Building this layout has been a challenging project; I simply don't have the financial resources to purchase(or build) the perfect basement with a house attached to it.  I had to make some compromises to get a house in the neighborhood my wife and I wanted.   We purchased 1.5 story Cape Cod style home built in 1920. The basement is a square about 26 feet on a side. It's a decent size but it's not "ideal" for building a model railroad.  I look at it this way; real railroad designers don't have the luxury of being able to create the perfect "right of way".  They have to take the terrain at hand, figure out what they can(and cannot) change and design their routes accordingly.  This is the case with my railroad.

There were three big hurdles for me:

• The basement needed finishing.

• It's very shallow; about 6' 3" from the basement floor to the bottom of the floor joists.

• The ductwork needed major modifications so I wouldn't keep banging my head on it.

Here is the basic plan I devloped for finishing the basement.

Created with Cadrail 7.

Unfortunately I lost all my pictures I took of the unfinished basement in a computer crash so I can't show the basement before I finished it.  Here are a few pictures of the finished product:

Once I had a basic plan for the finished part of the basement I started on the ductwork. This is what I had to deal with...

Not fun. But after much slicing and diceing I came up with solutions that preserved the sanctity of my skull.

While I was working on the basement I started creating some plans. Here a few I developed.

Track Plans

Created with Cadrail 7.

I originally planned on modeling in HO scale. But given space (and political) constraints I decided to switch to N scale. I wanted to have my trains wind their way through mountainous terrain but I felt there just wasn't enough space to do what I wanted.