Planning a new layout

Last updated on February 2, 2026

So, after a lot of time spent planning, we reorganised few things in our home and as a result of that the space for my layout was also moved elsewhere. And it seems that all my work I have written about a little in my last article was all for naught.

My layout plan was pretty straight forward – split in two tables (for easier portability) and size of 230x50cm. The “main” part of the layout was the scene of a industrial zone producing spirits and bioethanol. filled with silos, pipelines and factory buildings. I had a plan for a side “shelf” which would be used for staging and storage purposes with a single track leading to the main part. The whole setup would create an L shape and had bit tight radii, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make due to space constraints of the room.

Now, I think it’s good to mention that my intention with this layout are mostly to create a fun track to run with believable scenery, but not to necessarily model a real track and or place. I made a complete 180 turn on my previous layout plan that was solely oriented about replicating a real spur in an industrial area.

This is in no way a guide on how I think you should be doing layout and how you should be enjoying your hobby.

Do your own thing! Do what you find fun and that’s where the joy lies! I’m just writing here about my journey in the meantime between writing about actual tips and also want to show my own layout and share my own piece of the proverbial cake.

I am mostly interested in modelling Czech/Slovak railways and so many of sources I will be referring to are often available only in czech or slovak language. For those interested, I recommend just running the sites through translation, as I am not interested in copying their hard work over. I apologise to english speakers in advance and hope that is not too much of a nuisance. I do plan, however, to bit by bit build a similar repository of knowledge in here over time.

Now, without further ado, let’s get down to modelling!

Choices, choices, choices

With the relocation came two choices. Leave it as it was or design a new layout as the new space is a lot more giving.

Though I felt a bit defeated, having just spent weeks of planning the previous plan, I came to a conclusion that I will not get a good chance to do some sizeable layout anytime soon and it looked like a fun challenge. So, I chose a wall with an unused fire place (chimney is blocked off, rendering it unusable). There is a decent space from both sides of the chimney and about 140cm for a connection between the two sides. This means that my layout will be mainly located on two tables and a small interconnection between them to let trains cross over.
By the way, the chimney turns out to be a curse as much as it is a blessing, but more on that later.

This is somewhat how the layout is spaced, trackwork is one of the many iterations I’ve tried (left side inspired by Innsbruck Hötting)

Trying out what would work in my new space

The shape of my new possible table layout reminded me of a somewhat similarly laid out layout made named “Malá Paka”. The layout is split into three sections around a structural column between two windows.
This brilliant little layout built around pretty limiting constraints of train length of about 2 cargo cars, 3 at total maximum, is absolutely stunning and still captures me with the amount of detail and how it looks fairly realistic despite being incredibly compressed.

Author of the layout managed to put in three industries and solved lack of any car storage or even a side track going into outside world where a larger staging yard could be located.
Their solution to the storage problem was to build a hidden staging yard on the left side of the layout. Entry to this yard is through a tunnel to simulate trains going in and out of the outside world, giving the whole layout sense of being part of a much larger area.
To squeeze as much track in as possible, a moving table was built just for this section that facilitates traversing between the tracks. Since it’s not really possible to see inside without some serious back-breaking posing, a remote camera is installed that sees into this hidden yard from above.
This yard does not have a very large capacity, however, it’s size plays well with the train length limits of the layout, easily having capacity for some decently large sessions.

At first, I tried to see if the same strategy would work for me. After all, coincidentally the layout proportions are somewhat similar to what my would be.
After few iterations, I decided to not do it this way and instead plan my track to have a good connection point I can later use to attach a temporary staging yard table whenever I want to run some sessions that do movements outside of the layout.
While this idea in the end didn’t really work for me, I applaud the author for creativity and highly recommend giving a look or two if you’re in shop for solutions for compact hidden yards.
The site is only in czech, but should be easy to translate.

So, I decided to look for inspiration.

After I’ve read an amazing series on spur lines found in Czech Republic, I got a lot of inspiration and started to try things out. Once again, the page is only in czech, however, if you’re interested in modelling the region
I knew that I wanted some at spur on right side of the chimney with at least two tracks and in my head it was using a small engine to move cars around all day and a train would bring/collect cars on the spare storage track it would have. At that point I also knew I wanted the scenery be somewhere in hills. Main contestants were a mill and a quarry.

And the winner is….. a quarry!

Now, that I know that the main spur is a quarry, kinds of rolling stock will I be running and that it was in a hilly area, I gave a good thinking about a good place for the setting. My mind immediately went into Záhorie. The area is located around the borders of Austria and Czech Republic, full of very small train stations and is also a “host” of many quarries – sand, lime, etc.

Despite the area having many good options for modelling real places, I decided that I will be making completely fictional track and used hill names and other things for my station name (and other fictional stations along the track I plan to use for simulating traffic).
I will try to keep it with the spirit of the area using some of my childhood memories while visiting distant family, but I’m more interested in operations rather than recreating a diorama for this one.

Since the quarry will be on the right side (which is about 110cm wide), the siding size limitation is considerable. But I decided that it should be able to fit at least 2-3 14.5m cars per siding. (I might use smaller cars but in larger quantity just for the effect, but I haven’t really decided yet. I might also use a mix based on the customer it’s heading towards to give the spur a little variety).

This also dictates what kind of trains in terms of length should the left side be able to accommodate at minimum, which I decided to be 70cm (3 cars, 1 loco) to include some reserve.

What about the left side?

This, admittedly took the most amount of refinement. I just couldn’t find a good mix of track length, amount of sidings and a theme for at least one stub track I could use to bring some more cargo action to that side as well. Just as I was almost ready to give up, let it be for a week or two and come back with a fresh view would it not be for a completely random moment while playing Train Simulator World. I’ve been hauling cargo on the Mittenwald bahn and the little station “Innsbruck Hötting” was very attractive.

Today the station has 2 pass through tracks and two stubs, where one leads down a slope to a warehouse area. The other stub track is level and curves up behind the station building, where a small pump station for tank cars is located. Further down is a loading area that is kind of part of a parking lot. There is no ramp but ways of loading/unloading all sorts of cars could be improvised.

Once again, I took few iterations, but in the end didn’t use this version. I kind of had a problem with the fact that most of what I want to focus my layout on, shunting operation, was done behind the “main stage”. What’s worse since the tracks leading into the warehouse area is going downwards, it creates a somewhat unpleasant perspective and because of the chimney situation, i couldn’t flip the station either.

So, the search continues…

I dind’t have even an idea where I could find a station I could model after. Of course, I could do it purely from imagination, but somewhow every time when I try to do that, I end up with overcooked spaghetti of tracks. Even my best attempts didn’t really look satisfying. Since I don’t feel like I have enough experience as a planner to do this purely from scratch and still end up with a believably looking station, I am doing my best by searching for good examples to learn from.

My salvation came in when I remembered about a neat track in Czech Republic that has a lot of small stations and often very minimalistic signalling and is very well documented by it’s fans.
The track I’m talking about here is dubbed “Posázavský Pacifik“, specifically track number 212 and the station Kácov.
The station is very simple, yet can be rich in operation for it’s size. With one mainline track, 3 sidings (where one is mainly for storage, one is for passing and the last one has stub on one end an on the other fans into a locomotive shed and a stubbed storage track for equipment (mainly). There is also an improvised loading area right where a switch is located that leads into the shed.
Both arrival and departure signals are 5-light AŽD signals, departure signals being group signals.
I tried it out, ran some imaginary shunting and it felt just perfect. The plan required few adjustments, both for space saving (I used a three way switch instead of stacking two normal ones on the siding that leads to the shed) and because of the limitations posed by the chimney.

Now, how to bring it together

I have some work-in-progress of the layout so far. Track laying is almost done (I might need to tweak some distancing, shaping here and there but schema of it is set at this point and won’t change). Terrain is an absolute question mark and i will need to spend some time finding inspiration yet before I get back to it and finalise the whole idea.

I’ve got the spurs, I’ve got the station and a rough location for the setting of the whole layout.

Main idea and rough terrain and building placement is sketched out. I am internally debating myself on the quarry area still. I am thinking of moving it forward, so that the main action is in front, making a nice slope behind it to add some perspective and making the mainline go behind (perhaps into a tunnel). This way, I could curve the main track differently and make it easier to add a staging yard later, but it would mean that I have to raise the whole layout by about 2cm for clearance.

I want the layout to be set in around 2000-2005’s, so it will be V. epoch, though for a fictional layout this doesn’t matter as much in my opinion, but if you go too wild you might be facing some issues – like pretending it’s 1950’s and it’s okay for steamers to drive right past modern signals and stuff like that. If that’s fine by you, it’s totally fine, but personally it’s breaking the immersion for me.

As already mentioned, it’s somewhere in the area of Záhorie and has a quarry nearby (1-2km from the station, however due to my space constraints this distance is obviously heavily compressed). I envision it to be somewhere close by some hills, with some agricultural elements. I might represent this as maybe some field nearby the track, dunno yet, options are open.

The station has a capability of holding quite a bit of cars due to the design of sidings, but I never want to just stuff it all up, as that would make it look quite comical.

As the station is quite small, shunting operations are going to be done by the same locomotive that is part of a cargo train. However, I plan to treat this station as a “midway gathering point”. By which I mean that I will simulate traffic to other smaller stations with short 1-2 car trains that will then gather here into a longer train, which then goes into a station much further away.
In the quarry area, as mentioned, there will be a small residential locomotive doing the work. They will use their own private locomotive for loading cargo all day and then store the loaded cars on a free siding where a locomotive from freight train would come for it the next day. The locomotive is permitted to operate only within the spur and because of the size of that spur there is no interchange yard (also because i don’t have a space for it, but don’t give that away please).

I think that for now it’s enough and I still have a lot to finish on the plan so I will leave some details for the next time. It has been just a wall of text so far, but I just wanted to get the layout idea out and I will come back with some reference photos later, and, hopefully then, a finished layout plan.

Or so I have thought….. See ya later !!