Paul - As you can see, there are as many ways to approach your garden railroad as there are men and women doing it. This is one niche of model railroading that isn't controlled by a fixed and established set of rules and guidelines as are the other smaller gauges.
Are you going to be using sectional track, flex track, or hand laying your own ties and spiking down the rails? I usee RR-Track and find it the easiest to use for layout design using sectional track. It does have the tools to create custom straight and curved sections (but no compound curves in one piece).
The best looking (most realistic..) railways use flex or hand-laid track. If you plan that approach, then any drawings you create can be crude and don't *need* to be CAD-accurate. Probably best to just go outside and use a garden hose to create your track plan.
Using sectional track, RR-Track software is useful in getting a plan from which you can then create an automatic BOM of track parts.
Al
I ditto TJ and Showshoe; My first railroad, in Sacramento, was built confined to an L shape made with peeler cores (8' logs). Now I live on the eastslope of the Sierra Nevada moutains at 5200' give or take 125'. My first consideration was a mainline connecting to protected train storage. Most damage comes from handling equipment and transporting it is labor intensive. From our under-house-storage our railroad went wherever it could, maintaining a 2.5% grade. It's challanging but fun and satisfation. This may seem like a lack of planning, however it's prototypical, I present the Spokane Portland & Seattle (it never went to Seattle) or the Frisco (corperate name) St Louis & San Francisco which ended up going east between St Louis and Florida and the Canadian Pacific, built to join British Columbia with Canada with no idea of how to get there. So, go out and lay some track, the first piece is the hardest.
Have fun, Rob
One small piece of advice - quit looking at track plans. There will be a certain temptation to make a loop of track in the middle of the lawn. Resist the temptation and keep reading about planning.
Think about two things. How capable are you of creating a line in a garden? What is your long term goal with the railroad?
With respect to the first, could you enjoy being on your hands and knees or should you be more practical about raising the track to a height that you will enjoy visibly and work on more easily. Hang the expense man! You will find creative solutions to make it work. Look at bridges as Mary Cozak or concrete expanses like the Snow Creek line. It doesn't have to happen over night.
Secondly, we cannot ever hope to have enough room to play in the realm of the big boys. The smaller scales take advantage of many things like staging yards, interchanges, helixes, etc. The one thing we have in common is a desire to create a railway that will entertain us for years to come as a spectator and operator. The more interesting your line, the less tired you'll become of it. The more it acts like a real railway, the more likely we will continue a lifelong interest in railroading.
Real trains have a purpose. Ours do too and that is to entertain and educate. Finding that balance is a challenge but the journey is worth the effort. Don't feel that it is unorthodox to simply lay down a stretch of track to get a feel for scale and watch a train run. Save the loop for the Christmas tree.
Neil
Some good advice has been given here.
What I generally do is firstly find the space then lay the track to suit, as I change locations (every two or so years) mine are always easy to take up again when done. Saying that I use all the space I can find and then use my imagination, only because I find being constricted to a layed out plan on a page or computer can be annoying sometimes.
I have five kids too and they help out as well with their ideas.............some helpful some not.
Cameron
He who has the most trains wins!!
I recently started my first out of doors layout, like you I stumbled around a bit, but then got the idea of just modifing some standard HO 4x8 plans. Remenber a 4x8 sheet of plywood becomes 12x24 or 16x32 layout in your back yard, depending on which scale you are following. Kalmbach has several small RR track plans on line, just pick one and modify it to suit. Mine was a complicated fold dog bone which I used lopping of several branches for now.
Hope this helps; Old Rail Dog
TJ pretty much laid it on the line! I would add not to forget that just like the real railroads, you are fighting Mother Nature to an extent. Climate will, in part, dictate what you do, or have long term effect on your railroad. You will need to think about and provide for drainage, particularly in theose heavy summer squalls that can cause flash floods. Hurricanes affect those of us along the Gulf and East Coasts; while heavy snows can be a problem in the Mountains.
Consider what nature will do to you and try to plan for it!
to the real world of model trains!
Track planning, is as you will find out in many other areas of garden railroading, about compromise. All the replies have given you good advice, but the final plan will be dictated by the space you have, and the amount of work you want to do. For example, a track plan will be decidedly different if you plan on laying the track at or near ground level as opposed to constructing some form of deck or retaining wall type structure for the track. The former will be limited by slope, big rocks, trees etc, the latter (since you will be starting at an artificial zero) is open to infinite design. Laying the track on the ground is very low cost, building retaining walls and using fill dirt etc is very expensive.
The choice is yours alone to make. I've found it frustrating at times that there are so many options, so many variables, and each garden railroad is unique. What works for me, my bomb for you, duplication is close to impossible.
In the end, don't sweat the small stuff too much! You can always make changes later!
The Dixie D Short Line "Lux Lucet In Tenebris Nihil Igitur Mors Est Ad Nos 2001"
Chris Y.
Modeling the WSOR in 1:29
I use RRtrack. It is a commercial product with several libraries of sectional track. It has capabilities to provide a materials list summary which I used to order from. It also has has a flex track capability which allows you to shape what ever you need (within pretty reasonable limitson minimum curve/radius).
Some of the features are harder learn proficiently than I have been willing to exert myself for so I can't speak to them very well, but the basic track design capabilities are straight forward and pretty clear.
In building my railway I made changes on the fly with the program and was able to restructure some problem areas of my original design without creating a need to reorder different track.
To the second part of the questions, some people model locations/industries/railroads, some create their own railway to fit their imagination, but 99% take some license with the track design to fit their garden/locations restrictions.
Personally I would rather take an era, and theme add some local/regional historyand build the railway to display that rather than try to model a specific. It just allows you to do different things, and run some equipment that otherwise would be out of place.
Good Luck
Mark
Xtrkcad.org
the above was in a different in this section. I have not tryed it but it should be free
Dave the guy without a railroad
The head is gray, hands don't work , back is weak, legs give out, eyes are gone, money go's and my wife still love's Me.
Hello all i am new to this site and garden railroading. I am looking for some garden track plans without much success. Is there software that will help in planning? Are most plans free lanced?
Thank you Paul
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