Welcome to the home of the Layout Design Special Interest Group. 

Save the dates!

PCR's Layout Design & Operations Weekend Meet

January 31 - Sunday, February 2, 2025, at the CSRM

What is the event?

This year's event is a mix of clinics and talks, in-person events, and tours of model railroads in the Sacramento area.

This is intended to be an interactive event. You'll be able to participate in:

• operating sessions on local model railroads

• get feedback on a current or future model railroad design

• chat at lunch and at breaks with other modelers about layout design and operation-related topics

• explore a local railroad-related place on a tour

• share what you've designed or built for your model railroad by bringing a poster

• show your layout design chops by competing in the Layout Design Challenge

When?

Friday, January 31 - Sunday, February 2, 2025.

A local tour and get-together event is Friday, presentations and local tours are Saturday. On Sunday, attendees will be invited to an operating session on a local layout.

Where?

The 2025 meet will be a hybrid event. You can attend Saturday clinics in-person at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, or you can participate in the clinics via Zoom. Recordings of the clinics will be available to all registered attendees after the event.

For more information visit our website http://bayldops.com/2025/index.html

NEXT CONVENTION

LDSIG 2025 convention Information

Station No. VI 2025 Information

The LDSIG is planning its usual slate of clinics, consulting, special design-focused tours, and banquets.

Next LDSIG Virtual Clinic

July 14th, 1PM EDT

Recording now uploaded see links below

The Layout Design SIG is a place where new ideas and new thinking come to flourish. We are all interested in making our layouts fun, functional, satisfying, and unique. Our current methods, design process, and best practices are adequate for achieving these goals, but what are we missing? What other ideas, methods, and processes have we not fully embraced? What other approaches can we use to come up with a design that is truly unique, that display our beloved models in a different light, that allow us to showcase them in a way that makes our layouts unique and distinctive? This clinic promises to demonstrate the search for, and application of, often-overlooked sources and concepts to influence design and construction for the layout, the Jersey Central’s Newark Branch.

Located in a Brooklyn apartment and depicting a short, but intensely busy, branchline of the Jersey Central, this prototype-based, shelf-style switching layout has been a challenge and a joy to design, build, and operate. From its initial construction to the current day, the layout has experienced one move and is undergoing an expansion into Version 2 of the CNJ Newark Branch. While the primary focus of this virtual clinic will be on the unique approach to prototype modeling, it will also cover the layout’s design, track planning, moving the layout into a new space, and progress on the expansion.

Jonathan Jones

YouTube link to the recording

https://youtu.be/Toy0OGjuuRs

Link to presentation

Slides

LDSIG Virtual Clinic

June 2nd, 4PM EDT

Here is the recording link
https://youtu.be/EFUmWMmmW2Y

Here is the link to register for the June 2nd at 4 PM Eastern Time LDSIG Design clinic. Please register before the event as you will not receive login information on the day of the event, the event is open to all but you must register.


Clinic Info
Consultations are just one of the services offered by the Layout Design SIG. Usually, consultations occur at a convention, but can be via phone, email, online, or sometimes in person in a private home. During a consultation, a LDSIG member will be with you and discuss your ideas and plans for a layout. It may be a question-and-answer session: what do you want? Scale? Space available? Or if the “client” has those questions answered already and drawings or plans are presented, an in-depth discussion of the design can take place.

Our next virtual LDSIG meeting, set for June 2nd will have LDSIG VP Doug Harding MMR, walk us through a consultation he did in 2023 with an individual planning a new layout in a new home. Looking at a 15'x16' space, we will “hear” and “see” what takes place during a consultation which lead to a much nicer layout design.
Doug Harding
Youtube: Douglas Harding Iowa Central Railroad

January 14th 2024 LDSIG Clinic

Please find information from this clinic at the links below. LDSIG will receive an email with a link to the record presentation on the week of January 22nd

Link to presentation slides: SLIDES

Link to swing gate discussed in the clinic; SWING GATE

Link to LED lighting solution discussed: LEDs (this link will be added shortly)

Link to track plan TRACK PLAN (this link will be added shortly)

Let the Layout Design Special Interest Group: