Stefan Hofstadter's Layout
by Steven Stern
December 2000

Dave Pryor, Stretch Andersen and I had a chance to see Stefan Hofstadter's wondeful swiss layout which has been under construction. The layout is located in a separate shed in his backyard and measures approximately 15'x10.5'.  The layout is in the shape of a letter U and as you will see below, the first half of the U is well under construction.

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Dave, Stretch and Stefan admiring the layout. The mountain on the far right is fully completed and contains several helixes.

All of the trees are hand made and the rocks are hand carved. Note the small lake on the left.

A great background, lots of trees, even a few dead ones makes this scene look very real.

Stefan has done an excellent job with details.

Here you see the helixes hidden behind the mountain.

A view showing the multilevel tracks. In the center will be the main station.

A trackside view from the lower level

The great background adds a lot of realism. Note the curved background on the corner behind the mountain.

Here you see how the original single track bridge was converted to a double track later, as in the prototype.

The background is made by overlapping different backgrounds to give it more depth.

More trees help blend into the background.

The track sits on top of cork roadbed and is hand balasted.

All visible curves on the layout are very wide.

An old tunnel portal is being re-used from Stefan's old layout

Another set of helixes on the right side.

The first half of the U ends with this bridge.

The two halves of the layout are joined by this magnificent hand carved bridge.

A view of one of the two 7 track hidden staging yards.  Note the threaded rods used to support the multi-levels.

Stafan uses a piece of copper which has been flattened to ground the track instead of soldering to joiners or the track itself.