Layout Archive

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Last update on 12 August 2007

Our layout has evolved quite a bit over the years. The first layout had grown fairly rapidly to a considerable size. The module construction had created quite heavy objects due to liberal use of plaster for the mountainous scenery. This made them hard to transport, and they got worn in the course of that. So in 1994, we started a completely new layout from scratch. Through summer of 1998, we used a loop of modules with an arm extending from one corner. The proposed plan as of 1995 includes a number of peculiar track arrangements and module shapes that in part have survived until today. The "bi-rail" track was developed for the arm, and the concept has stayed around for about 10 years. The 45-degree modules are still alive and well; one frame lay in storage for many years before it became the Foggy Pond module.  Lastly, the alternate location for the blue line is alive and well, and exists today fully independent of the blue line, which it had originally replaced and which has come back as a separate line again.

Not every module in the 1995 plan got built as proposed. Some were never built and some were built much later: Prairie Bend appeared in the bi-rail arm, and when Warm Springs came into being, the old plan had been abandoned. However, enough came together quickly to allow us to run trains on a well scenicked layout. It consisted of a simpler loop than the plan had, and the arm.

The following layout formed the basis for our imaginary Texas Northern Railroad and was set up a number of times.

At the Holiday Show in Ft. Worth in November 1998, we set up for the first time in end-to-end mode, with new special end loop modules returning the red and yellow lines into the alt-blue and bi-rail locations. This gave us a continuous run on a single main line of 4.8 scale miles! Our photo album contains a number of pictures from this show.

A few modules left the club with their owners during 1998, but we have also added some more modules. Thus our layout grew from 13 modules in 1997 to 18 (or 20 as the large end loops are actually 2 pieces each). For most of 1999, we have continued to set up in end-to-end style, now with a little more room for us inside.

Production of modules had pretty much ceased in 1999 and through 2000, but the detailing of the sceneries kept us busy, and we attended more shows. One new straight module has come into being for the Oklahoma City Train Show in December 2000 where we inserted some of our modules into a joint layout with the local Oklahoma N-Rail Club and the Denver Area N Scale club. This module provided the missing second transition between the NTRAK regular blue and alternate blue lines. We did repeat this exercise in December 2001 with the following layout (graphic courtesy of Lee Williams of Oklahoma N-Rail; scale 1 one box equals 1 square foot):

With fewer members in 2001, we left a few modules at home to keep the setup time manageable. Here is our setup used at the GATS show in Mesquite in April of that year.

A year later, we have begun to grow again, and have set up a slightly enlarged version of our layout at the shows in winter and spring of 2001/2002.

And now that we were growing, we were building and rebuilding modules again. We have resurrected a loop of modules, but with two sizeable arms that use our end loops, and the loop of modules is treated like an end loop as well. Of the arms, one maintains our end-to-end concept together with the loop of modules, and the other forms an extended siding to the red line. This siding arm uses our old transition module, while for the other arm, we have constructed a "Y" module that handles the red, yellow, blue, and alt-blue lines on all three sides, and our bi-rail line (think of it as red from the back) towards the arm.

In the loop of modules, we have a set of 4 modules with the orange line up front and the elevated NTRAK mountain line in the back. On either end, the tracks are turning from orange to mountain and back to form a separate track loop for running. This and the alt-blue line in the loop of modules have offered us the opportunity to resurrect DC operation on part of our layout. With more members, and a good part of the roster still not converted to DCC, this allows us to run all our engines whenever we like.

Here is how we set up in Fort Worth in November 2002:

(Please excuse the odd colors.) The long loops appearing in red and yellow are operated with DCC, as are all other tracks in the two arms. The blue line in the loop of modules is not complete; two corners are missing it, and on one of the straight modules its existence is "pre-empted" in the drawing.

In Plano, space is tighter than elsewhere, so we have to leave some modules at home. In January 2003, we got by with "only" 17 of our 25 modules (the two end loops count as 2 modules each as they split along their length). Here is a bird's eye view:

We proceeded to replace the trapezoidal transition module with a standard 2'x4' sized one to improve on transportation - the new module can be sandwiched with other straight modules, while the trapezoidal one was always difficult to accommodate. The related corner module received its 4th track (NTRAK blue) and was remodeled from the ground up. The landscaping between it and the new transition module are coordinated. The town corner, dubbed Gene Autry sometimes after one of the three locations assigned to it in our imaginary Texas Northern Railroad, also received its 4th track, and the townscape was thoroughly redone. This closed the last gap in the NTRAK blue track in the loop of modules, and now only the quarry end loop with the big trestle, and the older of our two 45 degree modules do not offer all 4 NTRAK lines red, yellow, blue and alt-blue. At two GATS shows in Mesquite and Fort Worth during 2003, and again the Holiday Show in Fort Worth, we have operated with a smaller loop of modules but otherwise with the same concept as at the preceding Fort Worth show. This layout features two long DCC loops and 3 shorter DC loops (mountain, blue and alt-blue).

We have returned to the Oklahoma City show in December every year since we first set up our layout there in 1999, but now always with only a few modules and as participants in a large NTRAK layout organized by the Oklahoma N-Rail club. In 2003, this layout was also joined by AustNTrak from Austin, the New Mexico Rail Runners from Albuquerque, the El Paso & Southwestern club from El Paso, and the Denver Area N Scale club from Denver. Look for lots of photos from this show both in our photo album and at OK N-Rail's web site. The layout included nearly 80 modules (drawing provided by Lee Williams of OK N-Rail):

The show in Plano in 2004 saw a slight make-over of the previous year's layout; there is again a bird's eye view of it in our photo album.

In April, we were dancing on two weddings - the three freight yard modules went with their owners to Denver for this years Rocky Mountain N-Scale Meet (some photos of the event are on the OK N-Rail site), and the other club members took our layout to the GATS show in Mesquite again. Here, a new setup yard saw its first service in the club layout, and a new smaller 3-foot corner, too.

In August 2004, we participated with the two yards in a large layout (94 modules!) in San Antonio. Unfortunately, we don't have a diagram available, but our photo album will give you a good idea of how that layout looked.

For the annual show in Fort Worth in November 2004, we had a second 3-foot corner ready with a little train museum on it, and the older 45-degree module had been completely rebuilt with a new wine mountain scenery. Thereby, essentially all modules now support 4 standard tracks (red, yellow, blue and alt-blue in NTRAK terms). The new transition module by design on one side, and the quarry end loop (at bottom left in the diagram) will remain the only modules deviating from the 4-track convention. The benefit is that no matter how we build a full loop as part of the layout, we will have two separable loops (blue and alt-blue) there, and two loops can be extended from the "Y" junction module into an arm, here at the bottom of the diagram, giving very long runs for those track loops. Add to this the mountain loop (green and orange lines at the bottom of the Mesquite diagram above), and we have 5 complete track loops on the layout. The two loops including the arm are usually devoted to DCC operation, and the blue and alt-blue loops on the close module loop to DC. The mountain loop sees either mode, changing from show to show.

In Oklahoma City, in December 2004, we met again with all our friends we remembered from last year, and the layout was similar in size but somewhat differently arranged. The diagram here, again courtesy of Lee Williams of OK N-Rail, does not even represent the final version, as two additional modules were included on very short notice. However, the general structure of the layout did not change.

Another variation of the loop with one limited arm served again in Plano in January 2005.

In February 2005, at the GATS show in Arlington, TX, we hosted a multi-club layout for the first time in our club's history. Also, in at least over 8 years, if not much longer, there has not been a multi-club NTRAK layout set up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Clubs from San Antonio (SANTRAK), Austin (AustNTrak), El Paso (El Paso and Southwestern) and Oklahoma City (OK N-Rail) all brought modules and enthusiastic model railroaders for a great event. We had 57 modules in this layout. A single "red line" loop ran around the whole layout, through the junction between the two lobes, for some 7+ scale miles, operated under DCC. There were 5 passing sidings to the outside around this loop. For about an hour on Sunday morning, we used this for some opposite direction running with 4-5 trains one way, and 2 the other. The upper lobe offered a yellow and a blue loop, which both were operated under DC. The lower lobe contained 3 more loops; the yellow one was run under DCC, and the blue and alt-blue ones were again DC territory. We all had a lot of fun this weekend.

In summer 2005, we headed south to San Antonio again. The layout diagram is the near-final one, with only small changes done after it was drawn. Together with Oklahoma N-Rail, we provided one of the 5 lobes in this layout. It ended up containing some 125 modules, and it took about 20 or more minutes to run once around the whole layout on the red line, at a scale mile a minute. This layout caused us to modify the "Y" module to offer fully-fledged NTRAK junction capability, and we built 2 1-foot modules to balance a 3-foot corner against a 4-foot corner.

Fort Worth in November 2005 saw a new variation of our full layout. The show was moved into a neighboring hall on very short notice, and this allowed on Saturday afternoon the sun to shine through windows high in the wall onto our layout, allowing for some unusually lit pictures.

The Oklahoma City Train Show of 2005 saw some major changes. The floor plan of the show was updated, putting the N scale bay into a different location, and for the first time, the NEONS linked their layout with the large layout of the other clubs.

In Plano in January 2006, we squeezed another reduced version of our layout into the limited space. This time, we used the Quarry loop to terminate the arm, so we had only one line running out (alt-blue) and back (red), but with a 4500 scale foot siding on the yellow line, which served well for setting up some long (as well as not so long) trains. Of the three tracks in the loop, the yellow line was run with DCC, while the blue and alt-blue were reserved for traditional analog mode. The mountain loop was DCC-controlled one day and DC the other.

In March 2006, we managed to get three clubs together for our second multi-club layout, at the Great Train Expo event in Fort Worth. OK N-Rail brought a good portion of their travel layout, and Fred and Betsy Robinson of the Northwest Crossing club near Houston came with their module set. The layout below is almost correct, as on the shortest of notices, we had to make do with one less module. And the little gap near the junction in the upper loop was actually filled with our second 1-ft module, connecting the red, yellow and blue tracks. As you can recognize from the photos in our album, we had plenty of reason to have lots of fun.

After a number of years, we received an invitation to the Bluebird Festival in Wills Point again. We filled the Bill Mitchell Hall (the freight room in the former Texas & Pacific depot) with a somewhat reduced version of our layout, mainly at the expense of running length for the DC trains. We were allowed to stay over (and be open) on Sunday, giving us a full weekend for our effort of hauling things out there and back. This event is unique in that we could railfan trains both on our layout and right next to the depot on the old T&P main line (now UP).  The Bluebird Festival on Saturday was well worth a visit, too.

A special highlight was the invitation to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. Connected to their exhibition "Trains: Tracks of the Iron Horse" (Nov.2005 through July 2006), they invited numerous clubs to take turns in setting up their layout in the Rotunda of the library. We got to be there the last two weekends of May 2006. Though indoors, we had full sunlight on a good part of our layout for most of every day. (See for yourself in the photo album.) Each and every one of our modules was included, and everything worked beautifully. The red line covered about 6 scale miles, and the yellow line about 5 scale miles.

The summer brought another event that we have not attended in the past - the National N Scale Convention, which these days combines the National NTRAK Convention and the N Scale Collectors Convention, this year in Denver.  Modelers brought modules from as far apart as Tucson in Arizona, Houston in Texas and Dayton in Ohio.  The plan below (courtesy David Porter, Denver Area N Scale Club) is the near-final one, with a few last-minute changes occurring after it was printed.  The red line all around the whole layout extended to about 17 scale miles.

The annual Holiday Show in Fort Worth in November saw the premiere of a new horseshoe loop, replacing the well worn industrial loop, and the shipping canal on the British module was finally taken into operation.  As always, we set up the layout in an arrangement that we have never done before, which has become a tradition of ours and shows the flexibility of the NTRAK concept.

Attending the Southern Plains N Scale Convention and Oklahoma City Train Show also belongs now to our traditional events.  The layout (coordinated as always by Lee Williams) was a modification of last year's, and the N scale T-Trak friends from the Dallas area joined forces with like-minded modelers from St. Louis demonstrating their table-top way of model railroading. Loads of snow in the western plains forced our friends from Denver to stay home; their two modules were replaced by fitting ones from the host club OK N-Rail.

For the 2007 show in Plano, we "recycled" the 2005 layout, with the industrial loop being replaced by its new successor. One of the 1-foot modules served to balance the greater length of the new loop modules.

In March of 2007, the World's Greatest Hobby on Tour show took over the place of the more regular Great Train Expo show - for this year only.  On this occasion, we hosted again a big NTRAK layout, this time with about 140 modules much larger than we have organized previously, and more clubs joined us than ever before.  We have remained true to our tradition of  staying away from a regular layout, like lining up a number of loops off of one long connecting "spine".  The red line running all around the layout extended for about 22 scale miles traversing a large variety of sceneries, as can be seen in our photo album.  Everybody showed up on time, and the layout came together without significant problems.  Among the highlights were the Yesterland and Sugar Land module sets, as well as a large busy engine and car yard.  The modules marked "Other" in the diagram include the contributions from the New Mexico Rail Runners and the Fort Bend Model Railroad Club.

In April we enjoyed our unique two-scale show again, with our layout in the freight room of the former Texas and Pacific depot in Wills Point and the 12" to the foot mainline passing outside.

This year, we visited San Antonio again for the 5th Annual San Antonio Family Train Show organized by the San Antonio Model Railroad Association.  The SANTRAK club set up a NTRAK layout again, and we had 4 modules in it.  Besides the hosts and us, the Northwest Crossing club from Houston, the New Braunfels Historical Railroad Modelers Society and AustNtrak joined the layout.  (Layout and diagram, near-final version, prepared by Bill Carpenter of SANTRAK.)