Hi, just some quick remarks.
I found all the curves on your first draft not railroady; somehow i prefer a straighter approach. Stein showed you the way, but happily preferences are very different indeed. Radii are always a concern; a 5" long hopper needs with a 1:3 ratio a 15"radius. Having a 20"radius would be nice. The trade off can be a too curvy layout; with shorter (straight) passing sidings.
The original plan was some kind of a time saver. All the double switchbacks would be a bit to much to my taste. Having three run-arounds is making switching rather easy; you don't have to plan ahead any more. Having only a second one, in front of the elevator, would do great.
Having a crossing is a nice addition; but it should serve a purpose. With those two smaller industry's only you didn't really need one.
On Stein proposal's there seems to be more space, how come? It is may be the spacing between two parallel tracks?
You are working on a nice little layout,
Have fun and good luck
Paul
Last comment - your yard looks good. You might want to take in the A/D track a little - you won't be able to run trains of more than six 60-foot (or nine 40-foot) cars anyways, so you don't need an A/D track quite that long.
Possible minor tweak on your plan, making the A/D shorter, the yard tracks a little longer, deleting the track beside the engine house, and using a single slip on the yard ladder to allow access to the engine house:
A/D track can hold six 60-foot cars, shortest yard lead can hold six 60-foot cars, longest eight 60-foot cars, yard lead (up to crossing) is long enough for engine + eight 60-foot cars (ie longest yard track) without fouling the crossing.
Of course, if you want that longer track beside the engine house, you can always cut down the engine house to 2/3rds width (2 tracks instead of 3), and add a track along the aisle side of the engine house instead.
Anyways - just suggestions. As always, feel free to grab any ideas you may like, discard anything you don't like and modify whatever you want :-)
Grin,Stein
DoughlessI think both the original and your plan get dangerously close to crossing the line from being challenging to operate to problematic to operate without having a runaround near ADM. Thoughts about a runaround on the angle, sort of how you had it before, maybe longer, but angling ADM and switching it from the back? You wouldn't necessarily have to reach over the building to uncouple cars from the loco back there. More like from the side. Or.. Could you get by with a two track staging yard instead of three, and straighten the tracks, and shoving ADM back farther to allow an angled runaround and longer spotting track in front?
I think both the original and your plan get dangerously close to crossing the line from being challenging to operate to problematic to operate without having a runaround near ADM.
Thoughts about a runaround on the angle, sort of how you had it before, maybe longer, but angling ADM and switching it from the back? You wouldn't necessarily have to reach over the building to uncouple cars from the loco back there. More like from the side. Or..
Could you get by with a two track staging yard instead of three, and straighten the tracks, and shoving ADM back farther to allow an angled runaround and longer spotting track in front?
Hmmm - that's a thought. Something roughly along these lines ?
Smile,Stein
jguess733I was a little worried that I had too much staging for so few industries, but with my fiddle yards, I'm going to model transfer runs
Did a quick sketch:
Mmm - you probably wouldn't need any more than two staging tracks (like on the original design) - I have shown a GP40 engine and six 60-foot cars here (since you mentioned modeling the mid-70s), you could obviously backdate the layout to the days of mainly 40-foot cars and use a smaller switcher engine, if desired. You could fit an engine and nine or ten 40' cars on those same staging tracks.
Pulling the peninsula 9" higher up in my sketch (left in your sketch), would, if the layout room is big enough to allow it, make staging longer, and allow another couple of 60' cars equivalents (ie 8 + engine) on each staging track. But I don't know if that would be necessary - it really depends on what you want to model and how you want to run.
The way it is now, you have room for having up to three pre-staged 6-car transfer runs arrive in your yard from an off-stage yard (beyond the elevator). But you can always pre-stage quite a few cars in your yard before you start switching, if desired.
Key factor in moving stuff between the yard and the industries on your layout will be how long the tail track for the main switchback (at layout edge in front of elevator) is. As it is now, you can take trains of maybe 4-5 60' cars (or 6-7 40' cars) through the switchback there. Up to you how many such trips between the yard and the industry area will be fun, given that you only have two industry tracks to switch on your peninsula (vs 4 on the peninsula and 2 on the left part of the top board in the original plan).
Looks like you are drawing the elevator a little big in your figure, btw. I just used the Walthers N-scale set of buildings in XtrkCad and drew circles and square sized from that. In H0 scale, a 12 silo + head house combo is about 4" deep and 30" long, which in N scale should be about 2.2" deep and 30/1.8 = 16" long - which makes the figure above look fairly reasonable.
Looking at the plans again, I am not so sure about whether my advice to remove those extra runarounds was good advice. Maybe putting in a runaround on the peninsula again would be smart, to allow some more shuffling of cars here.
You could add a runaround along the lower part of the peninsula, e.g. like this:
It seems like a 5" deep amd 8" wide industry on an 9" deep and 96" (8 foot) long industry half of a peninsula will be pretty deep and not wide enough to look good. You should probably consider cutting that industry in two and make it 2 1/2" deep and 16" long.
Btw - cars are 60-foot'ers, 40-foot cars are 2/3rds the length of these, so you have room for 1.5 times as many 40' cars.
Original Pike plan (with four industries on peninsula) would have looked something roughly like this :
Mmm - Pike plan could be lightly modified with the addition of a runaround, and still leave 4 industries with a reasonable amount of car spots:
Anyways - maybe you should play a little more with the peninsula to see if you want to fit in more railserved industries and maybe a runaround after all ?
Hmm - what the plan above is short on is room to stash away inbound and outbound cars while you are working. Could always add an extra track for that along the front, perhaps somewhat along these lines:
Anyways - sorry about being too quick to advice you to discard the runarounds.
Hi Jason
I think you picked a good plan to modify. Its one of my favorites. Pulling the one leg of the classic L away from the wall creates access to another scene. I like your updates to the plan.
I will defer to the experts, but I think both the original and your plan get dangerously close to crossing the line from being challenging to operate to problematic to operate without having a runaround near ADM.
Doug
- Douglas
Hey Jason........
I've always liked that plan.....
Why don't you start your ladder at the first turnout of the yard? Put the A/D on the inside of the penninsula, you could even put a runaround there as well. I'd forget the engine escape crossover too. You'll end up with much larger body tracks...........And still be able to fit the engine servicing area....
Martin
I took Stein's comments into consideration and made some adjustments. I got rid of both the run arounds, that he mentioned. I also fliped the Refinery and the Warehouse. I can now spot 7 cars at the warehouse and 5 at the refinery. I also adjusted the tail track underneath the refinery it will now hold 8 cars.
The two spurs that I was undecided on now have purposes. The top track will be a team track with a 4 car capacity and the bottom will definatly be a scrap yard (I like lots of rust) with a 5 car capacity. Odave, thank you for the link.
I have also drawn in some building flats on the right side of the penninsula, one will be boarded up and abandoned, and the other two will be served by truck. There is also a yard office accross the tracks from the backshop.
I was a little worried that I had too much staging for so few industries, but with my fiddle yards, I'm going to model transfer runs. This new trackplan is more true to the original.
Jason
Modeling the Fort Worth & Denver of the early 1970's in N scale
I think adding the backshops is a nice touch, as the original plan's structures in that space could not be rail served. The tradeoff looks like shorter body tracks in the yard and fewer spots on the right-hand side of the peninsula, as Stein mentioned. To add some more spots on that side, maybe you could eliminate the track on the outside of the backshops and re-orient/move the structure over. This would let you extend the spur to the Deco Shipping industry, and move the whole thing up. This would also extend the scene-break towards the top, as the original plan had.
It looks like a switcher would be able to pull full cuts from the yard's body tracks without fouling the crossing by tower 55, except from the leftmost track, which I assume is the A/D. In the original plan, the other side of that crossing went to a couple of industry spurs, so fouling it is probably not an issue for that plan. You have it going to a fiddle yard and future expansion, and likewise off the bottom of the peninsula. So fouling that crossing may become a bottleneck depending on the amount of traffic you're expecting to run down that way. Or maybe that's part of an operations challenge.
I like scrap yards, so I think that's a good choice for another industry. Here's a lovely example in Pontiac, MI, served by CN.
Should work just fine, as far as I can tell.
You've added two extra runarounds to the original plan. That removes much of the switching challenge of the original plan, which was to get your cars organized in the yard before heading out to switch the industries, and having to push cars for the Pike Furniture Co and the industries on the far right and far left of the top table ahead of your engine when heading out of the yard.
Tail track on the far right (below ADM elevator) seems a little short at first glance, but it should be 12-15", and I guess that would work in N scale, where a 40-foot car is but 3" or so long. Umm - 1970s - make that most likely 60-foot cars, about 4.5" per car.
Feels like (from a model RR perspective) that there is quite a bit of "wasted" space on the peninsula. Original plan has four industries with about 10 car spots total in 6 feet in H0 scale, and needed some planning ahead to get car into the right order before heading out to switch the peninsula.
Your plan has two very easy to switch industries with room for about two cars at industry 2 and 3-4 cars at industry 1 on an 8 feet peninsula in N scale. Most of your peninsula is taken up by the runaround, and a long approach (which for some reason crosses over the longish runaround instead of branching off from it ?) to industry 2.
I quite like the touch of putting in a RR overpass on the left leg of the Wye. Should look good.
Here is my design for an N scale switching layout. I based it off the Pike City Belt Line in the Track Plan Database. It is Depicting the Katy and Frisco in Ft. Worth, Texas in the mid 70's. Benchwork height is going to be around 60" to accomodate book shelves below.
I'm not real sure What I'm going to do with the left side of the layout where Lancaster Ave is. I might actually Scratch build a replica of the Montgomery Wards Building to place there. Also I haven't decided on what industries I'm going to place on the two tracks down by the grain elevator. I'm thinking of a scrap dealer, and something else.
I know prototypically speaking the Ft. Worth isn't laid out this way, I'm just going for a representation. I'm going to place some small shops and such along the road inside the wye, and use a combination of a photo backdrop in the yard area. Lets hear what you think.