What are the temperature extremes you store/run your trains at? The attic above the garage being my only shot at a permanent layout for the next few years. OK, the good news is, if I put in the time, I get my fantasy layout, ot at least the first itteration. Starting conditions: No insulation, but we just covered the southern exposure with solar panels and the ridge vent is new. That will help with high temp (I think). Winter is winter. Electric, is there, clearing the space covering the walls, etc to follow, but I'm not running climate control beyond electric heat and fans when the space is in use by people. After I get a feel for if this is feasible, I will move to the design forum. I'm thinking Unitrak and Tomix track, unless the temp extremes will play more havoc with the connectors, than with another option. it will have DCC and DC operations. I have too many DC locos I like to limit myself to DCC. Some will convert over time. Some aren't convertable. I will work out keeping the lines separate as I plan.
Well - I had mine outside in an unheated (except by woodstove when I was in it) and mostly uncooled outbuilding. Through several years, I had O for a while, then HO. Never had the N out there, by the time I went to N, I had a spare room in the house(but still no cooling tho). I had DCC and regular, all stayed in good order. Two things - first - since attic/garage can have infiltration issues - the dreaded SB could be an issue, if you have them in your area. (Thats Stink Bug) and the other issue is to be sure if you use homasote, that its not unsupported. What I mean is that some have used homasote in place of plywood, and homasote can react very badly to humidity in that kind of usage. As much as I hate to finish off a room, before I start a layout, it could be wise to close off the train area, and have a good window AC hmmnnnnn - how about forget the car storage, garage becomes full train room
Thanks Won't use homosote. It smells.... Yup, we have the stink bug issue (so far it is minor), but we find them everywhere, so if I can train them to lay track. Also, we have a 2 car garage, are you telling me some people use them for cars? Where do they put thier tools and thier kids precious stuff? No way I could keep a section clean enough or protected from flying soccerballs in the 2 door closet!
I am in a large garage, and the temp goes from around 30-110 in there. The trains are fine.....the track and people,(Me mainly!), are not so good. My ceiling is 20ft or so, so space heaters are not really good heaters. During high heat, I have had issues with kinks.....sort of like the real railroads....LOL You just have to work around the problems I guess. If I had it to do over again, I would completely get the building ready with insulation and central heating/air. I would also do something about the dirt/dust issues in a large building outside. I do alot of cleaning on the layout. But.....I still love the hobby and have fun.
I am gonna keep an eye on this thread. I have switched over to Unitrack and the planned area for the layout will have EXTREME temp changes. 0 in the winter to 100+ in the summer. It will only be temerature controlled while I am in there. Hmmmmmmm
If you're expecting lots of kinks, etc. then why not go with unsoldered (or only soldered in key areas) sectional track? Install it and glue it down, ballast it etc. while it's hot (really hot?) in the room- use space heaters, etc. to gett he desired effect. When it cools off in the room, the track will shrink a small amount but simply slide/retract in the rail joiners a small amount, not enough gap to derail your trains. What'll get you really messed up is if you lay track in the cold, and then it gets warm- the trac expands, ends pusha aginst ends and it'll literally pop the rails off the ties (or worse, pull the ties out of your ballast on longer sections!) and maybe damage the track beyond use. I would say that you should expect to run feeder wires under most/all track sections to a bus beneath the layout, incase of any iffy connections; then won't affect your power to the rail sections or your trains (taking the power transmission duties away from the rail joiners). Big project yeah, but worth it? Heck yeah.
If you're going to use unitrack, I wouldn't think the expansion/contraction would be a major issue. The sections are short enough to not induce major dimension changes and the connectors should have enough "slop" in them to adjust. Also unless you're planning to model subroadbed you won't need cork or homasote. One thing I would mention is to make sure you seal all the lumber before putting the benchwork together to protect it from any moisture issues. And as a side note, the worst I've dealt with was with a modular club where we did a show at an old trolley barn. An outdoor setup (well, in the barn but the doors wide open) with half the layout in strong sunlight and half in shade. And boy could we tell the difference!
Thermal expansion can be a problem with Unitrack just like any other. There was a LHS layout on a 4x8 sealed sheet of Homasote, simple ovals with crossovers, unballasted, used for demos. FWIW it was nearly all Unitrack. The air temp would seldom get over 80F but the sun beating down through the window could cause minor to major kinks on the straight, where two adjoining Kato straight sections could be displaced up to 1-1/2" vertically at the joint. IIRC those were among the few sections left unglued (they might have been lightly tacked down with glue) to allow for expansion.
Be realistic about what the temp reaches in the attic space. 100-110 deg is one thing...still not great for your trains but probably won't do anything. But attics can get much hotter than that. I stored some things in a friends' attic and the vent fan was either not on or failed or whatever. I had the material on several cars fail. Warping on some resin cars and Walthers Thrall double-stack cars' metal just crumbled. It was 110 outside, probably 150 in there. If you do radiant barrier and insulation, the attic temp will pretty much hover around the outside temp in the summer, from the folks I know that have done it. (in Texas) I can't speak to the extreme cold. We don't get that here in Texas very often. I will say that, based on friends' experiences and my own, I will think long and hard before doing a layout that isn't in a climate controlled area. I have one now that I can fit in many different types of spaces, and it will be with me until I have a space that allows for something bigger. But it won't be in a garage or unfinished attic. The dust alone is more of an issue to me than the temps.
I started this... Spent a good deal of Monday night and last night in the attic. Straightening and basically communing with the space. Asking myself, can I play up here? The space won't work. i could do2 paragraphs, but gas lines, wiring, support beams, head space dust and the flat out bad vibe of being a dad/husband that lives in the attic. Loop on the desk it is. My wife has been suggesting something I can hoist up to the ceiling in the office/ guest rm. Hmmmm, I wanted more space, but hmmm....
Winter temps will be what ever is outside. Down to 25 deg. mostly 28 to 33 deg for the lowest. Highs outside have gotten to 115 deg.mostly up to 105 or so for a few weeks. So that means that in the summer the train building will be around 10 degrees hotter.
What's that??? I hate to ask, but why on earth did/would you pick that location, especially in N scale?
Our Ntrak group stores our modules in an unheated storage locker facility. Temps can range from below zero to above 100. So thermal expansion is always a consideration at set up time. Also humidity is a basic problem so the wood should be properly sealed on all sides. That last part about sealing on all sides is very important. Another problem is potential vermin infestation from mice to insects, spiders and the latest scrouge, the stink bug.
I used cheap, no name flat white latex paint to 'coat' my plywood and L girders. The stuff seemed to have a high water content as it raised the grain terribly. Is this a problem over the long term as far as not providing the moisture protection I need?
Interesting thread. My layout is currently in an unfinishable basement, but it will likely eventually be moved to a walled-off portion of a detached garage. I'm in southern Minnesota, so temp extremes range from -20 to 100 degrees, with high humidity thrown in to boot. I expect heat and AC will be mandatory. I'm hoping to keep layout temps between 50 and 80 degrees, and that that will be sufficient to avoid expansion/contraction problems. We'll see. Jim
We're lucky over here in that we don't normally get the extremes of temperature you find across USA, but I once had a layout in the attic, without any insulation. Boy, that was hot in summer!!! Not too bad in winter, though . . . The tramway (OO/HO) lives in the garage, the car doesn't. [[Peco Streamline code 100]] No insulation there either. In summer I can wear shirtsleeves, and in winter I put on as many layers of sweaters and coats as necessary, plus (sometimes) I use an electric heater. The US outline N layout lives in the back bedroom. It faces south and is about to encounter its first summer. With the window open and the curtains drawn, it SHOULD be okay! [[Kato Unitrack]] Regards, Pete Davies
Not sure where you are but the attic in the houses I've lived in have rodents that like to eat scenery and leave "boulders" along the right a way. Also the temperatures in an attic can hit 130 or more and that is extremely dangerous to be in, you could heat stroke and collapse with no one being the wiser. Maybe if you don't have a lot of room try a module or a shelf layout. Keith Jordan's Patch Layout, seen in Model Railroad Planning, shows how you can have a nice layout even in a finished room. A pull down layout is a good idea too but remember you will have to pull off all the cars if you want to lift up the layout since N-scale cars are so light. http://web.mac.com/ckjordan/The_Patch/Layout_Plan.html
