Full Version: ISLs ..Coming Of Age?
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I have notice the popularity growth of ISLs(Industrial Switching Layouts) over the last 4-5 years and thought it may be interesting to discuss these layouts.

Now then..I was discussing this with another local modeler at Col/San while railfanning 2-3 weeks ago and we thought this growth may be cause by the ever increasing prices since one can get by with less equipment and the less is more layout philosophy that seems to be gaining ground..

That could be.

However..

How about this instead?

How about modelers that doesn't have the room for a large layout because they must share that spare room with the families computers or activities or just don't have the room for a large layout?

Then how about those that is into minute scenery details? A ISL is the perfect layout for those modelers because they can spend hours adding the security fences,trash,weeds,detailed roads,mini industrial scenes,junk piles,dimpsy dumpsters etc..They could super detail their vehicles,interiors of their buildings in short have a museum quality layout.

Designing the ISL..Of course one should avoid any switching puzzle type design and to a degree some Inglenook designs..I firmly believe a well design ISL will be based on prototypical track arrangements-if space allows.

Yor thoughts?
I believe it was the May MR that had an article about a guy who downsized his home (and layout) and ended up with something that a) was more focussed, and b) actually "finishable" (as you describe above).

Andrew
I posted earlier that I thought trackplans have changed due to the advent of walkaround throttles - from a "table top" to an "around the walls". I think that an "around the walls" concept was less feasible with a stationary throttle. Likewise, perhaps ISLs have become more popular because of DCC and sound? It is relatively easy to wire and control a large mainline layout for DC cab control, but wit a switching layout and multiple locomotives, designing the "blocks" and throwing switches all the time could be a pain for more than one operator. Another advantage of DCC on smaller switching layouts: Sound. If the layout is smaller, one can hear the sound better, and can make use of all the "other" sounds that one does not hear when mainline running. I wonder if DCC has made switching layouts simply more appealing.

Cost probably has something to do with it, but I would venture hobby time is more important. People fill up the leisure days with tons of activities now. I don't see where people have less room than before, since house size has gone up and family size has gone down.
Even though my new building has 170 feet of shelves, I still consider it an ISL. I certainly have enough room to do the more typical "town to town to town" concept, but that requires a major compression of the mainline distance and the distance between towns from the prototype (as in - the engine enters one town, the caboose is still in the last town).

So, I feel my layout will be much less compressed and more prototypical if I model a shortline and the industries it serves, all located in or near the same town. And I also feel that the around-the-walls walk-around scheme is more "sincere" and comfortable than the tabletop spaghetti bowl.

I'm certainly not disparaging the layouts that do not conform to my thoughts. We each have to tailor our hobby desires to the space we have available.
I had my ho layout down in the basement destroyed by the pesky fur balls (that have a new home now) over the winter Curse I was on the line of repair or rebuild? So i went back in some model railroader books and found a switching layout so i fit into my space i have and now rebuilding the ho layout. In return goes with less is more for me vs my other layout.
How about the interest of the operating layout itself?

The mega-layouts usually feature long runs and following trains around, but switching allows a maximum of focused activity in a given space, constantly moving and changing, constantly presenting new objectives and new problems to be solved.
Brakie Wrote:Your thoughts?

I think it is a combination of several factors:

- walk-around throttles
- a shift towards operations based layouts instead of just watching train layouts enter tunnels and cross bridges
- a shift towards more "sincere" or "prototypical" scenes - where e.g. the mainline passes once through each scene
- a desire for layouts to coexist peacefully with other uses of rooms

I don't know whether it really is that much less cheaper in terms of the number of engines and cars and buildings and such things. A small shelf layout - say a 20 square feet 2 foot x 10 foot switching layout - obviously will need quite a bit less scenery materials than e.g. a 32 square feet 4x8 foot layout. But it is not at all unlikely that the 20 square feet shelf switching layout will use more turnouts (and possibly also more engines and cars) than your typical 4x8 foot oval-on-table layout. That kind of stuff tends to be more expensive than scenery materials.

Smile,
Stein
I don't know if my plans will result in saving money or not. I belong to a modular club where I can run anything I want to run in HO standard gauge. I would like to join the La Mesa Club at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in the near future if I can fit the time into my schedule. That would allow me to operate on their Tehachapi layout. For my home layout, I suspect that I'm not in an unusual situation for most people living in the Southwest. We generally don't have basements out here. Our utilities are run 4 feet under the street, so a basement would not only be an expensive dig, but would also require some sort of elaborate sump pump/anti backflow valve system to keep it from flooding in a storm. I have a 3 bedroom 2 bath home of 1400 square feet that was recently enlarged to @1800 sq. ft. I have the smallest spare bedroom that will be my "man cave/train room/model building room." It has room for a 7 foot x 9 foot "L" shaped layout on two walls and one corner. My house would probably appraise for $450k now. 2 years ago it appraised for $600k. Fortunately my mortgage is only around $400k so I'm not upside down yet, and it looks like property values in the Los Angeles Metro area are climbing. There are about 40-50 members of the modular club and at least half maybe three quarters of them have no home layout at all. If I lived in an outlying area like Gary does in Texas I might be able to build an out building to house a model railroad, but living in the city, I just don't have enough land.

Foirtunately, I discovered after joining the modular club that a few laps around an oval no matter how big gets old after about 2 or 3 laps, and I start looking for industries to switch.
This is the sort of thing that inspires me to model ISLs...[attachment=4972]
Actually having worked in the railroad industry and after starting several HO short line railroads over the years, it's prototype operations, track arrangements and switching that interest me more than anything else.

Although I have a 36ft x 10ft area in the basement - I've decided that bigger is not better and am actually beginning to work on two (possibly three) industrial switching layouts. One of them is in 1:29th scale no less!

Main thing is, an HO layout on an 18in x 20ft shelf will be something I can get running and reach a state of "completeness" in a much shorter time (and considerable cost savings) than trying to build a layout around the whole basement area, as I've tried to do in the past.
Similar to Russ's situation, we have no basements in here southwest Florida ... the water table is generally only 4 or five feet down. The highert elevation around here is at the peak of an I-75 highway overpass! The next highest elevation is about ten or eleven feet above sea level, and that place is about thirty miles inland!. :o

Model railroads therefore exist in the garage (hot, humid - way humid - and populated by a very wide variety of insects, from tiny ants to very large Wolf spiders) or in a "spare"/guest room. Now, with no basement, or attic either for that matter (above the ceiling has all the same attributes as the garage, except the heat is doubled or tripled and the Wolf spiders are larger and jump farther) the space available for storage is slim to none and so every imaginable space is used for storing out-of-season stuff. That artificial Christmas tree and it's lights do take up space!

My own layout is now (finally) about to begin construction in "the other half" of the "Great Room." train (it is currently represented by blue painter's tape on the terrazzo floor.) It will depict "traditional" mountain country, not be an Industrial Switching Layout, but rather a point-to-point, TTTS (terminal town to staging) type of layout. When I was planning, I wanted it to appear to go somewhere, which it will ... just not very far. Thumbsup Big Grin

As I think about it, with so many people living in apartments these days, where "free" space is at even a greater premium than in Russ's or my situations. Currently leaning up aginst the wall in the "Great Room" is a 28" x 72" Timesaver layout, which had casters under it and lived, covered, under the bed back when I lived in a small apartment. I used to roll it out and take the cover off of it when I wanted to "play with the toy trains." It all comes down to the most efficient use of the space available. If you plan well, and interesting, full-of-operating-potential layout can be constructed and enjoyed in very small places. We have just all been conditioned over the years by the model railroad press to believe that the goal was, in "wishbook" style, a model railroad empire that fills a 35' x 60' basement, when a smaller, more manageable layout is probably a whole lot more fun! Just think about how long a track cleaning session lasts when you have a basement-sized empire, you are working alone and "the guy's" are coming over tomorrow night for an operating session! Wallbang 35

Nawww ... I think I'll stick to something more manageable! Cheers
If it was a space issue, and considering people are preferring RTR these days (rather than kits or scratchbuilding) - why isn't N scale on the rise? With the huge houses I see being built these days, and the large house additions going up, I can't see where lack of space is a reason for ISLs. I think people are choosing to use their added space for other things.

A note about basements - I was told the reason some areas of the country favor basements has to do with the age of the community. Before electricity, houses had the furnace in the basement and depended upon convection to heat the house. Now with forced air heating, the furnace can be about anywhere and the heat "pumped" to where it needs to be. In places where basements were common for heating reasons, the tradition was carried on (houses without basements probably don't sell as well). In places that never had basements for heating, the added expense of a basement probably doesn't add much value to the house (unless the buyer is a model railroader Goldth ). In Arizona, basements aren't common. Most of the development occurred after electricity, and with a warmer climate many houses simply used fireplace heat. Popular myth says that our ground is too hard to dig, but that is BS. My neighbor's house was built in the 1930s, and has a basement that can only be accessed from outside. She says it used to have an oil fired furnace down there, but has enough space to stand and store things, and remains dry despite her yard being flooded with canal water every other week. Of course, Florida an New Orleans are different situations Cheers
nachoman Wrote:I posted earlier that I thought trackplans have changed due to the advent of walkaround throttles - from a "table top" to an "around the walls". I think that an "around the walls" concept was less feasible with a stationary throttle. Likewise, perhaps ISLs have become more popular because of DCC and sound? It is relatively easy to wire and control a large mainline layout for DC cab control, but wit a switching layout and multiple locomotives, designing the "blocks" and throwing switches all the time could be a pain for more than one operator. Another advantage of DCC on smaller switching layouts: Sound. If the layout is smaller, one can hear the sound better, and can make use of all the "other" sounds that one does not hear when mainline running. I wonder if DCC has made switching layouts simply more appealing.

Kevin,Excellent thoughts and ones that escape me..Indeed DCC/Sound or even DC/Sound could have played a major role in the popularity growth of ISLs.Even if one uses a locomotive with sound the added "play value" would be priceless such as ringing the bell while switching out cars at a industry and blowing the whistle/horn for crossings.
[/quote]

Kevin,Excellent thoughts and ones that escape me..Indeed DCC/Sound or even DC/Sound could have played a major role in the popularity growth of ISLs.Even if one uses a locomotive with sound the added "play value" would be priceless such as ringing the bell while switching out cars at a industry and blowing the whistle/horn for crossings.[/quote]

I've stated previously that I am not a big fan of sound. But if I has an ISL set in the diesel era, I think I could become a convert. Sound/DCC makes switching a whole lot more interactive, and I think a whole lot more appealing for many people.
nachoman Wrote:A note about basements - I was told the reason some areas of the country favor basements has to do with the age of the community. Before electricity, houses had the furnace in the basement and depended upon convection to heat the house. Now with forced air heating, the furnace can be about anywhere and the heat "pumped" to where it needs to be. In places where basements were common for heating reasons, the tradition was carried on (houses without basements probably don't sell as well). In places that never had basements for heating, the added expense of a basement probably doesn't add much value to the house (unless the buyer is a model railroader Goldth ). In Arizona, basements aren't common. Most of the development occurred after electricity, and with a warmer climate many houses simply used fireplace heat. Popular myth says that our ground is too hard to dig, but that is BS. My neighbor's house was built in the 1930s, and has a basement that can only be accessed from outside. She says it used to have an oil fired furnace down there, but has enough space to stand and store things, and remains dry despite her yard being flooded with canal water every other week. Of course, Florida an New Orleans are different situations Cheers

Members from the cold country know more about this issue than I do. I only lived in the Northeast long enough to realize that I don't like snow except on a mountain where it makes a pretty picture from my yard near the beach! I was told that most houses in New York had basements as a way to bring water lines that had to be buried below the frost line to avoid freezing, into the house in winter without freezing. My wife's family is from Long Island. Long Island has a much more moderate climate than the rest of New York, so developers built housing using slab on grade like the southwest instead of with basements. The only people who would buy that type of construction were "newbys." Anyone who lived in the Northeast for any length of time considered a basement an absolute necessity.
I agree, switching layouts are much more fun too. Don't get me wrong here, I still enjoy watching a set of B-40's taking a stack train around a layout. But, in today's economy, a SW-1500 with 6 or 7 cars and a caboose running through a bunch of buildings and tight curves is somewhat more affordable. Furthermore, you can focus more time, and less money, on inexpensive landscaping. Yes it's fun running a train around a loop of track, but, operating a "local" gives your layout a sense of purpose too. Modern technology (DCC) gives us the chance now to operate in smaller places without complex wiring features. You can put in more complex track arrangements without the need for extra wiring. You can focus more on lineside detail rather than trying to afford another elaborate piece of rolling stock to make your trains look longer.

Besides, the smaller ISL's are easy to move. That helps when you learn that your job is no longer and you have to move. Been there, done that.