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Longer tracks, or shorter trains! Generally, operation works best when you're at about 50% capacity--so if you have room for 8 cars on the layout, use 4 cars, which gives you room to move things around. But longer tracks also helps a lot!

I stumbled across this photo from an old presentation of my third layout experiment circa 2004 (the first was 2' of track with a building flat on a 24"x6" board, the second was a 3x6' double loop with 9" curves in HO), a 2'x6' switching plan designed for expansion that I later abandoned and...

Keeping in mind that more track doesn't always equal more fun, the question for the "double fork" is, what does it do besides let a locomotive with a car on either end spot each car on the same spur & move back to the main? While there are situations where this track layout exists, ordinarily...

Maybe not a mistake: just build a background flat to serve as your industry. This could be a 3-D plastic, wood, or cardstock exterior wall of a building, or even just a picture of an industrial loading dock of appropriate size. Put whatever you'd like to the left, depending on the setting you...

The best way to learn how to build a model railroad is by building a model railroad, even if it's a tiny one! An Inglenook or "Tuning Fork" is enough to get you started, and can be completed quickly enough to give you great satisfaction and inspire further construction. Something small enough to...

We're all in different parts of the same league; this is the same layout in much smaller/earlier form from 2005, 2 house moves ago (the house at the time was 731 square feet, with an 8'x16' un-insulated garage.) My advice is always "start by building a small layout, keep doing that and the big...

Current dimensions are 9'6"x23', previously 11'x25' before relocation to its current home, with room to add a 5'5"x10' future branch line. Here's what the main layout looks like--9'6"x12' in its current form. Peco Code 100 Setrack with some Streamline switches. Minimum radius 15" mainline, 12"...

It does! I hook it up to a Bluetooth hub, you lift the receiver and there's dial tone, spin the dial and it dials the number. I also have an even older phone (1940s Bakelite) in my office that also works, but only one Bluetooth hub right now so I can't use the rotary phone in the train room...

Neat! Here's another section from my layout that started as an Inglenook design less than 4' wide and 1' deep, with 2 car capacity on each spur (and the mainline in the street) and just enough room for a shorty switcher and 1 car on the left-hand side, assuming the 6" piece of connector track...

I assume you've already discovered the classic website for micro layout design https://www.carendt.com/, maintained in the memory of small layout evangelist Carl Arendt--lots of inspiration for micro layouts to be found there. Those designs inspired my (slightly) larger layout, seen below, which...

I have, specifically for early 20th century interurbans, which I found brittle but functional.

If you're just going to have two controllers with no power blocks, you can just do away with the crossover and have two separate loops, because Bad Things are likely to happen when a train crosses from one loop to the other, even with insulated rail joiners. But if you plan to add power blocks...

Now there's an excellent example of superelvation on high-speed curves! Shoeboxes on a "Plywood Pacific" loop are the first steps, but as we get older the imagination requires a little more stimulation, and hopefully one is inspired to add more detail, and some thought as to the function of the...

Angled brackets instead of legs to support the layout are another big reason to have a narrower shelf layout; under-layout access, storage room (cabinets on rollers or bins make it easy to move things in & out), and fewer stubbed toes! I'd respectfully disagree with the idea of double-decking...

A lot depends on the kind of motive power you want to run within that era: if you want to model 1950s-70s, that's generally early diesel or very late steam, most freight rolling stock was still in the 40-60' range. While many will recommend 24" as the bare minimum even for small switching...

What sort of model railroading interests you most? As others have already said, the shelves you're proposing are far too deep, which will create big problems for access, but if you were to approach this as a shelf layout, with shelves 1-2 feet deep, you've got enough room for a lot of switching...

If your principal interest is with things like Lionel train sets, which is more often about the fun of watching trains go around in a colorful setting, then an oval can certainly be a lot of fun, and you can certainly add switches, passing tracks, or future expansions to an oval layout (I am...

My Digitrax system came with the DT602 and while it's handy for programming, it's almost more throttle than I need to just operate. I picked up a couple of older utility throttles (one wired, one duplex) at train shows and generally use them for operating trains. Maybe it's just habit--before...

Hello, I recently joined this forum and figured I'd better do an introduction because I already joined in a few discussions. I model HO scale "transition era:" (1940s-1950s) electric traction and early diesel, specifically Sacramento Northern and Central California Traction, although like most...

A lot depends on what you want the layout to do: to paraphrase an old line, it's not the size of your layout, it's what you do with it! It's easy to fill a sheet of plywood with tracks, on the assumption that more tracks=more fun, but that's not always the case. A good layout starts with an...