I agree with the comments that have already been made. Be sure to read and print the professional advice on the hyperlinks. With the space available, I, also, suggest that you go with N scale, and make sure that you have access to the hidden tracks. By the use of a hollow tunnel under a foam mountain, one could lift the entire mountan, for emergency repairs.One suggestion might be to have a double track "train length run around" in the hidden track area, so that a freight train could enter from one direction and a passenger train could emerge in the opposite direction. Run arounds and spurs must be of train length, and if possible make your yard with a drill track such that the switcher can rearrange the cars without tying up the mainline. I used an overpass over a stub ended yard for the mainline, which can backup to drop off, or pick up an ordered consist of freight cars. The switcher never enters the mainline. I realize that my around the room 24ft.x24ft. layout with inside stairway entrance, is a dream come true. But, more than the space available, I am very satisfied with my layout because if fulfills all the other factors that contribute to a realistic model railroad. Bob Hahn
Btw - Blue Ridge Mountains - that's in the Appalachian chain, isn't it? There is a pretty cool web site for modelling Appalachian Railroad Modelling at http://members.tripod.com/appalachian_railroad/
Contains quite a bit of information about coal railroading in the Appalachians, and has a collection of track plans for such model railroads.
I browsed a little around on that web page, and found this layout plan which is about the size of what you are contemplating (10x14 vs your 8x12, but can be shrunk fairly easy), and has quite a few of the elements we have discussed - including ample staging, a junction and a fairly clear theme - this one has a mainline with a coal branch line:
http://members.tripod.com/appalachian_railroad/tp_hawksnest.html
I did a quick sketch of the core tracks of this plan to check on inclines and elevations. Should probably be tweaked quite a bit (especially on the right side of the room, where headroom over staging is minimal), bit It should in principle be possible to do this one in 8x12 feet without too excessive curves and inclines:
No curves under 27" radius, no inclines over 2.8%, shortest staging track 9' (about enough for two GP40 engines and fourteen 45-foot cars).
Room for coal branch industries in all four corners, room for a couple of yard tracks along mainline loop.
Anyways - just thought I would mention this plan - it might help you see more options for your desired ops and desired locations.
Smile,Stein
#722Ok, I'll take some time and read over the information you guys have given me. I appreciate your help, and hope to post something in a few days
Sounds good. A couple of extra suggestions, which may or not may be of any help to you in thinking about the overall design of your layout:
A real railroad consists of miles and miles and miles of just plain track (single track or double track or all the way up to four parallel tracks for the Pennsylvania Railroad in some locations).
These tracks pass across fields, plains, or deserts, through forests, hills, mountain passes, tunnels and cities, under elevated road overpasses, over bridges - some low, some high, some spanning roads, some spanning creeks, rivers, valleys and a lot more.
It can be very beautiful to watch a train passing through such a scene. But if your main interest is watching longish trains snake through scenes (ie a "rail fanning" type of layout), then consider the smaller scales like N (1:160) and Z (1:220) instead of H0 (1:87.1). That way your trains look smaller relative to the landscape, and you can fit in more landscape (and longer trains) into a given area in your house, and have longer runs to admire.
One key to making such a layout enjoyable in limited space is to move your trains at slow speeds. Having a Z scale train take 4 or 5 minutes to complete a loop is a lot longer than having an H0 scale train speed through the loop at full speed in 30 seconds.
Also - consider throwing in some places where a train needs to stop - e.g. a siding where one train pulls in and waits while another pass by in the opposite direction, to extend perceived run length.
Edit: You can do realistic operations on such a layout - but it is mostly related to dispatching the line. Having trains of lower precedence "go into the hole" (take a siding) to let more important trains past, or trying to run a procession of trains in both directions according to a time table. Dispatching is most fun if you have lots of staging, so a lot of trains can arrive on your layout or depart from your layout during an operating session.
But those long stretches stretches of single track through the scenery probably are not so interesting to model, if your main interest is switching - picking up, dropping off and sorting RR cars, or routing - breaking down and making up trains and sending them off towards various off-layout destinations ("down towards the coast", "towards Chicago", "up the valley towards the Anthracite mines" or whatever).
For a switching focused layout, think about making the focus of your layout modeling one or two clusters (towns/sites/areas) with groups of tracks serving several industries/businesses that ship or receive stuff by train. One big industry having several buildings or several tracks can serve the same function as several small, and will often look more realistic to booth.
For a switching focused layout, it is perfectly fine if your sites are "along the railroad" or "at the end of the railroad" (as opposed to being "at a junction between two or more railroads or railroad lines").
For a routing focused layout (or possibly routing and switching focused or routing and rail fanning focused layout), staging is fairly vital. I know you already know what staging tracks are - hidden tracks that represent "the rest of the world", the place where trains come from or depart towards when entering or leaving the visible part of your layout.
But another thing that is vital for a routing style layout to be interesting to operate, is that you usually would want more than two possible destination routes ("up the line" and "down the line"). Which quickly leads to the concept of modeling a railroad junction, either where two (or more) lines cross each other, or where one line connects to another line.
Junctions has several interesting characteristics, both for modelling routing and switching. They are often where railroads hand over ("interchange") cars to each other, to forward the car towards it's off layout destination.
Interchange can be modeled as simple as a single ended siding, where one railroad picks up cars "previously left" and set outs cars "to be picked up later" by another railroad, whose railroad lines, engines and operations is not modeled on your layout. And it is a "general industry" - any kind of car from anywhere can show up at an interchange track, and any kind of car to anywhere off layout can be left at an interchange track.
A junction town can also have two lines partially modeled - a branchline where you will do quite a bit of local switching, and mainline where only a short piece of visible track (through town) is modeled, while mainline tracks on both sides of this modeled part consists of a couple of hidden staging tracks.
A freight train comes into town from staging, drops off cars at the local yard, and "heads on" (into staging). A passenger train can come into town, and stop at the depot to drop off and pick up passengers. And then head on.
If the the junction town is at the end of the line for that railroad, the train would instead "head back" (into the staging from which it came).
Staging for such trains can be single ended tracks, which you "reset" by backing the trains back into their starting position before the next "operating session". And these trains do not need to be long - passenger service for small communities were sometimes run with stuff like diesel rail cars.
A junction town also often has a small yard to sort cars into "cuts" or "blocks" or cars, that will head out on a given train ("next manifest freight for Chicago on the mainline" or "evening local train up the valley").
Anyways - what I am doing here is trying to make you think about what the main theme for your layout will be.
Once you know what effect/illusion/vision you are trying to accomplish, you can start looking at how to model this in a way that fits into your available space.
Anyways - just some suggestions. Totally your call what you want to do and how you want to do it.
Smile, Stein
#722 What about this??
What about this??
What about it ? It is kinda hard to say if you are taking a sensible route towards your goal, or to suggest alternate routes, when we don't know where you want to go :-)
Some fairly generic comments:
Layout plan you are sketching will not very well support a train coming from somewhere, picking up and setting out cars at your industries and then heading back towards where it came from.
It won't work very well if you want more than one train to be on the layout at the same time. No where for two trains to meet. This also means if one trains is to leave staging while another is on the layout, they need to run in the same direction - following each other.
You are seemingly using fairly small radius curves and sharp angle turnouts. Will work okay for short engines and short freight cars. Not necessarily work all that well for long steam engines and longish passenger cars. Again - whether your plan will work is dependent on what you are trying to accomplish.
I'd suggest trying to read those links Dave gave you. I know that you are fired up and want to get to the juicy stuff. But it still is a good idea to first figure out where you want to go, before you start making detailed plans for how to get there.
Here is some pretty good advice on track plan analysis from the blog of a professional layout designer: http://mrsvc.blogspot.com/search/label/Track%20Plan%20Analysis
Dear Jacob
Stein and others asked you a lot of questions. Put the answers on paper please. What we try to do is looking if the plan you draw is consistent with the answers you gave.
Stein asked you if you would like to run long passenger trains with long coaches. If you think that's very, very important; someone will tell you these trains need broad curves(24"-30") and special switches(#6) in stead of the 18"radius and #4 you are using now. The very same gentleman will also tell you that the proper pike for those passenger trains is the donut.
You have to take the decisions in the end. Over the years certain standards have been developped, and with reason, so don't treat them lightly. John Armstrong's does the same in his book: ''operating reliability through standards" is chapter 5.
#722another mine. Either one could produce a lot of cars.
#722It will still produce a few cars per day.
Either it's a few or it's a lot, both at the same time? But where are these cars going?(staging?) How can you get them out without a passingsiding?
My advice is, blut as it may appear, to really carfully answering the questions and do the reading. If you have read spacemouse you'll understand why.
have fun, smile
good luck Paul
One thing I have to clarify is that the plan is actually 12'x8'. On RTS, I accidentally counted one too few squares.
Instead of the short staging track, extend it around both corners. This will make it possible to run a little bit longer trains, or stage two. It could also double as a passing track. The depot will be in town.
I could for-go the roundhouse/turntable in favor for a lumber camp or sawmill. This area is actually 3'x2.5' and could provide some interesting switching, depending on the track layout.
Along the short stretch where the black arrow is, I could place a small coal tipple or mine, only one track, representing a small time operation. It will still produce a few cars per day.
The green arrow could be a foundry or another mine. Either one could produce a lot of cars.
Sorry for the crudeness of the revisions, but photobucket isn't the most advanced program.
Jacob
1) You want to model railroading in a Blue Ridge Mountains narrow valley around 1954. You know what scenic elements you want : mountains, tunnels, the railroad crossing a river, one line crossing over another on a viaduct, a roundhouse.
But you seemingly hasn't thought so much yet about what kind of railroading you want to model.
What types of trains and traffic do you visualize on your line ?
Long passenger express trains just passing through the valley heading from one city beyond the horizon towards another city beyond the horizon at the other end of the valley ?
Long manifest freight trains pulling long strings of boxcars through the valley, maybe stopping at small yard or siding to drop off a string of cars for local destinations before heading on out of the valley ?
Coal drags slowly making their way down the valley, heading from the mountains down towards tidewater harbors on the east coast, maybe needing to stop somewhere to have an extra helper engine hooked onto the rear of the train before heading over that last hill out of the valley ?
A local mixed train (mostly freight, with a combination passenger car/caboose for a handful of passengers), stopping at one or more small towns, dropping off a boxcar of fertilizer here, a tank car there, picking up a box car loaded with grain here and two open hoppers of gravel there ?
Do you visualize having two trains meet each other - where one train moves into a siding to wait while another comes down the line in the opposite direction ?
2) You seem to have picked H0 scale without any discussion of whether that is a good choice for you. For a railroad where long runs through dramatic mountain scenery is the main attraction, and you maybe want to leave a viewer with the impression "trains dwarfed by the landscape", N scale might be a better choice.
You can't normally tailor a room to fit a layout. But you can (and probably should) tailor a layout to fit into a room in many interesting ways, some of which you might not have considered yet, and which can suggested by others if they know what your room looks like.
Anyways - have a look at the links Dave provided and do a little thinking about what your main goal(s) is/are. And above all - have fun :-)
It looks like you have the start of a good railfan-style layout, but since you're thinking about adding operations, you should plan carefully.
* I agree with Paulus that a passing siding and/or runaround is necessary. You could work it in at Hillside with some curved turnouts. They are expensive but they can open up space and options. I think it's OK for you to combine the functionality of passing and runaround into one set of tracks, as it does not appear that you will have a whole lot of traffic. How many trains/operators will be running this layout at a time?
* Once the runaround is in place, consider putting one of the spurs in the opposite direction as the others, as it will add to the operations potential.
* You haven't given information about the room shape & size. Since you have a good deal of hidden trackage, you should have a plan for access in those areas to take care of maintenance and emergencies.
* I also agree that the turntable looks odd without all the usual trackage you see around them. Sometimes they were found on their own at the end of branch lines in the early days, but I don't think this is your case.
But you should probably do some more thinking about what you want to do before revising the trackplan. Here's some live links to the resources Paulus mentioned, as well as Spacemouse's guide and John Armstrong's essential book:
Byron Henderson's Layout Vision
LDSIG's Primer
Spacemouse's beginner's guide
John Armstrong's book Track Planning for Realistic Operation
Have fun on the journey!
I think it is a decent basic plan, but it is quite limited in how long it will keep you interested. When all is said and done, and then another six months down the road, you will probably look back and feel that the erection of the layout was the most fun, and no longer the using of it. Trains must go in one direction only..or they have to reverse. Many of us try to get a turning track so that you can see engines running in the other direction without having to resort to the five-fingered skyhook.
More spurs will just cram more of the same type of "operation" into your space and probably crowd it. As the gentleman says above, there is more to operations (and varied interest and fun...and learning...) by having a switching facility...a yard. If you were to study real rail sites where industrial switching takes place, you will see cross-overs, crossings, and unusual configurations of turnouts. Some of the long leads will have runaround tracks to let an engine escape around the cut it just hauled into position.
Double track and/or passing sidings are important for variety and scheduling. You should have some of/one of one or the other...or both.
I happen to be a big fan of engine servicing facilities, so both of my layouts to date have them. They are generally located near living quarters and suppliers, not out in the boonies where people have to travel many miles to get to them. Fact is, towns grew around division points, and that is where engines were serviced...and still are. So keep your 'country' out in the country, and keep your built-up areas contiguous and set in at most two places on a layout as big as yours will be. Your turntable, if you are to have one, should be nearest one of them.
The gentleman above is correct about planning seriously and carefully about your train length and the sidings or leads to which you will assign those trains. It would be a shame to have beautifully laid and detailed siding track that is always two cars short for the preferred trains you run. You really should figure this type of problem out before you commit to a given plan.
-Crandell
mr 722; just Bill or ..................sounds nicer.
First a couple of remarks about RTS.
Back to the layout:
What you really need is an other station, with a run-around(=passingsiding as well) and an other spur facing the other direction. Think twice about the turntable, you could have a nice industry or an interchange (junction) down there as well.
It all comes down to a different kind of thinking. You are the CEO, what should your trains do to earn a living? And what do you like to model? Bottom line is, if you fancy a TT, you don't expect one in middle of nothing; you could call it coherent planning. When you have to explain why, something isn't right.
Look around in the area where you live and try to find out how people or businesses get their stuff transported; you'll find a depot, a freight house and a teamtrack for sure. May be an elevator, a feedmill, an oil and coal dealer or whatever. Are they modelled?
You've started the search on the web allready. Three sides are very worth visiting: LDSIG, Byron Henderson's (Cuyama is his nickname) weblog and Spacemouse. All have lots of information about primers. Start reading as well.
Behind all the remarks and questions is one underlying issue. What are you doing? Are you trying to model a railroad or are you after building nice scenes with an "accidental" train in it?
You'll have to answer all these questions first. And you'r choice is the right one! But knowing the parameters first is not bad at all.
Have fun , good luck and enjoy the hobby
Paul
Well, I know a lot of people post their layouts on here for critique, so I figured I'd add mine.
A little about the plan first:
It's set in a narrow valley in the Blue Ridge mountains around 1954. Almost all of the track along the long sides of the plan will hidden in tunnels, with the exception of a brief appearance over a high bridge along the river. In the top right corner, where the tracks cross, will be a 36" long, 7" high viaduct carrying the track over a valley. The top left corner is a gravel plant. Along the left side is a daylighted tunnel that will serve as a staging track. The bottom right will be an engine terminal with roundhouse and turntable and on the opposite side will be the town. The aisle represtents the river.
I guess my main question would be, should I try to squeeze in more operation by adding more spurs, or work with what I've got? I'll probably have more questions after seeing some of your responces though.