INDOOR LARGE SCALE LAYOUT FOR THE KIDS
Hi all
I would like to share with you my thoughts about building a large scale indoor layout that the kids can use all year round. In fact, the grandkids - the main excuse for all large scale train expenses - are really into trains. They want to play with them every time they visit or sleep over.
The problem is, I live in a flat in the city center and the garden train is at the weekend house, so the kids don’t get to play with the garden trains that often. So I picked up some Thomas trains and some track from Bachmann train sets and put down some temporary layouts when the kids visit, where space is available.
Putting down the layout every time the kids visit is a chore; listening to SWMBO whenever I let the layout on the floor is also not very pleasant. So I looked for a way to make an attractive layout for the kids, easy to put up and easy to put away.
Giving the geometry of Bachmann tinplate track, a minimum of about 1.4 x 2.8 m (4’8” by 9’4” will be required to make an interesting layout; a board of this size is impossible to carry and store and must be split into four boards 1.4 x 0.7 m (4’8” by 2’4” which can be easily carried and stored.
Each baseboard piece is made with a simple white melamine coated MDF, 10 mm thick, weighting 6 kg (13 lb). Each board has 10 mm diameter holes near each corner. This holes are used to hang them from pegs on the wall and also to connect them once they are laid on the floor. Figures 1 to 3 show how the board can be hang from a wall and mounted on the floor.
Figure 1 – 8 mm thick steel pegs are fixed on the wall, protruding about 6” from the wall
Figure 2 – The four boards, each about 30 mm thick, including track, are hung from the steel pegs.
Figure 3 – The boards are assembled on the floor using 5 connecting pieces with wooden pegs (four double and the central one with four wood pegs).
The connector pieces double as unipolar electrical plugs, allowing each board to receive energy once the main board is fed. Figure 4 shows how this can be done. This is necessary because, to facilitate assembly, the tracks on each side of each baseboard subdivision simply touch one another – connectors are removed. So the conducting connectors assure electrical continuity
Figure 4 – Electrical wiring of the four boards.
Juggling in CAD with the available track geometry I arrived at a minimum width layout with a curved passing loop and two parking tracks on one of the sides, indicated in figure 5.
Figure 5 – Diagram of the chosen layout
The layout uses only conventional straight and curved tracks, except for two half curves on the left side, to depart a little from the basic oval. This half curves are obtained by cutting to normal curved tracks – later I will show how this can be simply done, taking into account the characteristics of the tinplate track.
To improve the aesthetics of the layout, the boards will be covered with inkjet printed adhesive vinyl film, with a protecting upper layer, so that the kids can step over with minimum damage. Printing the film is expensive (about 200€ for the whole board) but I think it increases the play value of the thing. I tried a simple and colorful design, to remind of the old tinplate toys that I loved when I was a kid. The design I come up is indicated in figure 6.
Figure 6 – The printed vinyl decorative background.
With the track, the result will be like this:
Figure 7 – A view of the final layout
I hope I can show you in the near future – I will try before Christmas – how this thing turned out in reality.
José Morais
Headmaster of the Lapa Furada RR
