N-Scale is my primary interest in model trains, so I thought I would put up in my corner of the web what I am doing. I am lucky to have most of a 25 ft x 40 ft basement to build my layout in, though I do have to share part of it with my wife (so that laundry can be done), and all of the utilities that normally come with a basement. I've played with N-scale off and on for years. Some of my first experiments when I was 8 were some Atlas flextrack and sectional track my father gave me. Add in a Santa FE E8 & some streamliner cars and my Lionel went by the way side. As a kid, we moved a lot, so I never built a permanent layout, but in the mid-80's I bought some Kadee Unitrack (when they were the importer of it for Kato), which allowed me to easily setup temp layouts as I worked my way through college and a number of apartments before getting married and owning a basement. ;) Some of my design ideals I am going to put into play building this layout are: My primary road will be Great Northern I have not picked a specific time, but I am currently focusing on the 1st generation diesel era I plan on having at least two main-line interchanges with other roads, most likely as of this writing to be SP&S and Northern Pacific. The general scenery will be roughly based on the Pacific Northwest, where I am located My track will primarily be Unitrack, where there are a number of reasons for: First off the track is dead solid reliable. The original "earth brown" stuff that I have from when Kadee imported it, still works just like it did when it was new. And that is about 20 years later and innumerable temporary layouts in-between. Secondly, their switches just work. No magic wiring or pain in the tail under the track switch machines to install. The frog automatically is power-routed, so no dead spots for smaller loco's. Third, after getting painted, they look pretty darn good. John Sing has shown this on his website, and it looks good enough for me. I also really dislike balasting. It is one of the aspects of this hobby I don't enjoy (we'll see what happens when I get to scenery), so Unitrack lets me avoid it. Unitrack also has a pretty good portfolio of track, so for the most part I can build some fairly nice arrangements with it. Where I can't, I can decide to fail over to flextrack and/or other makes of switches. 15" minimum mainline radius I would have preferred to select something a bit wider, but this is the widest, 30 degree track Kato makes. I could have gone with the 18" track they offer, but at 15 degrees a section you need quite a few sections to make up any normal curve. Since Kato's primary market is Japan, where space is at a premium, I don't expect this to change so I put this in the acceptable arena. I also happened to have a fair amount of 15" radius, so accepting it as a minimum let me get the ball rolling without too much investment. #6 switches on mainline #4's can be used on side track's. Though, only the straight leg is allowed on the main. 10 ft or longer mainline passing sidings. This lets me have multiple power units and around 20 cars. Should make for some nice trains. DCC control. Command control is a godsend to model railroaders. Makes it much easier to just run the trains instead of worrying about wiring. And with the addition of a auto-reverser, you can avoid most of the problems inherent with 2-rail modeling. Currently Digitrax is my system of choice. They make the best overall package in my opinion and while their wireless isn’t everything I am looking for, it works. Micro-trains couplers and trucks throughout Until the other manufacturers match Micro-Trains in quality and usability, all cars must have their trucks converted and all couplers are to be Micro-trains. As nice as Acumates are, they are not as reliable or usable as Micro-Trains. Yes, I know the slinky effect isn’t desired, but that again is in the “acceptable” list.Basement.htmlhttp://www.atlasrr.com/http://www.lionel.com/http://www.kadee.com/http://www.katousa.com/http://www.gnrhs.org/http://www.spshs.org/http://www.nprha.org/http://www.kadee.com/http://home.comcast.net/~j.sing/http://www.katousa.com/http://www.katousa.com/http://www.digitrax.com/http://www.micro-trains.com/http://www.micro-trains.com/http://www.micro-trains.com/http://www.micro-trains.com/shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6shapeimage_1_link_7shapeimage_1_link_8shapeimage_1_link_9shapeimage_1_link_10shapeimage_1_link_11shapeimage_1_link_12shapeimage_1_link_13shapeimage_1_link_14shapeimage_1_link_15shapeimage_1_link_16
My N-Scale Layout