Interested In Building A G-scale Train
Layout Indoors?

My G-scale layout is indoors.

G scale CN engines

It is attached to the walls 68" above the floor. That puts the track at my eye level.

The Utopia Northern HO and HON3 layout is beneath it, usually with clearance of 24" around the walls. The HO layout base level is at 38" and rises to 48" in the center peninsula. There are spots where the large scale track is only a few inches above the scenery.

The large scale trains run on a double-track mainline above the HO layout. Here the scenery rises close to the G scale layout.

control shelf for G scale

I kept the controls simple. The automatic turnout controls have not yet been installed.

I installed a hanging shelf for the basic controls.

Some of the engines are DCC equipped, some aren't. I tend to run a DCC train by engine number in one direction and a non-DCC train on position 0 in the opposite direction. There is some passing tracks and a semi-John Allen type switching puzzle incorporated into the trackplan.

I only have about a dozen cars and a few engines including the two that came in the LGB starter pack. One of my former co-workers was a graffiti artist of some note and painted one of my boxcars with his nom-de-plume "Task".

Hand-painted graffiti

There are decal sheets of graffiti available from Microscale that I've used on some HO cars but there is nothing like having a personalized boxcar in large scale. Click here for some real graffiti photographed on the Canadian Pacific mainline near Alliston, Ontario in 2007.

Recently (autumn, 2009), my daughter had an artist friend, Ryan, paint some boxcars with graffiti as a birthday present. He did both sides of two cars. As my railroad runs around the walls, I can change the sides that are viewed. Here they are.

More hand-painted graffiti

The other side

The second boxcar

The second boxcar's other side

The railway maintenance department better apply new reporting marks!

You don't see many articles about indoor garden railways. Most are outdoors and are well covered in Garden Railways magazine. There was a series from August to November, 2005 in Model Railroader magazine that detailed how to build an indoor layout. If G-scale excites you, check out that project railroad. There's a lot you can do even in a relatively small space.

If you'd like to see pictures of a spectacular Canadian outdoor garden railroad, click here for Brain Swanton's G-scale garden railroad representing the historic Kettle Valley Railway of British Columbia, Canada.

For G scale trains running on a 40 X 60 foot indoor layout, have a look at the video I made of the Hockley Valley Railroad in Alliston, Ontario.

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