Aesthetics and Furnishings in Your Model Railroad Room

Here's a shot showing the layout, and in addition to the layout, we've got the fascia that's painted black so it kinda disappears, it gives you the feeling of a museum display. You'll notice in museums they paint the area around a display black so it goes away, and it's an old theatrical trick. Everything that you don't wanna see in a theater is painted black, and also, we've got a black carpet, so it kinda blends in. It makes the room look like a finished project, so you've got something nice to offer your visitors. I should mention that adding the drape adds a lot to the railroad in addition to the black-painted fascia.

The drape hides whatever you've got under there, it gives you a great place to store stuff, and it makes the project look finished. When I originally built the layout, I didn't put any carpet down, because I wanted to avoid getting it messed up with paint and plaster, and it became hard to walk on. It was a concrete floor, it was tough, so I had to buy rubber pads for people to stand on as they operated the layout. After I got the carpet, I learned it didn't need the rubber pads anymore, so we were able to take those up and just use the carpet, and it was plenty soft. This just shows that you can add carpet later on after you've finished your layout if you didn't add it when you started.

You know, you really can get relaxed sitting in your lounge adjacent to your layout as you listen to the trains and watch 'em go by, and it's a nice place for your friends to come and sit, and they can talk, converse during the operating sessions, in between when they're running trains, but you need to have someplace where your guests can feel comfortable and well-received. This is sort of a faux station, quasi-station motif that I've created. We've got the black and white ceramic tiles, we've got signs on the wall, we've got various different things that kinda indicate that, and the benches and what I'm sitting in look sorta like what you might find in an old station. And then there's stuff on the wall from in the past that you can look at as well. Here's something you could have in your railroad room, this is a Wabash car heater used in a refrigerator car to keep it warm so it wouldn't freeze on certain vegetables.

And then there are other things that you can have in here, there's a joke here in the Cadee airhose, it's a glad-hand with an air hose. And we've got the typical lanterns that you'd find around, and then I've got a shelf there full of timetables for the railroads that I model. Here's some nice signs that I bought that indicate the railroads that I model here on my Bluff City Southern. I've got the L&N, the Illinois Central, the Southern Railway, the Frisco Lines, and following up with the Missouri Pacific. You could add things like this to your wall at any time, and it helps give it that railroady feel.