Wow PRR22, out of curiosity I watched the video you sent and can't believe how complicated it is to program the address with a Digitrax controller. My NCE Powercab is so much easier ---all you have to do is follow on screen prompts and you are done in a matter of one minute. No calculations necessary --- I suspect the NCE unit does that for you internally.

I don't understand the logic of all the replies to Iceman. He mentions a Digitrax product and gets dissed for not talking Bachmann. Then all the following replies talk about other than Bachmann products. Seems like a double standard. BTW I use NCE wireless Procab and love it. Ha

Thanks RAM for your input but I already have plans drawn. I find it interesting that you can come up with a suggestion based on the view that my photos offer. The actual area for the addition is behind the camera and extends 7 feet. The existing farm scene that I have off camera to the right will be moved over to where the dinos used to live with a RR line running thru to a storage yard to be built.

I plan to make some changes to my layout over the next few months and I was trying to determine where I could find some real estate. Luckily for me I found out that a large asteroid was headed to the section of my layout that contained the Jurassic Adventure Park. Unfortunately my grandson's dinosaurs were headed to extinction. I hope to reconstruct this newly claimed area and some added bench work into a new farm scene and a train storage yard. So bear with me I expect to be busy on this project into the fall.

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Go to the video on Youtube that Rich sent and then continue on to a video that shows a parade of steam vehicles. Sorry I just checked and it seems the videos on Youtube don't repeat the same pattern I saw.

Very nice Ken, thanks for the photos.

Thanks All for the education. It seems there is little demand or we would see some offerings.

Are all the logging and mining engines that you see on various layouts only available in larger scales then HO?

Thanks Jward I hadn't noticed the reverse loop. That would certainly dictate a solid platform instead of around the walls. So I guess I will see what can be done with a large flat layout with access from all sides so things can be reached. I may look at a removable popup area in the middle by the Ore House and access from under the mountain. Challenges are what it all about right?

On my current layout most radii range from 27 to 32 with only one short area down to 23". The plan when you 1/4 a layout leaves you with a work area in the middle so that the layout becomes basically around the walls. Therefore access is quite good and I can use the whole 9X13 space allocated. The room itself is larger and the way I have it setup you can access two sides of the layout from both sides. The layout is tight into a corner of the room only. My first layout was started as a 4x8 which I expanded to 4.5 x9 so that it didn't look like the trains were going to run off the table edge since I used 22" radius tracks with 3" straights between the curves giving you 47" on the ends. The ratio 1.837 to go from N-HO is not universally able to work period. An example would be that HO is 1/87 scale there fore your 1.5lb engine should be 130.5 lbs if you scaled it to real life when we know that real engines weight just a little more.

Those numbers work in that conversion, but based on that the 18X36 layout would endup being 33X66 and I know that would not work with HO. You may be able to fit it on a 4X8 but that would be a squeeze. I aim for gentle corner radii not looking for making it work with 18"radius. I would probably draw it out on a decent size piece of paper and then cut the paper into 1/4 pieces and put the pieces in the corners of a drawing that was scaled to the 13X9 foot area I have to build in and then connect the corners with track blending it to look decent.

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