SCARM

Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeler

All of our layouts have been designed with a piece of software known as SCARM, or Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeler. There is other software available and this is not the one that our club uses, but when we first started SCARM was free (it was still in beta) and we got used to it. It has since been released as a paid version, which we upgraded to, and the author keeps it up to date and adds new features.

The software has libraries of track in different scales/sizes and from most of the manufacturers, running from T Gauge (1/450) to G (1/22.5). Oddly, in G it still does not have USA Trains brand of track (which we have a lot of) but it does have Aristocraft which measures out the same so we do not have any problems.

When you are trying to design something other than a simple circle or oval the modeling software is invaluable (to us anyway).