Liberty Industrial Spur

[steinjr]

BTW, I am not interested in creating an extremely portable layout, just one that small enough that it can be moved once or twice, a 2-foot wide HCD is portable enough.

Mmm - the great thing about hollow core doors (HCDs) is that you quickly can set up benchwork for a layout big enough for continuous run loop with forgiving radii on a single HCD in N scale. Or that you fairly quickly can put up benchwork for a larger layout, since each section will be fairly large, and you thus would need fewer sections. It is good for getting the tracks up fast.

Of course any layout made in sections can be moved. But it is significantly easier to move smaller sections than larger sections.

A length of 80" ( 6 2/3rds foot) makes a sections harder transport. If you want to move such a section to a new place, you for all practical purposes need an enclosed trailer pulled behind a car, or a van or small moving truck. Sections 4 feet long or so and not too deep (say 15-18" deep) can easily be transported in the trunk or back seat of a standard car. Or put another way - a HCD can be moved along with the rest of your belongings when you move to a new home, but it is not easy to take along to a friend for a weekend of model railroading, or to take back to your parents house during a college summer break.

Also, the bigger each section is, the harder it is to fit a layout consisting of several such sections into a new room. A 10-foot or 12 foot long wall is too short for two 6 2/3rd foot sections (it would take 160" - 13 1/3rd foot for two HDC lengths), a 10 foot long wall will fit two 4-foot sections and a transition section, while a 12 foot long wall will fit three 4-foot sections (or one could make sections slightly shorter than 4-feet long - say 47" instead of 48" long, giving you a little more leeway).

As for depth - for the style of railroading you are considering - just a few tracks deep at most, 24" of depth and 80" of length it gives you a pretty high scenery to rail ratio. We tend to run out of length long before we run out of depth on linear style layouts. Longer and less deep tends to give you more railroading relative to the amount of scenery. Being able to add length is almost always desirable.

If having enough time for finishing a layout is a concern, I am not sure that the apparent time savings of just plopping down a HCD instead of quickly building two small sections will be a bigger saving than the time needed to landscape the deeper section.

A single HCD gives you 13 square feet of surface area, while two 15" x 4 foot sections you you 10 square feet of surface area. Using two 15" x 4 foot sections gives you 20% more length than a single HCD, while using only 76% of the surface area. Comparing more sections, using two 24" x 80" HCDs vs three 15" x 4-foot sections - with the two HCDs you do get 11% more length (160" vs 144"), but you will also have to scenic 73% more surface area (26 square feet vs 15 square feet).

Building simple section bases is not really so hard that it makes sense to shy away from it, All it takes is a handsaw, a battery operated drill/screwdriver, a knife and a little glue to build a couple of simple sections (illustrations below show the start of a previous sectional layout 20" deep, 7 feet of length - i.e. of a size comparable to a HCD):










These are all reasons for why I question whether it really is a smart move to stay with the 24" x 80" HCDs if your main concerns are lack of available time to build a layout, the wish to have more railroading using less space, and the wish to be able to easily take the layout with you to new place.

Mind you - I am absolutely not saying that it always is a bad idea to build layout bases rapidly using hollow core doors. They are very good for their uses.

And, as always - your layout - you are the sole lord and ruler, and get to make whatever decisions you want :-)

Smile,
Stein, who should be heading back to bed instead of surfing the net :-)