Designing and Building Multi-Deck Model Railroads

Acquire more space and longer towns and runs with multiple decks. Tony Koester walks you through design, options, lighting and wiring considerations, the where and when sequence, as well as the all-important construction techniques.

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Author: Tony Koester
Softcover; 8 1/4 x 10 3/4; 96 pages; 175 color photos; ISBN: 9780890247419

Tony Koester has written a half-dozen books focusing on his life-long hobby of model railroading. Tony is the editor of Model Railroad Planning, a special annual issue of Model Railroader magazine, as well as a contributing editor to MR. He writes MR’s popular Trains of Thought column and has written numerous feature articles for MR. He also served as the editor of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine until 1981.
Tony spent a quarter of a century designing, building, and with his friends, operating a freelanced coal-hauling HO railroad, the Allegheny Midland (the Midland Road). More recently, he has been hard at work on a multi-deck HO layout that accurately depicts the Nickel Plate Road’s St. Louis Division as it appeared in 1954.

Introduction 4

The evolution of layout design 6
Looking up instead of out

Do you really need more than one deck? 12
Longer runs enhance operations

Design considerations 24
Developing a track plan

Climbing between decks 38
Helixes, continuous runs, and elevators

Height compromises 46
Factors in determining ideal levels

Layout lighting 56
In a word, “fluorescent”

Don’t let the top infringe on the bottom 66
Avoiding clearance issues

Construction techniques 74
Assembly order is critical

Framing the picture – fascias and valances 80
Framing the view of the layout

Multi-deck layout sampler 88
Examples of successful layouts

In this book, author and longtime model railroader Tony Koester walks readers through design options, lighting and wiring considerations, and the all-important construction process and techniques of building a model railroad with multiple decks. Tony shows model railroaders how to design a multi-deck railroad, light a lower deck properly, build benchwork designed to support an upper deck, use fascias and valances to outline scenes, ensure proper level clearance, arrange continuous runs to move trains between decks, and use switch machines and other wiring features that don't interfere with lower decks.

-Scale Rails magazine