Hi all-
With help from Stein and a lot of trial and error this is what I have come up with for my switching layout.A little description- cars come in from outside on left side-the string is broken down and using the runaround the loaded cars are put on the two yard tracks.There are two switchback tracks-one in the upper left and the other in the lower right.I also installed in the upper left a cleanout track where box cars can be put in order to have their insides steam cleaned prior to being sent out and reloaded. I'm still messing with the road placement and I also need to come up with a system for the switching movements. Also the overhead crane in the team track area is just a thoight.Not sure if I'm going to keep it or not.Bob
Looks great. Keep you busy
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot Visit my blog! http://becomingawarriorpoet.blogspot.com
Bob,
Take this as a devil's advocate question.
It is obvious that you can switch cars. What is not so obvious is the "big picture" of how it works as a part the railroad system. How do cars get off-layout and where do they go when they do?
Your answer determines the varieity and operational interest inherent in your plan.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
This looks like a pretty decent switching layout plan. You've minimized the switchbacks and whre they are present there is enough of a 'tail' so you can switch blocks of cars rather then doing them one at a time.
The one thing I'd suggest taking a look at is making the run around track longer. You can't move the left run-around turnout further left without making major switching headaches, but when if you moved the turnout to the bottome left spur track left a foot and the right end run around crossover right a foot (in effect swapping the left-right positions of the two)? You'd lose a car or two of capacity on the bottom left spur but you already have tons of car spots.
Space Mouse mentioned off layout staging? It appears the 'mainline' (center track vertically) runs off the layout to the left. Are you planning a separate staging area or perhaps a cassette (or even a car float) over there?
Looks good, have at it!
Regards,
Charlie Comstock
I might seem a little cruel, but I just don't see how this track plan is going to work operationally, or even close to being enjoyable.
The switchbacks are killer to operation. You don't have enough room in them to pull a string of cars down, grab the ones already spotted, and then put the cars to be spotted back in. None of the tracks leading into the facing point switches give you the room to pull the "old" cars while bringing in the "new". Railroads want things as simple as possible. This is too much of a "puzzle" for it to be efficient for crews to work in.
You can gain some extra length for leads by having your mainline come in at an angle to the front of the benchwork. Your run-around can be at the same angle, directly off to one side. On the opposite side of the run around (think in terms of left side / right side of the main line) you can have your storage yard for cars. Coming in diagonally gives you space for multiple scenes by having a natural divider through your space... the track.
This space reserved for SpaceMouse's future presidential candidacy advertisements
Chip-look at the plan. The main line is the way in and out.This plan is loosely based on Progressive Rails Airlake Industrial Park.Their in park main line connects to the CP main line.Empty cars are brought out onto the main for pickup and the same for loaded cars coming into the park.In the park there are no yards,cars are put wherever there is room.Also they use two switchers.
Charlie-would it be possible for you to diagram your idea?
GraniteRailroader-cruel-YES.The plan works.I ran trains on it many times.Maybe I can't pull long strings of cars but the fact is-it does what I want it to do.There is nothing that says I can't switch one or two cars at a time.What you are suggesting is that I literally tear most of the plan out and redoing it.Not going to happen.I had a purpose when I designed this layout.It is not now nor was it designed as a puzzle.
FoulRift wrote:GraniteRailroader-cruel-YES.The plan works.I ran trains on it many times.Maybe I can't pull long strings of cars but the fact is-it does what I want it to do.There is nothing that says I can't switch one or two cars at a time.What you are suggesting is that I literally tear most of the plan out and redoing it.Not going to happen.I had a purpose when I designed this layout.It is not now nor was it designed as a puzzle.
To the railroads, time is money. The longer they have crews working one section of track, the less money they are making in other areas.
Multiple switchbacks requiring double the amount of work to spot up cars just makes life miserable for the conductor. Throwing twice the amount of switches (or potentially more when you involve crossovers or switchbacks) increases the chance for on the job injuries.
BCSJ wrote: The one thing I'd suggest taking a look at is making the run around track longer. You can't move the left run-around turnout further left without making major switching headaches, but when if you moved the turnout to the bottome left spur track left a foot and the right end run around crossover right a foot (in effect swapping the left-right positions of the two)? You'd lose a car or two of capacity on the bottom left spur but you already have tons of car spots.
Charlie - it is a excellent idea to make the runaround longer by swapping the possition of crossover and the leftmost bottom turnout. Only problem is that Bob (foulrift) has told me that he only has 7 feet of length to work with - no room on the sides for extending the layout even by a single foot.
I see that Bob has added on an extra switchback to industries at the bottom of the layout. I don't have an updated drawing including that part and no time to make one right now, but the last sketch I drew during the time we discussed this one by email, it looked like this:
As you can see - not a awful lot of room to move that rightmost crossover from the runaround further right to make the runaround longer, if he is going to be able to switch enough cars from the main into the runaround to avoid the one-by-one car problem.
I know that this thing is way compacted. We tried to make it just barely possible to switch cuts of three 40' cars with a small switcher (I used an SW7 in the illustration above) on this layout.
I agree that having a detachable cassette on one end, long enough for a train and 4-5-6 cars would help a lot with making this layout more fun to switch in the long run.
The diagonal idea wasn't bad either. Would make a longer main line and a longer siding possible.
Umm - say track crossing the 7x2 foot layout at a 30 degree angle. One hypotenus is 7 feet, other 2 feet. Pythagoras sez length of hypothenus is square root of (7*7 + 2*2) is - umm - 7.2 feet. That gives a mainline 0.2 feet (about 3") longer - about half a car length.
Could very well be worthwhile in a layout this small. But comes at a cost in length of sidings parallell to the mainline. You can't go quite as far out into the "corners" as you can with the mainline straight across.
You have way more experience than me in this stuff. Any other ideas that would help Bob improve his layout plan ? I assume that Bob wanted comments and suggestions since he posted his plan. If I am wrong about that assumption, I apologize.
Smile, Stein
Stein-As you will notice from my plan I was able to a 1' to the length making it 8'.What I then did was to center the origional plan and extent the main 6" in either direction.What I did then was as you can see in the plan was to eliminate as shown in your sketch,the crossing and spurs 1&2.Spur 3 I made into a clean out track for steam cleaning the insided of boxcars prior to reloading.As far as the coal spurs are concerned-as you can see I straightened out the track,made one a switchbacks to service to pallet works and the coal dump.I needed the room for the coal structure. I figured that by adding track to the pallet factory I could add switching possibilities.I also added a wood chip hopper at the end of that track and was planning on putting a wood chip hopper that I made from a regular hopper car.Although it may look like a switching problem,the hopper car can remain in place for sometime before it had to be moved.In the meantime the factory can continue to get lumber loads.The overhead crane in the team track area is just a thought.I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it.
If as was suggested that the runaround track be made bigger,how can this be accomplished?
I don't want to undo any more than I have to.I do feel that by making it longer I might lose some track capacity to the lower tracks.
Would things work out better if I put the crossing track back in and added a sput to lower left?
You are also correct when you said that I was looking for suggestions and/or ideas.Although I like the way the plan turned out,there is something in the back of my mind that bothers me about it but I can't put my finger on it.
If you will remember when you were helping me with this plan was that I was trying to loosly base it on Airlake Park and you suggested that if I could increase the length on the layout from 7' to 8' I could bring in a few more cars.Like I said I was able to increase it to 8'.
There was one idea I was toying with to increase inbound/outbound capacity but I wasn't sure if it would work. That was to take the left side mainline track and curve it upwards and then adding a straight track to it.If this could be done it may help.It would mean shorteneing the tracks in the upper left but not by much.
I would be interested in hearing from you again about this.It changes are to made now would be the time.I haven't started building it yet,just buying track.
I had a copy of the plan before I made changes.It includes a crossing and industry spur in lower left.I curved the main line on the left side but I don't think this will gain much.Anyway now you can compare the two plans and let me know if any other changes could or should be made without getting too radical. Bob
FoulRift wrote: Stein-As you will notice from my plan I was able to a 1' to the length making it 8'.What I then did was to center the origional plan and extent the main 6" in either direction.
Stein-As you will notice from my plan I was able to a 1' to the length making it 8'.What I then did was to center the origional plan and extent the main 6" in either direction.
I see. Okay - you probably do not want the original plan centered and padded with 6" extra on both sides - you want your original plan extended by a foot on the right side of the plan.
The main right of the runaround is the key to switching capacity - the main left of the runaround is basically just needed to allow an engine to run around cars on the siding.
Move the crossover between runaround and main further to the right. You now have an extra foot to play with on the right side of the main.
If you can move the crossover 6" to the right, you will have made the runaround 6" longer and still get the part of the main to the right of the runaround 6" longer, too - ie you can fit one more car to the right of the runaround, and one more car on the runaround.
If the turnout that currently is just to the right of the right end of the runaround (the one that goes down towards the lower left hand corner) is in the way, just move that left (over on the left side of the crossover instead of on the right side of the crossover).
Sorry - I didn't notice that you had found an extra foot somewhere.
Grin, Stein
FoulRift wrote:Stein-check my above post with origional diagram.What I did do was to center the layout on the 8' to pick up 6'' on each side. If as you suggest move the crossing to the right,wouldn't that mess up the rest of the trackwork on the bottom? What if I put the main line back the way it was and shift the layout to the left to add track length to the right?Could you diagram your changes for me if you have time?Bob
Something like this (ignore names on sidings and industries - didn't have time to do that part):
Stein
Stein-Thank you very much.Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to see what I can't.From your plan it looks like I will still be able to extend spur3 to make a cleanout track.The spur in the lower left now gives me room to move the track up or down a little to make room if necessary for the structure and wood chip bin.In the lower right it looks like I still have the short switchback and more room for the coal dump.The only change I would make would be to flip the platform in the team track area(upper right).I built a platform to accomodate 2-40' box cars.I still might a an overhead crane to handle heavy flat car loads.Walther has one and the way it looks I can reduce the length of it as to take up less space.The only other thing I'd have to do is rework the roads.
Thanks again for all your help.By the way how is you Airlake Park layout coming along?Bob
HEdward-I quess I'm a poor judge when it comes to the age of children.Any they are still cute.
To aid you in your planning you might want to download XTrakCad. It's free and it makes planning a whole lot easier.I used it for my plan. Bob
HEdward wrote:You guys get this thing perfect so I can steal the ideas, plant it as the center, front section of my 20X6 layout. Now find me a spot for my passenger station and three stall roundhouse and coaling station. Seriously tho, this thread is good for my layout planning. The through mainline track and it's overall size are just what we're looking for.
If you are looking for smallish sections with a lots of switching, also have a look at Andrew Martin's website: http://andrews-trains.fotopic.net/.
FoulRift wrote:Stein-the revised plan looks great-one quick question-I noticed that on the left side of the main line there is only room for one car (I'm assuming the switcher).Is this so it can pull one or two cars onto the runaround and them make it's move to the other side of the cars.
Is this so it can pull one or two cars onto the runaround and them make it's move to the other side of the cars.
Starting position
Case 1: cars for the industry at the lower right hand side
Case 2: cars for team track siding in the upper right hand corner
It also looks like I will need to make a few moves in order to service the two lower industries.
Yes. I thought you had done that on purpose. Didn't you ?
Would it be possible for you to send me the XTrak drawing so I can run some trains on it to see how everything works? Bob
Here: http://home.online.no/~steinjr/trains/modelling/forum/foulrift.xtc
Stein-Thanks for the track diagrams.Now I fully understand how it works.I assume that if there are already in place that they can be moved around in order to make room for incoming cars and then the outbound cars can be set on the main for pickup,correct?
Also the link you provided failed.It was all numbers.Sorry-Bob
FoulRift wrote: Stein-Thanks for the track diagrams.Now I fully understand how it works.I assume that if there are already in place that they can be moved around in order to make room for incoming cars and then the outbound cars can be set on the main for pickup,correct?
Yep, that seems like a reasonable description. You set up inbound cars on the main, stash em in the two yard tracks, pull industry tracks, leave the pulled cars on the main, get some of the new cars from one of the yard tracks, stash in the siding (or place at industries), and put outbound cars on the yard track until you are all done. Last move is outbound cars from yard tracks to main (for a pickup).
Mmm - I am assuming that you are using Microsoft Windows as operating system and Internet Explorer as web browser as those are the most common choices.
Right click on link, choose "save target as", pick a location on your computer, choose a filename - don't forget ending ".xtc".
Then start XtrkCad, chose File | Open and navigate to the filename to open it.
Ought to work.
Thanks Stein.Now the link opens as an XTrak drawing.Now I can run some simulations including the one you posted above.There is however one aspect of the layout that I can't make up my mind on.In the team track area the loading platform that I have will be able to serve 2-40' box cars as well as trucks.There is also a ramp for truck use.I also want to be able to handle loads from flats or gondolas.My idea was to use an overhead crane which would straddle the team track.Walthers makes one and from the looks of it I would be able to reduce the length of it so it wouldn't take up too much room.My other option would be a couple of mobile cranes.I already have one that is mounted on a truck frame.I was also thinking of adding a tracked crane.Any thoughts? By the way-how is your progress coming on your layout?Ibelieve it is being modeled after Airlake Park.Any new pictures?Talk to you later-Bob
FoulRift wrote: In the team track area the loading platform that I have will be able to serve 2-40' box cars as well as trucks.There is also a ramp for truck use.I also want to be able to handle loads from flats or gondolas.My idea was to use an overhead crane which would straddle the team track.Walthers makes one and from the looks of it I would be able to reduce the length of it so it wouldn't take up too much room.My other option would be a couple of mobile cranes.I already have one that is mounted on a truck frame.I was also thinking of adding a tracked crane.Any thoughts?
In the team track area the loading platform that I have will be able to serve 2-40' box cars as well as trucks.There is also a ramp for truck use.I also want to be able to handle loads from flats or gondolas.My idea was to use an overhead crane which would straddle the team track.Walthers makes one and from the looks of it I would be able to reduce the length of it so it wouldn't take up too much room.My other option would be a couple of mobile cranes.I already have one that is mounted on a truck frame.I was also thinking of adding a tracked crane.Any thoughts?
Mmm - not really. Whichever one looks best to you, I guess.
You could look for pictures by DrWayne - among a ton of other nice stuff, he also has photos of a very nice team track with an overhead crane.
Should be somewhere on his updates page on zealot.com: http://forum.zealot.com/t117894/
By the way-how is your progress coming on your layout?Ibelieve it is being modeled after Airlake Park. Any new pictures?
Very slow progress - for me, planning is easy, building is hard.
I am reasonably happy with my benchwork, backdrop and lighting (need to pick up another light or two next time I am nearby the store where I got the other lights). Got about 2/3rds of the trackwork in such shape that I can send a boxcar careening down the track various ways through turnouts without derailing. Got feeders soldered to the track and hanging ready under the benchwork to join up, got control wires in plastic sleeves for the turnouts run from the front of the layout to where the turnouts goes.
But I am still hung up on my road bed - I am having trouble deciding how to do things there. And I need to finalize the road bed before I can glue the control wires to the turnouts, caulk down the track and move on to other scenery.
Anyways, this is the current plan:
I have made some changes - after testing with mockups showed that reach was adequate with a 24" deep shelf at the center of the layout, I did not cut away those last 4" on the front had planned to do - and thus I could straighten the team track and find room for some parking for Twin City brick and other foreground scenery - like a gravel dump pit on the left end of the team track.
I also decided to take some liberties with reality and put in a flour mill in the Airlake park, even though there is none in real life.
Guess I just couldn't resist the opertunity of switching a mill, especially since i had the necessary kits (and quite a few covered hoppers) lying around from the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha Avenue shelf layout I had started on but abandoned when I happened upon your plans for Progressive rail and realized that Airlake park was a much better prototype for varied operations.
Also, I haven't totally made up my mind about modelling the other buildings true to the prototype or not. It is tempting to just reuse buildings and building parts from the urban layout I abandoned in favor of Progressive Rail, and just mentally shift the Airlake park track plan to a more urban setting with four story buildings instead of low warehouses.
Jury is still out on that issue - but no hurry - first tracks needs to work, then I can make a final decision on the buildings. So I guess I am moving more towards "inspired by Progressive Rail's Airlake Park" instead of "modelling Progressive Rail's Airlake Park". But so be it.
Anyways, you asked for some pictures showing current status of layout:
Left wing of layout:
Not much done here yet. Grey building sides on the left indicates where the Wausau Supply warehouse will come. Probably will try model the warehouse as a low modern warehouse instead of a four story building when I get the layout to work well enough to worry enough about scenery. Or maybe just mentally change my location to a more urban setting than a suburban industrial park :-)
Blue building on the right is rear (trackside) end of the progressive Rail Warehouse.
Left/center of layout:
Blue building is the progressive Rail Warehouse. Four story building in the rear is a placeholder for Rexam Plastic (which may be renamed something else eventually).
Red boxcar is on the east-west "mainline" down the center of the park. Tracks are (left to right, refer to plan above): spur leading to Wausau Supply, siding into the Progressive Rail warehouse, Temporary storage track between Progressive Rail warehous and main, main and then Rexam Plastic siding.
On the right front end of the picture you can see the base of the gravel unloading pit - by the grey handled pliers.
Slots cuts into base foam board is control wires for turnouts, which I plan to hook up to turnout handles from Hump Yard Purveyance on the fascia, when I get the tracks finally fastened down.
Only one of them is fastened properly to a turnout yet - leftmost turnout on main. Rest are not hooked up yet - won't be until I finalize track bed and get that track caulked down properly.
Center of layout:
To the right of the progressive warehouse/rexam area the tracks will some day cross Hamburg Avenue. The core of the layout is the tracks that crisscross each other in this area, tying all the other parts of the layout together.
Hamburg Avenue will run between the right end of the team track (by the red handled Xuron cutters on the left) and the Twin City Brick (tan building on right).
In the background you see placeholders for Crown Cork and Seal (dark red four story brick building) and Wausau paper (with tracks running to a covered loading dock under the building.
I expect the Crown Cork building will eventually get quite a bit longer (to the left) when I get that far. But first I have to get the track work to function properly. And decide upon whether I want to go for modern suburban industrial park look or older urban look.
At this point, I am leaning towards going more urban and just relabel the layout to make it "represent" some freelanced/protolanced place in the Twin Cities in the 1960s instead of Lakeville in the early 2000s.
Right wing of layout:
This is from the rightmost part of the layout. The tank car unloading rack jumbled into a pile on the upper left of the image really belongs along chemical tank car unloading track just off the left end of this picture. There will be a road crossing the tracks here too, coming out of the rear corner and running towards the camera position.
On the right, front track will go onto a cassette, to allow me to swap consists in and out of the layout, in blocks of four and four cars. Why so short cassettes ? Spare cassettes will be stored under the layout - 4 car cassettes should allow me to store quite a few loaded 4-car cassettes crosswise under the layout, and put together trains by picking cassettes at more or less random. At least that is the theory - I will see how well it may work in actual practice when I get that far :-)
Buildings are flour mill (rear, pretty obvious), and RytWay Distribution (in front). Between the buildings are three tracks - one for the mill, one for Rytway and a center track that is the far right end of the main, and will be used as temporary storage for cars during switching.
That's how far I have gotten.
Still a long, long way until this layout will be running trains, and quite a bit longer till it will some day (God willing) have buildings and scenery that will look acceptable. I don't ever expect to see it in a model railroad magazine, that's for sure :-)
But it give me pleasure and relaxation from work and life stresses to think about it, dream about it, plan a bit here and there, and even get a little work done on it once in a blue moon.
Since I took up this as a hobby, I have not even once considered chucking some of the people from our admin department out of a third floor window when they come up with yet another piece of red tape that will delay one of my projects.
And that is a good thing, considering that Norway does not carry "praiseworthy homicide" on our law books
It really works to lower my stress level, and that is my main reasons for being involved in this hobby - aside from a love of trains, of course.
Anyways - Suggestions and comments are welcome.
Steign - One question for your layout...
How do you plan on working the cars on the cassette into the operating plan? It seems as if you won't be able to run around them to spot them into certain industries.