My visit to Kolejkowo

I should feel ashamed. I declare myself a train models fan and a person who loves beautiful "miniature worlds", and yet, for months I've failed to see the only train layout in my city. So it was really the time to catch up and see the wonders of Kolejkowo.

The layout is a G scale creation and it's placed indoors. It's actually located in a retired train station building so it all fits perfectly. It covers a large room on the ground floor but is soon to be extended to include also an upper level.

The layout is split into 3 sections:

• Forest and a village
• Lower-Silesia urban/industrial/mountain area
• Scenes of the city of Wroclaw

I've counted 6 trains running at the time of my visit:

• PIKO BR80 (37125)
• PIKO V60 (37140)
• PIKO BR204 (37563)
• LGB "Steinz" (70403)
• LGB Tram (23360)
• LGB Köf II (23930)

The place is definitely worth visiting although it's a little pricey if you choose to go with a large family. Of course you could just run through the exhibition in 10 minutes but you can also spend hours looking at all the details and enjoying the work that has been done there.

The most impressive (to me) was the amount of landscaping and custom work done on the buildings. The layout recreates some of the real places in the lower-Silesia part of Poland very well and if you know those places, you'll recognize them immediately.

There's even a miniature of the station building that Kolejkowo resides in to be seen. You could try to imagine that there's an even smaller version of the Kolejkowo layout inside that model!

But of course a picture is worth a thousand words. So it's time for the photos!

The design of my "test" N-scale layout

My first N-scale layout is something I'm very proud of. I love the way it looks and the time I spent working on it allowed me to try many different methods useful in my hobby.

The Korfantów layout however has one huge disadvantage - it's incredibly small. And as soon as I bought a longer locomotive, I realized I could not run it there...

I still lack the space to build a bigger permanent layout. So instead of starting a new, huge project, I've decided to go for something simpler. That's how the 'test' layout idea came to life.

Here's what I wanted:

• a significantly longer track of a single oval
• big radius curves
• as many independent tracks as possible
• easy to assemble and disassemble
• ability to try DCC control to a large extent

And of course I wanted it to require as little space as possible. Here's what I came up with:

This layout does not take much space - it's around 220x90cm. It allows me to run 3 trains at the same time without any risk of collision. The radii are as wide as I could find and even the smallest one can accommodate the long locos. And I can easily route the trains between the tracks using all those turnouts.

The inner area is a very small radius area. I know I'll be able to run only short engines and cars there. But that's fine. And it's actually realistic...

I also mentioned that I wanted to be able to easily assemble and disassemble the layout. My answer for that is in using the Kato Unitrack. This type of track features a 'click' system that not only allows attaching and detaching the track pieces easily but also ensures the proper geometry of the layout quite well.

And last but not least the Kato track is pretty cheap. This is most visible with the price of the Kato turnouts, and I can have them all electric at a low cost. In the future they'll be all controlled via DCC.

Here are some renders of my 'test' layout prepared in the SCARM software:

At the time of writing this post, the layout is actually 80% complete.
I can already run the trains there and most of the switches are DCC controlled. I have to say, the layout serves its 'test' function well. Once it's finished, I will have exactly what I wanted.

The big downside of such a simple layout is how boring it is. It's great to have a lot of space, be able to easily clean the track, not damage any decoration when reaching for a car, etc. but running the trains there is simply not that much fun.

But it's a 'test' layout after all and 'fun' was not a priority here. I'll post some photos once my work is complete.