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Part 2: Small-Scale Bookshelves
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From Ian Holmes, a veteran modeler
who lives in Princeton, Minnesota, comes this classic Inglenook switching layout
in On30 scale. Marathon Seed and Feed measures 30" x 8" with a sector
plate at the left hand end and a traverser at the right. Though he still has a lot
of detailing to add, Ian's work already looks pretty good! |
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A Pair of Starter Shelves Here are two simple shelf layouts, made from sectional track, that could be the basis for your first micro layout! Or, if you're looking for some operating fun with just a little effort, even a seasoned model rail could enjoy these bookshelves. They're built with 16.5mm gauge track, used in England for 1:76 OO scale trains and in the U.S. for 1:87 HO scale trains. Your choice!
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  Another simple track layout for a beginner's shelf railroad is Pine Street Yard, being built by Ken Scott, from Sheffield, England. With a tip of the hat to Jack Trollope's Box Street Yard, this four-foot bookshelf gets a lot of operation from just two turnouts -- albeit one of them is a double-slip! The rear double tracks disappearing under the road overpass dead end into a fiddle yard, while the frontmost track continues in front of the backdrop as a private siding. "I will be using the extra track as a ‘fiddle’ but pretend it ends under the bridge," Ken says. "I have just bought an RDC railcar so I am planning a small station at the front right hand side. Beside the goods platform will be an oil depot and the spur to the right will probably be for coal or gravel." Though it's still under construction, Ken reports this layout "runs a dream" and he's already having a lot of fun switching (shunting) on it!   NOTE: Either of these two beginners' layouts could also be used as an HO scale layout in the U.S. or continental Europe. |
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Candy Mill is a 47x11 in bookshelf
layout that illustrates the advantages of handlaying your own track! It's under construction
by Tony Maude, Pastor of the Peebles Baptist Church, Scotland. You can tell
at a glance that it's not made with standard sectional track! |
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From "Shortliner" Jack
Trollope, in the Scottish Highlands, comes this U.S. prototype layout for a 5x1
ft shelf. Garry's Truck & Electric - a Division of Jaxilli Industries is
an adaptation of my Car Repair Shop layout,
originally designed for O scale but here adapted to HO. It's a takeoff on the well-known
Ohio firm, Larry's Truck and Electric, which repairs and scraps old locomotives.
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'End of the Trail' in the Old West
[ED. NOTE: François' wonderful Old West picture illustrates how much layout can be squeezed into a very small bookshelf using tiny scales like HOn30. ] |
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 According to Alexander, "I plan a harbour scene with two unloading tracks in the harbour front. To run around the cars I plan a traverser an two tracks. One of them can also be used as an unloading track. The sector plate is even big enough to shunt the 'Köf'-locomotive and one car. I think it will be interesting to shunt with two or three cars and the locomotive." Thus far, Alexander has built the trackwork, as well as the traverser and sector plate. He has begun running trains, and is delighted with the operations. We'll try to bring you pictorial updates as construction progresses.
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SCALE 1:160 (N) N scale is a natural for small layouts, and shelf lines are an inevitable medium for it. My Rollaway Hills Railway shows how much N scale railroading can be packed into a space of only two square feet! The design is a 72x4 in. (180x10 cm) adaptation of the Starter Layout in the Micro Layout Design Gallery. It represents the small town terminus of a U.S. branch line. There's a small industrial spur line sneaking off to a wharf and providing a healthy traffic source between the ships' cargoes from the wharf and the bustling team track along the waterfront. There's a passenger station of sorts at the terminus, which could be served by a gas-electric or (in the U.K.) a DMU push-pull set. I've suggested the simplest form of fiddle yard, which is a removable cassette that can be loaded with selected cars, reconnected, and the train hauled onto the layout proper -- all very quickly done, so there's no dearth of action at Rollaway Hills. I'm not sure what the industry at Rollaway Hills might be, but it's a busy one, being served by virtually every train that arrives in town. And of course, it will require transferring its products by rail to the wharf for shipment 'round the world. Car waybill operation is a natural for this little line, and it might even be able to tolerate timetable running, as there's essentially no mainline length to contend with ... and model switching moves take just about as much time as the real thing. A switch crew will be interrupted periodically by the arrival of the passenger consist, which can snarl even their best-laid plans as they scramble out of the way of the varnish - or head over to the wharf for lunch! Most of the scenery is made as low-relief "profile" models, because track takes up a lot of the acreage. But the nature of the community -- facing a waterfront (either river or ocean) -- allows us to use convincing backdrops of buildings, warehouses, railway stations, brick walls (with lots of graffiti), and the like. This line was designed as a non-competing contribution to the All Model Railroading N Scale Forum two-square-foot layout challenge . You might want to have a look at some of the excellent competition entries, which we hope to feature in these pages at some point. |
Woodside Wharf is a 48x8 inch bookshelf
being built by John Downes who lives in Kent in England. The wharf is foamcore
board, the trackwork is Peco, and all the locos and stock are Hornby and Dapol four-wheeled
vehicles.
You may be surprised to learn
that this layout comes from the Loire region of France! François Fontana,
from Saint Ettienne, offers the following footnotes about this extremely appealing
shelf layout:
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Visit us often ... we'll add new pages
every month to the Small Layout
Scrapbook!
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