Family Built American Layout

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Hi! Tell us about yourself and how you got into model trains

We are Lindsay and Xavier Turlan, 45 years old. Lindsay works for a study abroad company and is from Vermont, Xavier works for an insurance company and is from France. We have a son, Gabriel, 9 years old.

Xavier had a model train built by his grand father and father when he was a kid in France. But we started a new layout in 2020 when our autistic son Gabriel, who loved nothing more than trains, was unable to enjoy them as he was used to due to COVID restriction. He has been obsessed with trains since birth – and during COVID, we could not visit train museums. We could not travel on trains.

The train hobby takes more and more time in our life. We like the diversity of knowledge you can learn from this hobby like engineering, wiring, wood work… Working together, Lindsay is the layout builder and Xavier the operator.

We have website about it all, ModelTrainHO.com.

We also have large Instagram and Tiktok accounts, a decent engagement on Pinterest and a YouTube channel. Our large social media accounts give us the opportunity to travel and meet people from this great hobby.

Please describe your layout

We named our layout Norton Heights. It is focused on the area where we live (Connecticut / New York), i.e. USA with engines from the 60s.

We have been working on the layout for 2 years. It is Marklin HO Scale and the dimensions are 12ft by 8ft. We built it mostly by ourselves. If we have questions we look for videos on YouTube.

This is our first layout, but we have done two others since we started the main one. We have done a Z scale layout and a HO one for the National Model Railroad build-off as a Walthers’ ambassador.

Still, we do not plan to add anything for the moment as we are busy with other topics, like running a train show for an historical museum in our area and travelling to train clubs and museums to add content to our social media accounts.

Our Norton Heights layout is not available for exhibitions, but the one we built for Walthers is available as it represents the Metro North line between Norwalk, CT and Danbury, CT. The train station in Danbury is in a curve, and that’s the reason why Alfred Hitchcock chose to record his movie “Stanger in a train” in Danbury. On our layout, we have a tiny Alfred Hitchcock and his crew recording the movie.

How did you plan your layout?

When we planned our layout, we got inspiration from other layouts. But we did not really planned anything. We wanted a mountain in one of the corner of the layout, a bridge, and a station… The design was simple and we did follow our first ideas.

If we could change something, we would change the shape of the layout. We created an oval, as it was not supposed to be a big layout. Now, reaching the middle part of the layout is hard. So the shape of the layout is not that great.

Concerning the scale, we choose HO because Xavier’s first layout was a HO Scale one.

Describe your rolling stock

Our rolling stock is mainly American from Marklin and also Xavier still has all his French/European rolling stock from his childhood.

We like Marklin even is this brand is not popular in the US and favorite would be the Marklin BR24 steam engine. This steam engine used to belong to Xavier’s grand father and was recently digitalized to run on our layout so that our son can play with it. It’s a 70 years old engine…

In the future, we plan to add more modern and European rolling stock. Our layout is all digital now.

Advice for other people in the model train world

For people starting out in the model train world, we recommend that you do some research online before to start! You can get a lot of information and recommendations. Also, do not be afraid to change/modernize your layout – and remember “Not all people are into trains but nobody really dislike them”. Show your layout, they will enjoy it anyway.

People keep saying the model train hobby is dying. Kids do prefer to play with their tablets…. This is wrong. Show the kids some cool modern stuff and they will enjoy the hobby…

The best $100 we have spent in model trains would be a stool on wheels, so that you can sit down and work around the layout without having back pain.

Looking at what people do wrong, many people are running the trains too fast… Also, we have seen a layout with live fishes in a tiny pound. That was not fun to see that.