MORE EXAMPLE LAYOUTS
HO Scale (16.5mm gauge)
Inspired by an Iain Rice design in
Model Railroad Planning
2003
, John Peckham’s 1x6-foot Rockport Maine features a
“picture frame” to set off the layout and direct the audience’s
attention. John operates with a card order car-routing system
that makes good use of the hidden dropleaf fiddle yard to the
left of the layout. He also uses ambient sound, with ocean and
countryside noises coming from four speakers hidden behind
the upper valence.
Sn2 Scale (9mm gauge)
Russ Haigh built
The Cavorite Tram,
a 20x30” narrow-
gauge railway, some-
time around 1995.
It’s built on three
layers of Foamcore
board glued to a
frame of 2” thick
pink insulating foam.
The little 1:64 tram serves a mine for cavorite, a mineral invent-
ed by H.G. Wells that has the uncanny ability to fall upwards.
Wells used it to power a flight to the moon. Russ’s pike includes
Minimum space layouts - 4
O Scale (1.25” gauge)
Dick Bell built this tiny 36x28” O scale railroad, theDelaware Valley
Traction Company, almost 30 years ago. The small layout features
private right-of-way, street trackage, working overhead wire, and a
curved turnout leading to a spur that serves as a team track.
“I originally built the layout to learn the various skills needed to
build a working trolley layout,” Dick comments. “Today, I use the
layout as a photo prop (the scenery can be varied by changing out
the buildings), as a loop to test run and work out the bugs in new
cars, and most of all for fun. It has survived the construction and
subsequent destruction of two large trolley layouts. I call it my ‘first
and lasting’ trolley layout.”
You can find still more example layouts at
an appropriate mountaintop airport for cavorite-powered
planes, complete with an office and an outhouse that is guyed
down to avoid being blown over by departing flights. Cavorite
can be shipped out either by rail or by air.
MRH-Sep 2014
