shelving dating to the 1050's or older that I wasn't sure was structural or not. So left alone for now. I originally used an old Kato power pack and blue switches to control the turnouts, but I soon discovered one of the neat features of the ECoS. The unit has a multifunction color TFT display built=in, and a facility for creating a track map for display. Turnouts and other digital devices can be wired to the bus or stationary decoders to operate turnouts, etc., just by touching the display. I invested in some Digitrax DS64 decoders (4 turnouts per unit), programmed them, and operated the turnouts from the touch screen. This worked well until the DS64's started failing. Digitrax stopped making them, the secondary used market dried up, and I switch to DCC Concepts ADS units, purchased from Iron Planet Hobbies. None have ever failed, and I have continued buying them as the layout has grown.

Fast forward 2 months...