To Answer jmp883's questions:
"Door High" means just a shade over 6'. The room has a window, a closet (with folding
doors that stick out when opened), and a door (which swings in), plus I don't want to
bump it with my head. The top of the window trim was the lowest of the three openings,
so that was the level chosen. Notches have to be cut in the plywood pieces over the door
and closet trim.
How supported?: All the wall space around the room, between these three openings was
filled in with "quarter round" screwed to the wall at the studs. I shopped around to find
the best quality (3/4" birch) plywood I could find (Hint, stand it on end, if it doesn't stand
absolutely straight up and down, i.e., no bend along the entire 8', DON'T buy it) - that
insured that the plywood would lay flat on its own. Since gravity is my enemy here,
keeping everything light was my goal - thus, for the most part, I rely on the tensile
strength of the plywood to support itself. The largest plywood piece (the town area) is
triangular, i.e. make a radius at opposite corners of the plywood, connect the two arcs
with a tangent line that forms the "inside" edge of the railbed thru town. Since this still
is a large piece I applied some additional support on the upper side, parallel to the
railbed. That meant there would be a hump in the middle of town, so toward the corner,
"behind" the hump, I cut an irregular hole, and installed a piece of plexiglass of the same
shape, to be a pond - which you can look up through to see the back side of the hump and
the scenery in the corner. Therefore, the four plywood pieces are held in place by
gravity, and exact fit at the joints keeps them in place laterally.
The other three plywood pieces range in depth, from the wall, between 2 inches and ten
inches, except of course in the corners where the turns are radiused. Where as the
triangular "town" piece was a single track, the other three pieces have two tracks, but not
side by side. The "mainline" track (which defines the inside edge of the layout all the
way around the room, is fairly "modern" i.e. straight stretches, except for a 90 degree turn
(more or less) at every corner of the room. The second "historic" line I tried to make as
crooked as possible, within the limited space between the mainline and the wall. There
are only two Kato # 6 turnouts (28 1/4" radius) at either end of the "town" - those turnouts
layflat and the operating mechanism is self contained. What little wiring is needed (at
this time) is easily hidden on the upper surface of the layout, which you can't see. The
historic rail line needs to be elevated over most of its length - I cut the railbed out of 1/4
plywood laying over a piece of 2" foam, thus cutting both at the same time with a jig saw.
The 1/4' plywood (about 1" wide) railbeds are glued in place to the 3/4' plywood using
various length verticle plywood scraps that are the same width as the railbed, looking like
a long crooked bridge when done. The foam pieces then fit perfectly in place on either
side of that rail bed, and you can start forming them to be the scenery. Additional foam
based scenery, above the level of the historic line, is held in place by gravity and is
removable-that allows you to raise and remove the 4 plywood sections if so needed.
Note also, along one wall, above a bookshelf, there's sort of a notch in that plywood
piece, with a 3' foot long "drop down" level of scenery, which is a water way, that the
mainline bridges and the historic line skirts.
Is there scenery? Yes, but as I said because your view of the layout is limited to standing
on the floor and looking up, you can "cheat" , i.e., everything doesn't have to be
"finished" on all sides, only the sides you can see. The "sky" is painted right on the wall
of the room. Since the layout is by necessity hillside, at three corners, the hill scenery
reaches all the way to the ceiling, thus no curved sky background is needed at the
corners. On the town triangle piece, buildings on the hillside reach the ceiling in the
corner.
Operationally it's a very simple layout. You can either run one train consist on the
"mainline" with the other train consist parked on the "historic" line, or (by just switching
the two turnouts, it's visa versa. Is that single cab? No DCC yet.
I'm a passenger train guy, so track and train winding their way through the country side,
rather than a freight switching yard, is my interest. Thus this approach works for me.
Right now it's about 80% complete, then it's add a couple more turnouts, "tunnel"
through the walls and extend