Getting Everything to Fit | Dave's Workbench

[Music] howy folks welcome to thunder ma Studio Dave back here at the workbench and I hope you are having a great day wherever you are today I wanted to give you a little little inside look little peek behind the curtain because I've been over here trying to figure out the particular puzzle which is this studio space and you know I'll be honest with you it's been a bit of a challenge trying to figure out how everything is g to fit you see when I first moved into this new space a few months ago I thought I had a pretty good handle on where everything would go and how everything would fit but as it turned out it was a little bit more complicated than I thought it would be even though this news space is roughly the same square footage as my old Studio was back in Jerome uh the fact that it's laid out in more of a long rectangle rather than a square and and that it's divided up into two rooms has made it kind of an interesting challenge the truth is I was never fully satisfied with the way I had originally set things up in the new layout room it just never flowed or worked the way I wanted it to it seems like I'm always trying to cram 10 pounds of model railroad into a 5 pound bag and the ongoing struggle with this has stalled progress on the reimagine Thunder Mesa layout and on other projects I'd like to get started on I wouldn't really call it planning paralysis but it is a big reason why I keep drawing and then redrawing plans for the Thunder Mesa layout trying to make everything work within the constraints set here by this space and by my own goals for the railroad those constraints are not necessarily a bad thing in fact I found that having certain boundaries on a project often helped to spark more Creative Solutions there are physical boundaries set by this space that I have to work with and then aesthetic design boundaries that I've set for myself to preserve the flavor and character of the project for example one boundary I've set for myself here is that all of the layouts in the space be portable that one single constraint sends you down a whole path of creative decisions that will affect everything else like the secondary constraint that the layouts be of modest size you know the future is never certain and after the most recent move I really don't want to build anything that won't easily fit into an average garage just in case of course one of the biggest constraints on the use of space here is that I'm not just building the Thunder Mesa out there are several other little projects that I am interested in pursuing and they all need their own little corner to inhabit the Goldfield and Calico the Bandit Canyon most recently the San Lorenzo mini layout and there's also a um Colorado themed H3 layout on the horizon that I'd like to fit here into the puzzle somehow I've talked about this a little bit before but you know I made the decision long ago that I would rather spend my limited time and resources working on several small to midsize layouts with different themes than on one huge allc consuming project I mean the Thunder Mesa layout will always be number one in my heart but I need the creative space to work on other stuff too sometimes those other projects end up getting sold and going to a new home like the gruesome Gul layout did and though it is hard to see them go it does free up valuable space for whatever idea is next but getting back to what's in the studio here right now each layout has its own particular needs for proper viewing operations and access like the Bandit can and Railway ideally needs to be viewable from at least three sides and the Goldfield and Calico needs access to the staging yard from behind the backdrop I solved the access issue with the band Canyon Railway by moving it here into the front office but the access issue with the Goldfield and Calico has been a tougher nut to crack originally the Goldfield in Calico was up against this the East wall of the studio and I literally had to roll it out to get access to the back not a great plan needless to say that didn't happen very often and it left the entire studio in disarray it was it was kind of a mess and frankly that's really the reason I haven't had an Open studio day here since moving to the new space but one day I started to wonder what would happen if I moved the Goldfield in Calico from here over to there you know everything in here does roll on casters so I decided to do what I nearly always do in situations like this when and doubt rearrange the furniture [Music] oh [Music] well one thing leads to another and this one simple change has led to an entirely new plan for the layout room let's take a look at what I've come up with with the Goldfield and Calico moved to the north wall of the layout room I could now have a twft wide aisle behind it that's too narrow for guest access but plenty wide enough for my needs and moving the layout over here has had the happy side effect of hiding this unsightly air conditioner which so many of you have been concerned about now with that puzzle piece in place it was time to think about the thunder Mesa layout or rather rethink it if you've been following the ongoing drama of the Thunder Mesa redesign you might notice that this shape is quite a bit different than the most recently published plant now for all of this to work I would need to take a bite or two out of the overall footprint of the Thunder maze aloud and scale back my ambitions just a little bit so once again there's a new plan on the way Thunder maesa 2.5 I'm not quite ready to share it yet but one very exciting detail is that it will now reconnect with the Calico layout with a junction right about here I knew i' put this switch here for a reason the two om30 layouts will remain separate railroads with their own themes and identities but now they'll be able to physically interchange with each other the San Lorenzo mini layout has now moved over to the East wall of the layout room and this will remain a flexible space with some workbenches displays and the possibility of future small projects and many layouts down the road on the South Side we've got this big rollup door it's useful but kind of ugly and aside from the gold field in Calico it's been one of the major sticking points in trying to figure out the best uses for this space but as it turns out it's a perfect spot for that H3 project I hinted at earlier there's room for a nearly 9x4 ft portable layout in front of the door and its backdrop will cover up that unsightly view quite nicely as an extra bonus if I build the h113 a little bit higher off the floor than the other layouts We'll add had a forced perspective illusion of great distance when viewed from the o30 side yes I do have a plan for that future H3 layout and thanks to a very good friend of the channel I have a small collection of Blackstone H3 equipment to run on it and I'll be sharing all of that with you in an upcoming installment in the meantime work can start moving forward again on the Thunder Mesa and the Goldfield and Calico layouts and we can start offering Studio visits again in in the near future the flow of the layout room is greatly improved with this new plan with most of the onstage aisles at least three feet wide meaning widening out to three and a half to four feet that's plenty of room to view and work on and operate the model railroads so that's my plan for making everything fit you know it was a tough puzzle to figure out and it took some time but I guess that's to be expected when you upend everything and relocate to a new space but I am planning to be here for a while and I hope to see you back here again next time so make sure you're subscribe with those notifications turned on so you can follow along as these projects move forward hey did you know that you can now join patreon for free and get immediate access to the model railroading chat for on my page there that's patreon.com thunder Mesa and speaking of free stuff you should also check out the resources available at the the Thunder maesa Studio website that's thunder mesa. Studio of course if you'd like to help support the channel as a paid member Like These Fine Poes did and get Early Access exclusive content parts from the builds my laser cutting files and more you can get all of that at the upcoming link until next time keep moving forward my friends adios for now [Music]