Al Z's Train Pages

As Seen in "Readers' Rails" Run 218

The layout construction started after my son at the age of two received a MTH R-T-R starter train set for Christmas from my In-laws in 2002 . This re-kindled my interest in model Railroading that had as a kid. I had a couple of HO scale train sets as a kid and never really got into building a layout just carpet central. I think due to the size of the trains I lost interest. After about two weeks of my son receiving his train, I started to build our layout for him and myself .

I started on my benchwork and had the quite a bit done and realized that my plans were not as well thought out as I thought. When deciding to build the layout I had to restrict the width to approx. 30" wide in the middle of the layout, due to my furnace placement, plus I decided early on that I would only use one half of the basement , since I didn't want to lose my work shop area. So..... I have been trying to do as many levels as possible with hidden tracks etc. to have as much operating area to run the trains. I also wanted to have at least one track that had a 72" radius which I have accomplished and then some. My layout size is approx. 30' long x 9.5'w at one end and 7' wide at the other end which is still growing. So far I have managed to keep the minimum curve to 0-54. The layout is currently command control with the MTH DCS system with plans to add TMCC ll in the future. I have over 550' of track and about 30 + switches on the layout which are also controlled by DCS. I recently changed the plenum on the furnace in order to allow me to add an additional passing siding on the lower level and still have a large enough isle way. This has been quite the work in progress and hope to have most of the track work done by 2007. I hope you enjoy visiting my website.