Lost in Space - Revisited

[Anonymous]

... made some changes:

- wider aisle to the window

- staging yard in front of window removable for access.

Layout controls (for turnouts etc.) will be incorporated in the fascia board. Trains will be run using DCC wireloss controls.

 

Motive power: Contemporary UP

                    Occasional steam railfan trips

Looks ok to me now - any more ideas to make this even better?

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

 Thanks for all the valuable comments, Fred - very helpful. I will do some more consideration with regard to width of aisles and layout hight. I guess I won´t have much of a problem - the room is a little wider than drawn.

 

 

[fwright]

 Personally, I would shrink it towards the northeast to provide an access aisle to your window, and more room to get through the door.  Aisle width is a personal issue, and depends on more than just how wide you are, or are not.

Factors leading one to wider aisles:

• most of us will grow horizontally as we age.  What is the expected life of your layout?  How successful have you been at avoiding adding 3 Kg per year to your weight?
• I understood from your earlier post that the window opened into the room, and that it needed to be accessible.  The aisle you have shown isn't good enough (measurements indicate 1ft aisle).
• Do you need to turn around, or face the length of an aisle?  Human bodies are wider side-to-side than they are back-to-front (in most all cases).  Having to sidestep down a too-narrow aisle may be acceptable for a once-every six months access, but is probably not acceptable on a daily basis.  Damage and bumps to layout edge will be much more common.
• Are there going to be any layout controls intruding into the narrow aisles on the south and west side of the layout?  How far back do you have to stand to operate the controls?
• Do you need to stand back a foot or two (or 3 or 4) for a decent view of the layout?
• Will a rolling chair or even stools be used in the aisles?  Not all of us want to (or can) spend all our time at the layout standing
  
• Not being able to use the full width of the doorway to get things into/out of the layout room is almost a guarantee of new vocabulary sometime down the road.
  
• layout height has a big impact in how wide an aisle feels.  If the layout is up near shoulder level (my case is 60" due to wanting work desk under), 24" aisles feel much more claustrophobic than the same aisle with a waist-high layout.
• Conversely, low layouts are much susceptible to damage from elbows and items being carried into/out of the area using narrow aisles (I consider 24" aisles the absolute minimum).  Mock-ups using cardboard boxes do a great job of convincing me to make my aisles wider than I want to from a layout design point of view.

Consider you are designing a layout as part of a display or multi-purpose space, not a track plan.  When the layout's display and human operating interface are considered as important parts of the design, I believe a better overall layout emerges.

In your particular case, I would make the aisles on south and west sides of room at least 2.5 ft, with 3 ft being better.  This would shrink the track plan a little, but would make the room and the layout more comfortable.

my thoughts, your choices

Fred W

[Anonymous]

 Yesterday, i went through all the layout plans I have produced over the last years, still in search for my dream layout.

Good news - i think if have found it.

 I just positioned the layouts I have planned in the available room - some adjustments, and here it is:

 

 

How did you like it?