So you think you haven't room for a model railway?

When I was young, I was an avid reader of model railway magazines. A recurrent theme was 'minimum space layouts', aiming to convince the reader that, wherever they lived, they had room for a model railway layout. Some layouts were arranged to form part of, say, a bookcase, so that they could be on display in a sitting room. Others were arranged to hinge upwards so as to be parallel to a wall when not in use. A fairly drastic approach was the layout suspended on cables from the ceiling and carefully counterbalanced, allowing the whole layout to be raised to the ceiling once the operating session had ended.

But, back then, I didn't see advocated the rather startling solution adopted by the model railway shown in my picture.



A 'computer floor' has been fitted in the model railway area. These are often provided in offices where a 'false floor' is provided by a grid of square frames suspended on pillars a few inches above the real floor, invariably concrete in modern buildings. Each pillar is provided with some height adjustment to compensate for the real floor being not quite flat. Each rectangular frame is then fitted with a substantial 'tile'. The space below the tiles then gives an unemcumbered space to lay cables.

But this modeller has decided that the technique which provides space for cabling in offices would be better used for a 4mm scale model railway, complete with scenery! All that's needed is clear tiles so that you can see the railway beneath your feet. It looks as if clear polycarbonate material has been used for the 'false floor'. Presumably to provide extra support, a number of lengths of clear tube (a similar length to the supporting pillars) have been dotted around.

Considering how innovative the technique adopted for providing space for the railway is, the track layout is rather unimaginative - a large double-track oval with a couple of modern trains both running clockwise (probably a Class 323 and a rather short 'Pendolino set).

Will this solution catch on, I wonder? Well, I doubt it. Construction must be rather expensive and the arrangement is not ideal for dealing with derailments or re-marshalling of trains.

Actually, this model was an eye-catching publicity stunt on the Alstom stand at the 2012 'Infrarail' exhibition at Earl's Court.

My pictures of the Alstom Model Railway

Model Railways