8 Realistic Track Plans For Small Switching Layouts

This book is perfect for anybody who is into modeling railroads. It's a readers digest version for everything you need to know about building a small shelf layout. To the miserable people who gave this book one star, not sure what you expected. To say the book has big font and takes up the pages. Well yes it does because its suppose to be easy to understand. If youre a modeling savant then maybe this book is beneath you. Also if youre into g scale, if you would simply read the description you would see this book is probably not for you. Don't know many people who choose to model g scale for a shelf layout but with that being said you could still break this down and use the track plans for any scale. One reviewer said the track plans take up a whole room. Well there is nobody holding a gun to your head saying you MUST use every aspect of the track plan. You could take part of a layout and build maybe just one part? That might make to much sense though.Enough of bashing the mutants who gave one star. I am in no way affililiated with Lance Mindheim, this is the third book of his I've purchased and there arent any better books out there if you want Info on small shelf style switching layouts. The guy is a graduate in engineering and chose to go into designing model railroads. This guy knows his sh*t. If I had the room I'd pay him to design a layout for me. Awesome author you won't find better information In one place. Sure you search the Internet for hours and come up with some of the same type of info or you could not be cheap, save time and buy his books.To the mutants who gave this book 1 star. Please don't breed and spread your genes😄Patrick✌️

I really wanted to like this book, and given the price I didn't expect a full on Kalmbach treatment, but something I could sink my teeth into given the reputation of the author. Frankly it fell down in several areas the most glaring was the lack of content, what I felt were pretty pedestrian layout suggestions, photo's that didn't really add much to the atmosphere of the subjects and the use of large fonts in what seemed an attempt to take up white space in the book. I don't mean to come off harsh...really. Like I said, I didn't expect something from a mega publisher, my expectations were much higher. Maybe that was the problem, high expectations and little in the way of meat to sink my teeth into. Many of the layouts start and finish with a yard and that is very common, and not very interesting.Suggestions:Use a track planning tool like Anyrail or others that actually show us that the components you called out will work in that space. I see a few areas that might be a squeeze. We would also get locations of the sections you call out and what parts to order. Will these plans work with Kato roadbed track as well as Atlas Code 55? No idea.Give us reference to what kit structures we need to anchor the layout and who makes them. Not every building needs to be identified, but a few. I learned in Journalism school to never assume your reader knows what you do. If they did, they wouldn't buy your paper or book. Give the beginner and those of us salty veterans a starting place so we can get juiced about one of your layouts.HO modelers are not the only ones out there...give us minor scale modelers a bone or two with track plans we don't have to rig around with. You had plenty of room, smaller fonts, use empty pages etc. Given the space you could have shown each layout in two or three scales...or just mark the book, "8 Realistic Track Plans in HO scale" so we know what we are getting.If you don't have enough information to fill up 56 pages, give us one with 48 or 36 and charge accordingly. All those blank pages really make you wonder about how much you were willing to share. Do I really need a whole page that shows me an empty spare room?I came away feeling like I did after my first Raw Vegan meal...I know I had something, I was hungry right after the meal was over and I wasn't inspired to try it again. I want to like the books you wrote, but by themselves they come up short...packaged together, you would have had something very interesting.

Two of the main purposes behind a book such as this can be expressed in the catchphrase 'I and I'. In other words, information and inspiration. Lance Mindheim's book "8 Realistic Track Plans for Small Switching Layouts" provides plenty of both.In brief, the eight trackplans detailed in this book are well-thought-out, practical and feasible, and offer considerable scope for having fun both in the construction and operating phases. It's been said that the first and last few hundred yards of a freight car's journey are the most interesting part, and that's what these layouts depict.The restraint and balance shown by author Mindheim in his designs will result in a model railroad which is simpler and less expensive to build--and which can be completed in this lifetime. For instance, these plans don't incorporate much in the way of staging tracks. More staging can always be added by the modeler, of course, but the author believes that small layouts can operate perfectly well by staging cuts of cars rather than whole trains, thus saving a lot of complexity, expense and maintenance headaches.The trackplans are all sized for a hypothetical 11-by-12-foot spare bedroom. Since I sit typing this review in a room which is a virtual clone of the space shown in the book, I suspect that many readers will be able to adapt these plans to existing rooms in their own homes.Even these too much for your available space? There's a bonus plan entitled 'The Beginner', which would fit in the smallest studio apartment or dorm room. It looks like a blast, too."8 Realistic Track Plans for Small Switching Layouts" provides not only inspiration, as any good idea book should; once you're inspired, it will take you to the next step and get you started on an attainable and enjoyable model railroad project.

I wish I had read in more detail the other review. This book is a 5 Min read and all the Track plans are almost identical, For a Huge Spare room, so in essence this was not what I was looking for. I anyone is thinking about purchasing this book please please contact myself and I will gladly send you my copy free of Charge and I will even post it for free. DON'T Make the same mistake I did. Look on the internet there are hundreds of free plans and web forums where rail enthusiasts are only too eager to offer practical advice and help with Layout design.

Packed with great ideas and inspiration for small layouts!

Ich hatte mir beim Kauf dieser Broschüre Anregungen erwartet, die mich beim Bau meiner neuen US-Anlage unterstützen sollten; leider enthält dieses Buch nur sehr einfach "gestrickte" Schienenpläne (Schienenstränge parallel zum Anlagenrand, Themen einfallslos abgehandelt), sodass in mir der Verdacht entstand, dass der Autor (der in den USA Vorträge zu diesem Thema hält!) in erster Linie die Geldbeschaffung zum Ziel hatte. Es gibt bessere Bücher...

Thought the book might inspire ideas for a first model railroad track layout but it is very specific for non-continuous tracks (meaning end-to-end only) and the scenarios offered were not especially appealing to new modelers like us who are looking to eventually build a more romantic, nostalgic, European, scenic model.

Tiptop