New Project: Nursery Wall Layout

Before I get to building a full size layout for myself in the basement, I have another small side project to work on. My wife and I have decided to go with trains for the theme of our new nursery, which means I wanted to work in some kind of layout. At first I wanted to do an around the room running setup, but found that would not work out so well. My other option was to do a non-operational display layout on one of the walls. 

Now that I have taken some measurements, I've decided to go with a six foot long layout that will be mounted to the wall. I plan on using five pieces of Atlas 9" straight snap track for the center of the layout along with one piece of Atlas 18" radius snap track at either end. The idea we came up with for each end is to create a false tunnel entrance so it looks like the track leads into the wall. Beyond that, I still need to decide a few things like what locomotive and rolling stock we are going to display as well as what kind of scenery we'd like to have. 

This project is officially under way now that we hit up one of the local hobby shops the other day (Empire Hobbies) and bought the code 100 Atlas track we needed (plus a few extra pieces for myself) and a nice pair stone tunnel portals from Pre-Size Model Specialties. 

(2) Cut Stone Portals, (2) Atlas R18" Snap Track, (10) Atlas 9" Snap Track

Before I start cutting any wood for the shelf that this will sit on, I thought it would be a good idea to sketch out what I wanted this thing to look like. Here's something I threw together in SCARM (Simple Computer Aided Railroad Modeler) as a starting point. It's got the basic track layout, the two portals, and some possible spots for buildings and trees.

2D Track Plan Generated with SCARM

To get a better idea of what this might look like, I used the 3D viewer option in SCARM. Here's what the rendering looks like. It's pretty crude, but definitely helps bring the track plan to life.

3D Rendering Based on 2D Track Plan from SCARM

We aren't looking for anything too complicated here, just something that would look nice on the nursery wall and be a little bit more than just a picture. I've still got some figuring out to do, but this is the general concept and will serve as a guide for the building process.

As a self-imposed deadline, I've got until around December 1st to get this thing built and hung on the wall. In the mean time, I need to decide which era this layout is going to be and what we want as far as a locomotive and rolling stock.