Scale Model of a Model Train Layout

This is a scale model of a model train layout I am going to build someday. It is to be in N Scale, using Kato track and equipment. 

The Train Table

Here is the completed train table. My friend Yung made it for me using birch plywood, poplar, and douglas fir. It is perfect, almost too nice for a train table. 

I will be attaching the track directly to the wood and leaving the layout as a nice piece of furniture suitable for the living room. As for now though, it has a nice place in my studio, under a series of train station paintings from my collection.

My Model Train Layout

I have always loved scale models and model trains. Over the years I have planned and built a few, and I am now in the process of building another one. I am taking a short break from painting to work on it. Well, sort of.

Here are a few random images from some previous projects, and my latest one. The top photo is of a scale model of a scale model of a Z- Scale layout I designed a while ago. I made the mountains from clay, and the buildings from scraps of basswood. I sprinkled some ground foam to suggest grass and used pipe cleaners for trees.  I mounted the whole thing on a piece of 5" x 7" tempered hard board.

I made a small diorama for my brother a few years ago to display an N-Scale coal train model I had given him. This image is a close up of it, with a passenger car to show context.

The sketch above is for a small 13" x 22" Z-Scale layout I am working on. It will have a European theme. Just below that is an in-progress shot at my work bench.

Which brings me to my current project: a portable N-Scale layout symbolically representing Los Angeles. It will have Amtrak, Metrolink and BNSF intermodal freight traffic. 

A centerpiece of this layout will be the Pasadena Train Station which I have painted and sketched for many years. It is now a nice restaurant in the middle of a mixed-use development but on my layout it will be an active working passenger station serving Amtrak's Southwest Chief and Sunset Limited trains.

These images show my practice model. I used mat board, ink, and colored pencil, and mounted everything to a piece of bookbinder's chipboard