brickgrrl

The shelf's not built yet, so there's some flexibility there, but it's going to go over a desk (with computers, etc on it), so it can't be 3 feet deep or anything. :) I'm sure 10 inches deep would be fine, since that's what my current shelves are. I'm pretty sure 15 inches deep would also be fine, which would allow me to turn a train (with that on both sides), but doesn't leave room for much but the train. I guess what I need to do is mock up a 20 inch deep shelf over the computers and see if we hate it. Because if I had a full 64 studs deep, that might be doable... 4 stud margin + 8 stud track + 4 stud margin + 16 stud road (not really wide enough) + 32 stud modular building with sidewalk = 64 studs. Or I could remove the backyards (and mess with the corner buildings quite a bit) and have a proper road width.

So, sort of. Please accept my apologies for the awful sketch - I clearly need better train-drawing technology!

Oval. I've only got about 40-48 studs depth on each side, so not room to turn.

I would actually have to put the train in the front, in order to make the turn...

Hi! (Long time lurker, first time poster.) I'm mostly a modulars fan, although I have a couple of trains I'd really like to get on display, too. (Love that Emerald Night!) I'd really like to get my modulars on display, with a train running around them. But I don't have room for a big train table. I've got a big stretch of uninterrupted wall that I'm thinking about running a loop of train track through. So there'd be a long shelf on both sides of the wall, with a hole in the wall on both ends so that the train could loop through the two rooms. (Have I mentioned that my husband is very tolerant of this Lego stuff? He is.) Since it's 3 baseplates to turn a train, I'd be looking at a total depth of three baseplates, although about half of one of them would be through the walls. So I could do one baseplate (32 studs) deep on one side and 1 1/2 baseplates (48 studs) on the other side, or it could be about 40 studs on each side. The question is: is that deep enough to actually do anything, keeping in mind that I want to do modular buildings as part of it? The modular buildings are of course a 32 studs as built, but that includes about 8-10 studs in the back that I could lose (with some rebuilding), so maybe 24 studs needed for the modulars. But it seems like I'd need to put in a road for it to look right, and THEN the track. Seems like I'm short on studs, even if I make one side deeper than the other and only put the modular buildings on the deep side. Suggestions? Has anyone done something like this? I've looked at lots of gorgeous train layouts, but haven't quite seen anyone do anything quite like this. Thanks!