Getting in the Christmas Spirit 1: Inspiration and Design

A little more than a year ago, my wife made a passing comment about putting some trains on display in our living room at Christmas. I was going to build a quick, simple micro layout. Instead, my designs grew into the Frazier Borate mini layout, which was too big to fit on the table she had in mind.

Fast forward a year, and On30 guru Dave Meek has doing a series of YouTube videos on building a small H.O. scale winter-in-the-canyon-country theme layout.

That's got me thinking about that tabletop layout for the living room. Here's a track plan for a simple 24 x 32 roundy-round: 

Just an oval of track with a short trestle and lots of tall, Monument Valley-style rock formations. Maybe a building or two.

I might decide to hand lay the track; I have most of the material on hand, except maybe stripwood for the ties. It's less than six feet of track, so it wouldn't take long. It looks like Dave used simple premade bottle-brush trees, which I can easily pick up from the craft store. Maybe one or two Christmas Village buildings, or a couple of Clever Models kits, and it's done.

Or a better idea: A solitary cabin, with Christmas lights along the eaves. I found some multicolored fiber optic lighting supplies pretty cheap on eBay, so that could be an interesting little project in itself.

I may head over to the Home Depot this afternoon or tomorrow and get some EPS foam. I've got Friday and the weekend free, so I could maybe knock out the whole thing in one marathon build.