Building your layout will be the most costly of all model railroading tasks. Much more then a simple model, the tiny details of layout design will kill your pocket book if you are not careful. A little patience, research, and careful use of pride will allow for a changeable plan that will be every bit a piece of art.

We cheated a little. This month's Model Railroader magazine had a perfect design on which to base ours. We drew the track plan on a piece of paper with 1" equal to one foot on the layout. Our bench work is on the cheap as well. This time of year many companies are throwing out skids (a.k.a. pallets) that have piled-up over the winter. We only used the cleanest ones. A good tip is to soak the wood with the hose before pulling the nails, making it easier on both you and the hammer.

The top of the layout is made of planking from those skids. Without proper precautions this is not a good idea, but a little extra preparation is all that is needed. You should first glue your planks to the cross members, the follow-up with screws. Finally, sealing the planks with latex paint is the final step to making sure this works. After the top was done we drew our 1' grid and set about laying-out the track.

Using the grid we marked out we started making center lines, allowing us to see the true The placement of structures on the layout will follow prototypical practice as much as possible. For example, our coal and water towers had already been built and placed temporarily on the layout. Studying actual operations will allow us to later make a final decision as to their final locations.

When laying roadbed we sealed it with automotive primer grey, this will protect the wood from swelling when we ballast.

Installing the switch machine was easier than we thought it would be. The only thing we found an issue with was the diagram didn't sufficiently explain powering. We figured it out after a quick email to AneModel.com. Ivan was more then willing to answer our mails and was very understanding about our inexperience. We powered both the control board and stationary decoder with track power.

This machine will power 2 switches and 2 animations (yes, folks, it is a 4-motor kit). After centering the mount to our hole we made an enclosure for the electronics underneath the bench (remember: this is going in a living room populated by kids). Following the instructions to program the unit was easy and we have a working switch in a matter of minutes. We will do a complete article on this switch at a later date.