Received The Layout Questionnaire

I got a copy of Jackson's layout questionnaire and have started to go through it. What I try to do is to get a feel for the persons likes and dislikes. What would make them happy. What things really irk them. That kind of thing.

Designing a layout for a person is a very hard thing to do. It is very personal. Each of us has strong feelings about parts of the hobby and some parts we dread. My job is to figure out what the owner sees in their head when they think model railroad. My other job is to help them make right decisions that will increase their enjoyment. Often I wind up with a layout I would never consider building myself, but makes them quite happy. This is why you don't see the work of pro designers in the hobby magazines. Often, its just not what the hobby press wants to see!

The questionnaire is a tool in and of itself. How a person answers the questions tells me alot about the person. I.D.'s answers are short, simple and incomplete. I'm inclined to think that he will want his layout to go together quick and without a lot of effort. This usually means no tricky track work or unusual benchwork designs. It will mean cookie cutter systems for quick gratification. This is where I nudge the owner to make sure that QUALITY doesn't suffer. A layout that is built quick often sits in ruins only one year later.

Another big part of the questionnaire is to ascertain the skills of the owner. Everybody is good at something and sucks at something else. My job is to figure out what those skills and non-skills are. If a person is great at scratchbuilding then I'll focus on key scenes and structures that really show off the modeler's talent. If they hate doing eletrical work, I don't want them to be forced in to more than they need, so reversing loops, signals and other eletrical apparatii will remain off the table.

Luckily in this case I've been friends with I.D. for many years, chased trains with him, and know some of his limitations. This inimate knowledge will help me design a winner for him.

Did I tell you about the time he drove his van down the tracks of a mainline? Really! LOL. We'll model that, too.

I.D. is actually doing the right thing. His weakest area is in layout design, so he's subcontracting that to me. His railroad is one of my favorites and I've done massive amounts of writing and photography work around the Georgia Northeastern. His prototype is local, so if we have a question, we just go see it. He has plenty of room, a good budget and most importantly HE KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS. This project will be a huge success.


What I need to cover with the customer:

1. Need to do an in depth personal interview.
2. Did you actually build a DCC layout? To completion?
3. What is your favorite thing about model railroading? Couldn't read the answer.
4. I can't read your top 10 things you want on the layout
5. Review basement dimensions
6. Do you really want CTC for the trains? Railroad And Company?

I'll give him a call tomorrow and we'll run down these and other questions. This is a good start!

A Chat With I. D. on the Layout Design

At my office is a fax with his layout design questionnaire and the changes to the drawing. His extra room has a damaged floor that he is going to have to repair. Apparently it was built incorrectly. The rest of the rooms are read to go.

We'll use the train room, double decked with a possible third deck for storage, and we'll put a helix in the extra room. There is plenty of real estate to work with. The second phase of the layout will be a CSX line into the garage. We may put a staging yard out there temporarily to feed traffic to the interchange at Elizabeth.

I'll grab those drawings and get to work on the basement sketch. Then I'll go over to his house and verify the dimensions. Meanwhile I'll start putting together the track diagram. When I go railfanning next week I can check the industries and the trackage one more time.

Sick At Home On Train Night

Being sick is not fun. Being sick at home on Friday night is worse. Being sick on train night is about as bad as it gets. My buddies are over at Glue Bob's building scenery and I'm sitting here freezing with a bottle of Vick's Vapo-Rub and a new box of Kleenex hacking and coughing up things that I can't even figure out what they are. The drugs are making my vision blurry so I can't read a book..... cough, hack, wheeze.

Even though I don't have all the information for drawing the basement, I'm going to go ahead and get started with what I know and draw the rest by eye. Then I can make adjustments. The back wall I'm assuming is concrete and it measures 30 feet, so we'll start there. I draw it in as a 6" thick solid wall. The reason it is gray is because it looks like concrete but more importantly it lets me know that this is a wall that can't be pierced by trackage (unless you are Paul "Jackhammer" Rankin, that is.)


I'll move around the drawing in a linear fashion. The tan walls are pierceable wood/sheetrock walls. The walls are drawn on the BASEMENT layer in 3rd Plan It. The text is drawn on the BASEMENT TEXT layer. I do this so I can turn either off as I see fit.


Here we've added some doors and other walls. I.D. didn't let me know if the doors are just pathways or actually have a door. If they do have a door, there are four possible ways that they can swing (for a standard door.) Should they be a pocket door, I'll need to mark the walls as non-pierceable. I circle problem areas with a PROBLEM layer red circle. That way I remember to correct the plan when I get the information. The 21'3" wall at the bottom was only 20' on his drawing, so we have to check it out.


I stopped adding dimensions on the rest of the layout until I get some dimension checks. Once I have them it will be easy now to finish the drawing. We'll need to add windows, ceiling height and a few other things. One important item is the power box, which we can't block.

Questions For I. D.

While drawing the layout I had some questions:

1. The door to the extra room. Does it swing in or out?
2. What is the length of the right hand rooms?
3. Are there any windows?
4. What is the ceiling height?
5. The door to the train room, swing right or left?
6. The 20' wall in the Extra Room doesn't match the opposite wall.

Started Drawing Today

I started drawing today! Been thinking about the railroad for a week or so, just getting back into the swing of things. Sometime it is hard to have more than one design going at a time. Right now I've got The Dixie Central which is under construction, The B&O #2 for Steve and this layout. I've not been able to handle more than three.

Click On Sketch To Enlarge

We'll start with a rough dimensional sketch of Jackson's basement. He's got a lot of room, but we can't use it all. Until I get the questionnaire back and have a sit down with him, I won't be sure of what area we'll have available, but I know that most of the left side will be used and double decked.

I'll open up a new 3rd Plan It file and save it as JACKSON'S GNRR 1.001. It will be in a file called Jackson's GNRR. The 1.01 is the version number. The first 1 is the revolution, in this case I'm just starting. A 2 in the first slot means I scrapped the design I was working on and made a significant change. The .001 is the working version. About every thirty minutes I save a new version. That way I can go back to what I was doing earlier if I want to go in another direction. It is not uncommon for me to have 50 versions.

The screen looks like this. I'm using version 8.05.003.1256 of 3rd Plan It until they work the bugs out of the Windows 7 version.



Next I need to set the grids and dimensions. This will be an HO scale layout. The overall dimensions for the plan are 50' x 30' roughly. So I'll change the settings.

I like one foot grid lines with four foot main grid lines. Just my preference because I think better in 4's than 3's.

Next I created a BASEMENT WALLS layer so that we can draw in the walls. Usually I draw them in dark gray for concrete and dark tan for wood walls. Why bother? Well, some walls can be penetrated and some can't. Unless you are Packrat Paul, then you can go through reinforced concrete!

Getting good specs from the owner is TOUGH. 90% of all problems with the design come from bad dimensions. I've already noticed that on I. D.'s drawing that the total length of the basement can't be calculated. So I'll stop here and send him a note.

Starting to Think...

Ok, I can hear the jokes. Yes, I think all the time. Mostly about trains.

While Jackson is filling out the Layout Design Questionnaire, I've been starting to lay out the layout in my head.

I normally start with identifying the key features of the railroad. For starters we have:

Reason for the railroad: service customers in north central Georgia by moving freight to and from the CSX interchange in Marietta.

Key features:
1. Interchange in Elizabeth (Marietta) - key source of freight for the line
2. Tate shops - locomotive servicing and the "end of the line" although it does go a bit north of there.
3. The marble mines - source of calcium carbonate
4. The Tate switchback - important operating feature of the layout

What are some others? The railroad has changed lately and has added/subtracted some industries.

Post your comments below!