Welcome to Milford Model Rail, where the Southern Pacific is still alive.
This is a simple website where I hope to exchange ideas and give progress reports on how my home layout is progressing. I am primarily a Southern Pacific modeler. I grew up in California near the Roseville yard. I also had a little bit of free run in the Sacramento Shops. I had a friend there that was a painter for the historical society. And, of, course, the Sacramento Railroad Museum.
I have been playing with trains since I was about four years old when my grandfather bought an AHM set for a christmas present. This set was purchased in 1976, and I still have most of it today. I have collected on and off for several years, never really having enough space or money to really build a decent layout of my own. I have bounced around to a couple of clubs here and there over the years, most recently a member of The Brazos Valley Model Railroad Society, in Bryan, Tx. It was here at this time where my focus turned 100% on trains. I learned alot from the experienced hands of that club. The club enabled me to get my collection out of their boxes and get some track time down.
I have now since moved, purchasing my first home with my fiance'. We were blessed to find this home. It fell into our laps so to speak. It is a 3000 sq ft. two story brick home here in Milford. With a detached two story garage with bare walls and plywood floor. Perfect for a train room. Finally, I could turn my attention to buying wood for benchwork of my very own. Yay! My first real layout is finally a gleam in my eye. After several months of trying to design benchwork and a layout I finally came up with a workable plan.
The room is apx 25ft x 25ft. At least the back walls of the upper story are 25ft. The front wall is apx 19ft across. The difference in depth is from a staircase that ascends from the lower level to the upstairs. There is a nook over the staircase that extends the room a bit. I wanted a layout up and running asap. So, therein lies the design challenge. I had three four foot and one six foot NMRA standard HO modules from the club in bryan. Since these allready had track, ballast, and some scenery and buildings, these were going to be used in the layout plan. I wanted to keep it simple. Spend as little right away as possible and utilize the materials I had allready.
I think that the plan that I came up with is very doable. I can build it in stages. Stage one will give me aproxamatly a 25 ft x 8ft rectangle utilizing the modules. L-girders down the wall anchored to the studs and 2' x 4' "dominoe" style benchwork. The whole rectangle is no more than 2' wide and I should be able to put in plenty of switches and keep a minimum radius of 30" or better.
These photos are obviously not taken by me, just some of my favorites.
bravenet.com