How to Plan Your Model Railroad.

     Tony Koester, ed. Model Railroad Planning 2018 (2018) The annual Model Railroader special issue on planning layouts. Better, on designing them, but the word “design” hasn’t become comfortable usage for model railroaders.
     This one has 15 articles, mostly of the “how I did it” variety”. Each includes a track plan with summary stats such as room size, mainline run, curve radii, etc. The articles focus on the process of deciding what kind of layout the owner wanted, and how they arrived at an acceptable version of it in available space and time. Most of the layouts are large to very large, based more or less accurately on some prototype, and intended mostly for operation by a multi-person crew.
     A couple of exceptions: David Barrow built a small shelf layout in O scale, depicting a small town, perfectly suited for solo operation, and (like all his layouts) about as simple as a layout can be. It’s not much more than track on plywood, with a couple of building mockups and photos of industries tacked to the wall. It's the layout as game board.
     Two layouts, planned by professionals, are designed primarily for train watching. One of them uses vertical staging: shelves along the wall above the work bench, reached by spurs off a helix that hides one end of a folded-dogbone mainline. Each shelf hold two tracks, slightly separated vertically so that the train in front doesn’t completely hide the one at the back. The owner can turn from his work to watch his trains.
     The other one uses a spiral (pioneered by John Armstrong), which allows long runs between towns, and a division point that plausibly requires engine and crew changes, block-switching of through freights, and assembly of local switch runs. This layout gives the owner both the train watcher’s thrill and the pleasure of operating with a crew of friends.
     The lead article by Doug Tagsold tells of how he returned to Colorado narrow gauge modelling, but wanted more reliable mechanisms than HOn3 could guarantee. He devised a scale of 1:72, using HO track and rolling stock tweaked to have the narrow-gauge look. The gauge works out to 3.95 ft (approx. 3 ft 11"). Not exactly narrow gauge, but the overall impression is plausible, judging from the photos. 1:72 is a popular military scale, so there’s lots of material available for scenery.
     Most of the layouts allow both train watching as well as operation, but as usual operation is the main goal. For the average hobbyist, the stories inspire, and may encourage the vaguely dissatisfied to tear down and rebuild with a better notion of what they want from their layout. For the beginner, it’s a showcase of what’s possible, and may help them avoid the beginner’s mistake of trying to have it all. Koester's summary of "Seven things not do" should be tacked up on the wall of every layout room. ***