A modular approach it is!

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How big can I go!

As a kid we were very lucky as we had an old pool table and a big chipboard layout my Dad would lift out and set up at various times in our childhood, mainly after the footy season. This was in the shape of a big oval and was Direct Current and my brother and I would put our locos at separate ends and run them around for hours, eventually my loco would get caught by his, as it was new and tighter running gear.

Thinking back to the old days and working through the ideas and plans with Pinkenba in my post Picking the right site location and Track Modelling I knew a large layout was not going to be able to be achieved. 

I started to google around to understand how people who had limited space were able to enjoy the hobby of model rail. Initially I stumbled across a few posts with different views on the model rail forums. When looking at video content, I stumbled across this series of videos - Building A Modular Model Railway - YouTube I found this to be very informative and later found another series Building A Shunting layout | Baseboard And Track Plan Ep1. 

Both individuals left me with alot to think about, but the key thing was how much fun and opportunity there was to create a layout with such a small space, bigger is not always better. 

Reading the model rail forums, alot of experienced modelers kept making reference to the depth and height of a layout which is something that stood out to me, this was mainly around operations when leaning over the layout, standing and moving around or just sitting on a stool and watching the layout.

Inspired and excited by this new knowledge I headed down to Bunnings to look for some plywood in order to get something flat, but I will be honest I was not impressed and returned home. It was probably a good result as being an IT professional I don't have many tools, so this prompted me to stop and do a bit a planning and gathering research first.

I pulled out a pencil and paper and scratch together a rough drawing, the plan was to build 4 small modules which would be 1200mm x 600mm in 12mm plywood and run in a single line and stand about 100 - 110mm. Seems simple right!

Until next time.


Little Shunter


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