Room Construction

Roughly a third of my basement will be dedicated to the train room. The room is roughly 22 feet by 18 feet, with a few obstacles. I have a furnace, water heater, ejector pump, and a support pole to work around, but overall there is more than enough room to make what I hope will be a beautiful layout. As is the case with all model railroaders, no matter how much space you have, you could always use more. Here is a rough overview of the space that will be used for my layout.

Construction on the basement began around a month ago. I am not an expert carpenter, and have never done any framing before, but it is fun work. When I purchased my house my dad applied a seal to the concrete floor, which I highly recommend. Concrete creates dust, even if you don't walk on it. If you seal your floor, it prevents this, which prevents the dust from being sucked into your furnace, and blown into your house. The seal also gives the concrete a shiny finish. Currently the framing is about 65% complete. Here are a few pictures of the current progress as of today.

The pictures make the space look smaller than it really is. The final picture shows an O-72 template on the ground. After framing is complete the next step will be to spray a bug-proofing agent on the concrete walls, then installation of electrical and insulation. So far on this project I have spent less than $200, and that included all lumber (about 60 studs, 9 12 foot 2X4s, and 9 12 foot treated 2X4s), screws, and nails.

Introduction

Welcome to my O scale layout blog! Thanks to my father and my Uncle, model railroading has always been a hobby of mine. My father gave me my first steam engine when I was 3 months old for Christmas, and there has been a train under the tree every year since.

Model railroading tends to be a seasonal hobby, unless you actually build your own layout. In the fall of 2010 I finally made the decision to start construction on my own layout. Visiting webpages such as www.ericstrains.com and www.toytrainsontracks.com got my imagination rolling, and definitely fueled my enthusiasm to start my own project.

I also recently discovered the forums at www.ogaugerr.com which is an irreplaceable source of information  for the hobby. Here you can see dozens of new pictures added daily of some amazing projects, as well as learning about railroads that are here today, and railroads that were around 100 years ago.

Finally, the ejearchive webpage, and its creator Dave, have given me a vision for my layout, which will be focused on the Elgin Joliet & Eastern Railway. Some amazing historic images that I will share with you are because of the work Dave has completed, to document this history of EJ&E.

That about wraps up the introduction, I hope you will enjoy following along as I build my first layout!