Plans

Davis-Murdoch Stone Company

Planning Small Layouts



I referred to an Iain Rice book in a recent 'Projects' post


Finescale in Small Spaces is a book I pull out often, but it doesn't directly address my particular situation. It is written specifically as a guide for British layout design, therefore the specifics do not apply. But generally it presents ideas I can relate to, so I have tried to extract those ideas and reword them in my planning notes in order to make them more applicable to my layout.

RiceLineDetail

For example:

Rice is confident in the potential of small layouts to be worthwhile, interesting projects. They fit better into overall personal time and resource management. Significant progress can be made at a deliberate pace. Rice considers small layouts to be stage sets, the theater being a good resource for solutions to many situations on a layout that require suspension of disbelief:

  • Lose edges and create the illusion of wide open space
  • Natural and disguised entrances to storage tracks and staging
  • Setting that complements the Theme without obscuring or detracting
  • Uniformity that pulls the entire project together with tone, color, and texture
  • Sight lines and separate scenes creating a series of events as trains progress around the layout

These factors are far easier to address on small, simple layouts. In many ways it is more achievable for a small layout to be a good layout. My personal definition of a "good" layout is one that is a composed, functional display of the builder's interests, apptitudes, and abilities.