Model Railway Forum

Here is a proposed plan for my layout. It will be 290cm by 50cm, and built onto Ikea Ivar shelves. I'm going to modify the shelves to remove the gap between them, to aid in the scenic side. ignore the markings for the road... it's not taking that route anymore.

Porjus is a small town in northern sweden, and lies along the Inlandsbanan. The layout won't reflect real life, but will take inspiration from the general area.

Looks interesting, what time period will it be set in?

I like to run a wide range of stock, so I'm keeping it somewhat flexible. I'm aiming for anything after around 1950, with some steam specials being run on occasion.

The Inlandsbanan to date has not been electrified, and is the only railway in Sweden that has not been converted... however, I do intend to have my layout electrified to some extent... mostly so I can run RC loco's, which are as Swedish as Ikea.

if i'm feeling really silly, I may make the road signs and markings interchangeable to accommodate 'H-Day'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

Thanks to the the Ikea summer sale, I was able to get a significant saving on the total cost of the shelving which will form the base of the layout.


Ably assisted by my youngest, I had the shelves built and in place in less than an hour. Next job(s) is to add filler pieces to the shelves, and 'remake' the spare shelf to fill the space between the two units (it's about half the size of a single width unit). After that will be leveling and securing the whole thing to the wall.

Then it will be time to actually do some proper modelling... getting 3mm underlay down, along with track and power feed droppers.

Now that I've got the shelves up, I've been laying out the track to see how it works etc... and I wasn't really 'feeling' it... so I've done some shuffling around...



I feel the Y point instead of the 3 way point after the double slip makes the less cluttered and the additional Loop and headshunt allows for more shunting. The bigger visual change is the 'main line' has been pushed to the back of the board. This brings the 'action' of the layout forward, which will be the shunting of the various goods wagons that arrive and depart. The passenger services will likely be Diesel Units and Small Multiples, so will only be coming into the station, hanging around and then heading out.

What are your thoughts?