steinjr Are you envisioning a steady stream of trains several trains simultaneously blasting throught your town on two parallell main line tracks, or just running several trains sequentially (e.g with one train taking a siding/clearng the main to let another train past) ?
Are you envisioning a steady stream of trains several trains simultaneously blasting throught your town on two parallell main line tracks, or just running several trains sequentially (e.g with one train taking a siding/clearng the main to let another train past) ?
I will likely have two trains running when I sit and watch, if I want to start operating more, will use sequential running.
steinjr Do you picture this town as "the end of the line", "on the line" or "being a junction" ? Junctions (and especially junctions with interchange with other RRa) generally are more interesting (since it gives you an excuse to resort and reblock cars in a small yard), but might demand more in staging (more or less hidden tracks representing "places to the east", "places to the west" and "places north") to be believable.
Junction, and I have a section off the corner of the layout to make a yard (more for staging, but will be visible). I am working on the space in another corner for a similar yard. I also plan to have a little more trackage than what is there, must read the Christmas present before continuing (it came last night).
steinjr Any preferences for states/areas or railroads ? Have you given any thought to train lengths - ie number of cars ? A 50' car is in H0 scale about 50x12"/87.1 = 6.8" and a GP38 is about 60 feet (a little over 8").
Any preferences for states/areas or railroads ?
Have you given any thought to train lengths - ie number of cars ? A 50' car is in H0 scale about 50x12"/87.1 = 6.8" and a GP38 is about 60 feet (a little over 8").
I was probably not going to run more than 8-9 cars at a time, and possibly less (only have 15 right now). Current "sidings" from one section to another are approximately 5.5 feet (if outer track is main, inner is passing siding when running single track. As far as states, a combination of norther Indiana and soutwest Michigan are in my head, with some of the industry being based in Plainwell, MI, where I grew up at my dad's lumberyard (which didn't receive rail shipments, but will on this pike) which had its parking lot flanked with a Conrail secondary mainline and two spurs. A grain elevator was across the street (also didn't receive by rail when I grew up, but it is a food establishment now, so, um, modelers license). The city had a great paper mill for years, but I haven't planned on modeling it due to the amount of selective compression needed.
And yes, I do get MR, and have looked through every plan on the database. Some gave ideas for something to have, others gave ideas for what I didn't want. To each his own.
And for those who don't like the "flame stuff," I figured that it may not be well received. It was, as described in an earlier post, a joke (I know, sarcasm does not show with type) from some of the ideas from the guest sneaking, where people are posting for fear of being ripped apart). I will change the title accordingly to reduce confusion. I do respect the people who have years of experience more than me (read: any) and wanted a good criticism of work thus far.
I thank all for the help I have received thus far.
Why don't you go to Internet "Track Plans" (then click on "User Track Plans", or go to 101 Track Plans Lin Westcott's book is great! With this size layout you can use run arounds, overpasses, reverse loops and wyes, to add interest to a multi-train operation.
Bob Hahn
petvet Well I decided that I could probably do a double track, and use it as a single track with passing sidings if used for more operations (thanks to the forum, and I want to say Texas Zepher and others, for this idea) or double track if I just want to let the trains roll. It is not done yet, but figured why continue with this charade of knowing how to design a track plan, get some initial input. I am willing to take flames on this. I will try to allow for in laying track to keep from having all tracks parallel to the edge of the layout (RTS only helps so much). The liftout configuration may be changed, but I have stopped doing work on the benchwork and layout due to waiting on delivery on a Christmas gift to me ... Track Planning for Realistic Operation. So, this post may be quite premature, but there are numerous track plan gurus on here that could probably give additional help or change ideas. Thanks in advance
Well I decided that I could probably do a double track, and use it as a single track with passing sidings if used for more operations (thanks to the forum, and I want to say Texas Zepher and others, for this idea) or double track if I just want to let the trains roll. It is not done yet, but figured why continue with this charade of knowing how to design a track plan, get some initial input.
I am willing to take flames on this. I will try to allow for in laying track to keep from having all tracks parallel to the edge of the layout (RTS only helps so much). The liftout configuration may be changed, but I have stopped doing work on the benchwork and layout due to waiting on delivery on a Christmas gift to me ... Track Planning for Realistic Operation. So, this post may be quite premature, but there are numerous track plan gurus on here that could probably give additional help or change ideas.
Thanks in advance
You described available space and room configuration, you described your givens and preferences, some thoughts on what kind of trains and how to run the trains on the layout, you have a realistic idea about what you can fit onto a layout this size, you have sensible curve radii, you have Track Planning for Realistic Operations coming soon, and you have told people that you do not have an ego too fragile to take a constructive comments on your plans.
From my point of view, I'd say you have made an excellent start on the design process - far better than what I did when I presented my first design for comments a few years ago.
You seem to be picturing as your focal point of your layout (your vision) a smallish midwestern town with the typical elements like a grain elevator, a lumber yard and a couple of warehouses (plus a team track, perhaps - gives you an opertunity to spot any kind of car - including tank cars and coal hoppers for loading or unloading to a truck). That is an excellent vision - eminently doable in the space you have available.
Some questions for you, to see if we can develop your vision even more:
Do you picture this town as "the end of the line", "on the line" or "being a junction" ? Junctions (and especially junctions with interchange with other RRa) generally are more interesting (since it gives you an excuse to resort and reblock cars in a small yard), but might demand more in staging (more or less hidden tracks representing "places to the east", "places to the west" and "places north") to be believable.
Of course - you can always cheat a little - and start a round of operations with a block of cars "just having been dropped off" on a visible track and end a session with a block of cars "ready to be picked up" on a visible track.
I have found that a good rule of the thumb for compressing train lengths for H0 scale switching in a normal room is to say each car on the layout represents 4 or 5 real cars. Then an 8 car local freight "represents" a more respectable 30-40 car real train. A train of e.g 8 cars and an engine take about 62-63" of line and needs a siding af about 5 1/2 foot to add a little for clearance at the ends.
Industry track lengths - I have found that switching cuts of 3-4 cars into or out of an industry generally looks a lot more realistic than spotting just one car for each industry. For more realism it often is better with fewer (but larger) industries than many tiny industies, where the building seems to be so smal that having just one box car load of stuff would have stuff coming out of the windows.
Big industries (like an elevator) often look better up against the backdrop, where you can do stuff like cutting an elevator in two and place the halves side by side along the backdrop.
Are you a current subsciber to Model Railroader - ie do you have access to the track plan database on this website, so it is possible to refer to layouts there when discussing various options for your layout ?
Smile, Stein
petvet I am willing to take flames on this.
I am willing to take flames on this.
Why?
This is trully crap...I am under the belief that this is a forum dealing with a hobby, something that one usually would do for enjoyment and entertainment etc., why would anyone with a genuine interest in the hobby "Flame you"? Anyone inclined to do so isn't worth a pinch of ***.
I too am a fan of such design layout.
My previous layouts of years back where of such a design, and my next is going to be also, if for no other reason than logistically it can't be any other way, being located in a 40' shipping container. I plan to have three levels, the base level having maybe twin mainline, the second level around 10" higher a single main, and the third level, maybe a further 8" will consist of several seperate narrow gauge operations.
Scenicaly it will be based in mountain country, possibly following the course of a river to a bay.
But it has all been put on hold for almost a year now, as in the real world the shipping container has just been moved a thousand kilometres and a world away from where it was in the swamps of South Australia to the high country of Victoria.
HarryHotspur Why do you want people to flame you?
Why do you want people to flame you?
It was a response to the guests sneaking thread about how some people feel that some will not post for fear of flaming. I was not actually too worried, as everyone has been quite helpful on so many topics for us newbies, whether basic or not. I should remember not to post when tired and distracted.
Thanks again for all feedback thus far.
- Harry
Russ, I am a big fan of the donut bench work, my next bench will be one. Looks like some of the bench is 24" wide and some around 28" or so. So you cut down the width of the hollow doors?
Lets call the out side track the A line and inside the B line. One idea is to push the B line out a little more and add a C line or branch line more toward the center. If you make the lift out wider the C line could all so be a loop. If you don't want a wider lift out you could make the branch line a point to point.
What I envision for my next bench will be a donut like yours, but will be three foot wide at all the way around. On the outer edge of the bench there will be a raised section apx 12 inch above the lower level and about 8 inch's wide. On the upper level there will be 2 main lines that do not hook to the lower level, they will be a independent lines. Lower level will have 2 Main lines and a branch line all the way around.
Good luck and have fun.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
I'm not sure if your wife has detailed specs on the tunnel, but a couple of prototype midwestern rail tunnels are the ones in Detroit and Port Huron that go under rivers to Ontario. They're not quite as dramatic as the through-the-mountain variety, though. You could also do some iron ore handling in the upper midwest, in which a tunnel might be plausible.
And there's always the "it's there because it's my layout and I want one" trump card
Scarpia No flames, thanks for the offer, but a simple question. Doesn't it make more sense to base your benchwork around the track plan instead? It just seems that you're choosing to (perhaps) limit yourself based on pre-set criteria. Or is this the only way the benchwork can go in?
No flames, thanks for the offer, but a simple question. Doesn't it make more sense to base your benchwork around the track plan instead?
It just seems that you're choosing to (perhaps) limit yourself based on pre-set criteria. Or is this the only way the benchwork can go in?
I had an original plan in mind, then I read more, that plan went the way of the dodo rather quickly, and here is why:
This is virtually the only way the benchwork can go in. It is an 11x11 space, and as I was adding the space up, the powers that be (who likes tunnels) decided there needed to be a walkway through that section of the basement (even though it is easier to go through another way), and I lost 2.5-3 feet of space off of the bottom side on the plan, as well as an additional 8-10 square feet in another section. Thus, the extinction of the original plan. Just for fun, I had already bought the materials for this with a different area for a bridge/liftout.
Thus the benchwork
No flaming here from me.
What I did was settle on a loop for my plan in a similar situation with my spare room. However I use a duck under to get to the middle as a lift out is too much of a hassle with wife wanting to get to closet in the morning.
With that loop, one end is the industry drill track for the entire layout. There is a train length passing siding inside the main with a short runaround just enough to fit the longest cut of cars plus switch engines.
I pull in from one direction, run a few loops clockwise (Westbound) then arrive at the industry with a inside passing siding serving as a arrival departure track. Drop off the road engines and send them to the office at the end of the drill to wait for the industry switcher to finish the work.
When the required work is done, the caboose is taked onto the other end of the train and I depart counterclockwise for 4 laps presuming a road trip back to yard or whatever. The direction then is "EASTBOUND." back to a point defined in my imaginary semi prototype modeling area.
The loop is strictly to give all engines a chance to break in, give a visitor a oppertunity to enjoy train watching, but when it is time to operate, that loop is part of a imaginary connection to and from a single point outside of the layout.
What did my reply have to do with a town? Well, consider my town. All of it is in boxes ready to be placed onto the future addition or built to suit the space in the future, whatever it may be. A train will arrive into town, switch the industries in that town and continue on. There is a tower in that town because traffic to the industry I descibed eariler is a dead end branch line and trains will need to get past each other in the future town.
Finally, consider your structures. Where they fit is where you run track to them.
I totally resented having to adjust the structures to allow for truck and trailers to get to the dock. I cannot stand having a dock with a truck/trailer catty cornered into a situation impossible to get out of. Need about 40 scale feet radius for the tractor and a inside turn of about 30 feet more or less for the trailer tandems. I realize that it is too much to think about this early in the game. But structures that are easily accessible by people, vehicular traffic and fairly... buffered by a bit of scenery of any kind are much more believeable than some town crushed against a wall and no way for the HO scale people to drive in or out of without crossing over 5 scale feet high tracks and cork roadbed.
Some of you old Kings will tell me that I can spin a set of tandems on a trailer in place. Remind me to weather the concrete pavement with lots of rubber scorch marks to reflect the hard work a truck needs to do to get into small docks.
If you had a Coop grain elevator for example on a corner of the table with the grain truck leaving the scales 1 inch away from the table edge facing a 4 actual foot drop or roughly 370 feet drop. Well... that is me.
Me? Well.. I decided which industry structures I needed and designed them to suit the existing space and to complete the total operations work in the space I had. Walthers modulars was the path I took at the time.
You can put a little bit into a space and stop. The problems begin when one tries to cram too much into the space.
Finally I think your trackplans are not too shabby. There will be continous revisions and changes until your last structure is placed onto the railroad.
Months ago I thought I had "THE PLAN" and bought track to fit. During the track laying, I found certain truths such as leaving a engine or car length space between S curves. During that time of track laying, I think the layout endured about 5 generations of changes until it reached the golden spike for that section a few weeks ago.
I keep going back to the hobby shop to purchase track or other goodly bits to faciliate ongoing construction.
My wife once asked me, where is enough "Enough?" at which point in the future do you stop and say that the layout is DONE?
Silence as I pondered years and decades of work to the thing.
Even then Im still pondering a switch here a spur there....
I'm trying to model 1956, not live in it.
Hey all,
This is my first attempt at posting photos or anything else not text related. I have been reading up on MR related things for over a year now, as my wife told me I must get a hobby .... I was in a small apartment, and didn't have room for much more than a very small switching layout, and I didn't get started on that while there. Then we bought a house. It had a basement ... and a dream (nightmare at times?) was born.
Well, the move is over, and I finally got some benchwork up. I was maximizing the space in the basement that was allowed me for the layout. Since right now I am just new at this, the track is mostly for moving the trains around, while practicing scenery, building structures, and learning basics.
This is the schematic (grid is 12") of the benchwork. It is a combination of hollow core doors with foam on top. The layout is at 36" in height, as I spend the majority of time at work on my feet, so will be sitting in the inside. I also have a wife who doesn't understand the whole higher is better (will just have to build a second deck in the next few months (read 10 years from now). Will be doing a midwestern theme, small agricultural town, so hills are not large, but present. Will have a lumberyard, grain elevator, small non railroad buildings. This will be with GP 38s, with mainly 50' cars. I will be doing this in HO, and most of the curves are 22 or greater. Why HO, well, I like the size, and I deal with things the size of N scale at work, and don't need to for relaxation.
I was trying find a layout that would work, looking over many different layout designs, as well as doing a lot of guessing, and couldn't find one I really liked. I ended up designing this as a point to point (kind of, if liftout is gone) as well as continuous running. The upper left corner is 18" radius, but will be covered, as my wife requires a tunnel to be present on the layout. I am not heavily prototype oriented (yet), so a tunnel in the middle of flatlands will just have to be explained away somehow. This has room for a couple of industries on and off of the double ended spur, as well as a (very) small yard.
I didn't really care for this plan, however (despite many hours of working on it), so I started laying temporary track to get trains to run, work the design mojo. Well I decided that I could probably do a double track, and use it as a single track with passing sidings if used for more operations (thanks to the forum, and I want to say Texas Zepher and others, for this idea) or double track if I just want to let the trains roll. It is not done yet, but figured why continue with this charade of knowing how to design a track plan, get some initial input.
I am willing to take (edit: constructive criticism) on this. I will try to allow for in laying track to keep from having all tracks parallel to the edge of the layout (RTS only helps so much). The liftout configuration may be changed, but I have stopped doing work on the benchwork and layout due to waiting on delivery on a Christmas gift to me ... Track Planning for Realistic Operation. So, this post may be quite premature, but there are numerous track plan gurus on here that could probably give additional help or change ideas.