Iain Rice

Dear Greg,

Suggest checking out a copy of Iain Rice's "Small Smart and Practical Trackplans",
Iain sets out essentially the same idea with an example layout design called the "linked-up logger".
(Page 73 for those playing along at home). 

Point being, your thought-process is in good company...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

It depends on your goals - Riven approach may be limiting

Ah, I remember playing Riven many years ago and it was a cool game with unique, interesting atmosphere and was pretty immersive.  I still have the disks.  It would be interesting to see it adapted with new, higher res graphics and more animated rather than a slide show.  Anyway, back to trains. 

I have moved many times since leaving home for college and it is my opinion that if you build a layout in a sectional style meant to be moved and re-used, it limits what you can build in that space.  If that isn't a problem for you, then the Riven approach, or David Barrows domino approach, may work for you.

My compromise is to, where possible, build my layouts in a somewhat sectional format so they can be broken down fairly easily and then you have to decide what to do with it.  That allows me to utilize a space to it's maximum potential.

Example 1: 

I built a 16x19 foot hollow L in my garage while in graduate school (sectional).  It reached the plywood pacific phase, where I could run trains but scenery was just getting started when I finished grad school and it came time to move.  The house that I moved into had a basement but the layout I built would not fit. 

Solution: I advertised the layout with a scale drawing and sold it and recovered the cost I had into it and could use the money to fund a new layout.

Example 2:

In the next house I built a 14x26' layout in the basement, most of it in a storage space and a bit of it out into the finished part of the basement.  A separation and later a divorce forced me to tear down that layout.  Nothing recovered but much of it was built on top of storage shelves.

Solution: Since building sectional style was not practical in this situation, the layout was simply dismantled and the track carefully stacked and stored.  Most of the track was pulled out after years of storage and re-used on Example 3.

Example 3:

I moved into a town home with a 10x18 foot finished basement room and built an around the walls style layout.  I designed it to fit as much as possible in that space.  It was built in a sectional format. 

Solution:  When it came time to move after 4 years in that house, I destroyed the scenery but saved all the benchwork and plan to re-use it in the next layout.  The track plan/format was far from ideal to re-use so the track was carefully removed and stored.  A couple of the benchwork sections will "drop-in" to the new layout.  I will have to re-built the other sections to fit into the next layout and add to it.

When I consider other locations I have lived, and all the homes my wife and I have looked at when house hunting, I have come to the conclusion that each space would best be utilized by designing a layout that will fit it. 

Conclusion:  Re-using sections and bridging them together may work, but will it yield the best use of the space?  I would guess if you are lucky, it might, but probably in the majority of scenario's you could use the new space better by designing and building a layout to fit that space.

Operations layout

I have often thought of some sort of an operations oriented layout for road shows that would have sections or modules that would have switching areas/passing sidings connected by narrow sections for running.  The siding areas would be a series of 2 ft x 4-6 ft and the running areas 6-12 inches x 4-6 ft.  

I would assume that the same concept could be used with Freemo or N-Trak.  Use the standard modules as the siding/town/witching area "islands" and connect them with one or more narrow strips of running space.

a railroad that grows

what occurs to me is you can start small and expand.   how many times has someone wished they could change their layout.

you can start in one small room and expand to multiple rooms or a larger space, inserting sections between existing sections.

you could also rearrange sections for variety. 

It's really situational. 

It's really situational.  Starting small and expanding may make sense especially for novices who can practice on small modules and expand as knowledge and track planning experience grows. 

For someone who has been in the hobby for years. they may be, as John Armstrong put it, able to better create a list of givens and druthers and design a track plan including elements that they have learned they need from past expedience.    This is where we incorporate those things we wished we could have and wanted to change.

Layout design/build is one of those things that evolves over time.  The Riven method may especially be useful for people who are members of modular groups but want to use those modules at home.

Bridges Not Too Far or Further

As I commented in your  are all modular layouts strictly standard modules post, I built a bunch of narrow modules (both in HO and N) to "bridge" between regular modules. Another club member built three narrow N-Track 90 degree "modules" which also came in very handy when setting up show layouts or temporary home layouts. This added additional run time and allowed for better overall layout arrangements. All included some basic scenic work and sky boards, but a couple did include bridges. 

I thought of the linked up logger idea. I used a similar idea

for my current layout. I keep ending up with operations based on the same location. I decided to make that a permanent section. Actually a curve is included but the city and village are key scenes to me. The rest of the railroad is staging to support operations on the permanent section. 

Depends on what you want. I know I am an switching operations nut and sometimes I decide I to rearrange the trackage so I made the part I won’t change permanent and I can re-engineer the other parts. I currently model only two locations on my railroad. 

A guy who wants to model the entire division wouldn’t be happy with my layout, though honestly he would need a much larger space to be happy.