John Armstrong (model Railroader) - Layout Design

Layout Design

Armstrong pioneered and promoted modern layout design, stressing the concept of designing the model railroad as a totality, including its operational scheme, the prototype on which it was based (including its landscape setting), the use of double sided backdrops and other devices to control viewpoints and viewing angles, multiple levels of railroad, staging yards, and the operational plan or schema. Before his synthesis of the ideas of John Allen, Frank Ellison, Whit Towers and others, layouts were often little more than a "spaghetti bowl" of intersecting tracks on which trains ran in no particular order and with little or no sense of purpose.

Among Armstrong's innovations was the development of a sophisticated electronic control system. Decades before the invention of the personal computer and accompanying software, Armstrong used electronic parts from a variety of sources including pinball machines to build a walkaround control system that enabled him to operate model trains from control stations at intervals throughout the layout.

Armstrong was extensively published in the US Model Railroad press, he has over 300 references in the Trains Magazine Index.