Introduction

Scaling up

Before I show you lots of track plans, I first want to illustrate two issues which in my humble opinion are important in the design of small model railways. On the following pages I willrepeat myself a lot: when enlarging the surface area with the same track configuration you immediately get a better result. I have a nasty habit of making the plans as small as possible. This is sometimes at the expense of the overall look. The next page will show this effect. [↑]

This page describes how changing the theme can also lead to a better result. I’ll show the effects of changing the scale of the track plan. [↑]

Above design is more or less a theoretical exercise. You cannot do much on 1 m² in H0. This obligatory light railway offers (too) few possibilities for shunting. The curved tracks will cause problems coupling the cars. The passing sidings are too short. I did provide an interchange track to connect to the outside world. With this track you can put trains away on a (removable) storage track and change the trains by hand. Also present is a quarry. An industrial narrow gauge train delivers the gravel. Frankly, this plan is a nice “gimmick” for an exhibition. I’ve used PECO [ωωω] track from the Setrack program. [↑]

A much used method in order to obtain a more acceptable plan is the re-design to narrow gauge. Because in reality everything is smaller with narrow gauge, the disadvantages mentioned above are less evident. When you re-design a track plan for narrow gauge, you can squeeze the same plan in a smaller space. I wouldn’t do that, because the plan will become like a postage stamp. I’m confident you can redraw the plan yourself. [↑]

I’ve redesigned the plan and changed to theme to a tramway. In reality tramways have sharp curves which comes in handy because on 1 m² we can only have sharp curves. The quarry has been replaced by a depot, where you can store your tramcars. A little bit of freight traffic is generated by the post office. These cars can be loaded and unloaded at point ②. [↑]

Like before, this plan has connections with the outside world. You can even build more 1 m² tramway modules and put them together like tiles. [↑]

This layout stays rather small. In reality it would occupy a surface of 87×87 m². That isn’t much. Everything is depicted tighter. It’s what the Americans call “selective compression”. You only model the interesting bits and leave out everything in-between. [↑]

On the previous page I described how a large scale plan occupies a lot of space. This design shows how I’ve scaled up to 2m (meter gauge at 1:22.5). Articles for this scale are produced by LGB [ωωω] in Germany. LGB has tramcars in their program, which could be used here. The baseboard can be divided into four squares of 1.2×1.2 m². This makes the tramway transportable. With a layout with the dimensions of 2.4×2.4 m² the inconsistencies become less evident. The eye can see surface of 1 m² at a glance, here this isn’t possible anymore. So we can compress the cityscape even more. Theoretically, scaling up a layout of 1×1 m² in 1:87 (scale H0) gives you a layout of 4×4 m² in 1:22.5 (scale 2). This can fill a room comfortably. But I’m convinced the smaller surface of 2.4×2.4 m² also gives convincing results. [↑]

To obtain the illusion of a tram riding through the streets I've put low-relief buildings along the sides of the layout. When the building are high enough, i.e. three stories, the effect will be quite noticeable. You’ll need to make a manhole in the middle. Standing there will give you the feeling being amidst the scenery. This is also necessary to have all parts of the plan within reach. [↑]