You can find John Allen’s plan and the Elk River plan in Small
Layout Scrapbook #4:
A more comprehensive list of schematic arrangements for min-
imum space layouts are discussed in detail on the micro/small
layout website:
End-to-end
layouts are
mainly used for switching,
rather than for continuous
running. This can be a very satisfying mode of operation, and a
good switching problem can easily take nearly an hour to work
through, even on a very small layout. These pikes are often
placed on bookshelves or in out-of-the-way corners.
A good example of an end-to-end design is Chuck Yungkurth’s
well-known shelf layout,
Gum Stump & Snowshoe,
see:
and
In both these sample schematics, the turquoise-colored area
represents hidden trackage, sometimes called a “fiddle yard,”
where trains can be secretly marshalled, stock rearranged, and
locos swapped in order to keep traffic moving on the visible
part of the layout.
This is the “backstage” area of the layout, and it’s one of the
tricks we use to achieve railroadlike operation in these small
designs. The hidden trackage represents the “rest of the world”
in minimum space layouts.
Minimum space layouts - 2
EXAMPLE LAYOUTS
There’s something about the challenge of shoehorning a work-
ing railroad into an “impossibly” tiny space that brings out ex-
treme creativity in model layout designers. Here are some ex-
amples of minimum space layouts in each of the most popular
modeling scales currently used in the U.S. They should provide
you with information, inspiration, and a lot of fun!
N Scale (9mm gauge)
2: Probably the most popular
minimum-space plan in the
world is the “pizza” layout —
a small circle of track amid
carefully crafted scenic sur-
roundings, often looking as
though it could be delivered
in a pizza box. This N-scale
example, by John Lucas, is
scenicked to represent the
clay cliffs along the bayshore
near Pensacola, FL. It’s 24
inches square.
3: Focusing more on op-
eration is Bob Hughes’ San
Vince de Rey, an industrial
switching yard measuring just
18x6 inches (excluding fiddle
yard). The spurs duck under
an overbridge at the right and
are connected to a movable
cassette backstage, allow-
ing the engine to serve all the
tracks just as if there were a
switch ladder back there. Bob
uses the layout to play Ingle-
nook switching games (see
the
website
for more information).
2
3
MRH-Sep 2014
