Altoona,
I've marked up your map a little:
The two blue circles are the approximate locations of limestone quarries, both served by this line. The red X is where I lived growing up. I used to ride my bike down the center of the tracks... dumb, I know, but I was young and indestructable. At the approximate location of the yellow x was an industrial park, with a Corning factory and several chemical plants and light industries (machine shops). All served by rail.
And the blue x, by the most remarkable coincidence imaginable, is this station
So, I'd model that little stub between Lemont and Centre Hall.... and make sure my backdrop had Beaver Stadium in it somewhere.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
tgindyPart of your backdrop challenge might be placing a "closer backdrop" perhaps one inch in front of a "further backdrop" (and also hazier) for the prototype scenic effect of "Greater Happy Valley" -- Many forum members may not know this prototype surrounds the lushly-forested & mountainous geographic center of Pennsylvania also called Penn State.
Part of your backdrop challenge might be placing a "closer backdrop" perhaps one inch in front of a "further backdrop" (and also hazier) for the prototype scenic effect of "Greater Happy Valley" -- Many forum members may not know this prototype surrounds the lushly-forested & mountainous geographic center of Pennsylvania also called Penn State.
Here's a huge (huge) picture of part of the area, for the unfamiliar:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/20/Bald_Eagle_Valley_NE.jpg
This is Milesburg. You can see the railroad paralleling the divided highway that runs bottom to top and north of the half cloverleaf is some sort of industry. Looks like a half dozen covered hoppers. No idea what that is. And south of the road that heads east (right) out of that interchange is the NBER (ex-PRR) heading to Coleville. Coleville was once the site of the Bellefonte Central-PRR interchange, and the line continued southwest around to Lemont at the south end of Mount Nittany.
Without providing direct links, here's some things to look at:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=102524&nseq=14 This is the line east of Bellefonte, heading east to the lime plant at Pleasant Gap. Note that its rather flat, for being in the mountains.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=62241&nseq=28 A few miles south, near Port Matilda. We have moved into different kind of scenery only around 15 miles apart. Its not easy to see but immediately to the right of that picture is a fairly steep mountainside.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=5775&nseq=39 Just north of Lemont, you can see how the mountains make a heck of a backdrop. Here's another: http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=102357&nseq=8
AltoonaRailroaderIt will be mostly a coal hauling line with some rock quaury, lumber, and a few other industries I haven't identified yet.
It will be mostly a coal hauling line with some rock quaury, lumber, and a few other industries I haven't identified yet.
You also have a unique industry opportunity to transfer map to layout...
The glider airport offering glider lessons, could fit along a longer shelf, just as in your prototype Bald Eagle Valley, which would be perfect between the backdrop(s), and 6'-10' scale feet below the railroad mainline that would be closer to the layout's edge.
P.S.: For what it is worth -- my CR&T is a 9'x9' room as a U-shaped multi-level layout with a helix in N Scale delivering 45% more in operations than HO Scale, The math -- (HO/N) -- 87/160 = 54.4% -- and thus 45.6%.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
As has been suggested, identify the critical scenes you want to include in your layout.
Sketch out those scenes, that is draw the track arrangements you want for each scene. It doesn't have to be to scale. Then pick the route or routes through the scene with the most switches in a row. Multipy the number of switches by the approximate length of a switch in your scale, that will give you the minimum length of a scene. Add in the distance you want between groups of switches, that will give you the rough length of a scene. Find the spot witht the most number of track s and multiply that by the track spacing and that will give you the minimum width of the scene.
Draw a couple different variations on how you might loop the main line around the room. Doesn't have to be to scale, just accurate enough to be clear and to make sure you haven't put in any horribly tight curves and have left room for aisles. Take the normal width of your benchwork plus half your aisle space and divide it by the number of times through the scene or decks on your layout. That will tell you how many square feet of floor space a foot or main line will take up. Divde the square footage of your room by that number and you'll get about how much main line you can fit in your space. So if I am going to have 2 ft deep benchwork and 3 ft wide aisles, that's 3.5 feet. I am going to go twice around the room, 3.5/2 = 1.75. I have a 9x11 ft room, so I have 99 sq ft. 99/1.75 = 56.5 ft. About the maximum run I will get is about 56-57 ft. If I use narrower benchwork and aisles, 1.5 ft and 2.5 ft I might get 72 ft of run. If single deck it with the narrow aisles, I'll get about 36 ft of main line. This is just a guesstimate. A reality check is to compare the total length of all your scenes with this estimate. If you have 85 ft of scenes and only 72 ft of main, it probably isn't gonna work. If you have 65 ft of scenes and 72 ft of main, that means you probably aren't going to have much room between scenes.
After you jave some trial ballon footprints, start dropping the scenes on them in the order your want. You know how long and wide they are. Doesn't have to be detailed. If the room is 12 feet long and you have a scene that's 8 feet long and one that's 6 feet long, you know hat if you put them back to back, one of them is going to sqidge around the corner of the room onto the next wall. Same with width, If you have a 12 in deep scene next to an 18 in deep scene in the same area, the benchwork will have to be at least 30 in deep to fit them both (or deeper if you want 6 in of scenery between them). If it doesn't fit the way you want , start the scenes on the next wall and try dropping them in the same order, rotated one wall. Then try dropping them in the other direction (counterclockwise vs clockwise) around the room. If it still doesn't fit, then you can decide which scenes have to go or go back the scenes and decide which switches or tracks to omit or shorten.
Note in all of this I still haven't drawn a scale plan. All of this can be done on the back of an envelope at lunch. You aren't working with details, just scenes that are so many feet long and so many inches wide.
Once you think you have all the scenes positioned, THEN start drawing things to scale.
The alternative is to start looking at published plans. The key there is to recognize which plans from other scales will fit in your space, we will assume you choose a plan with curves and switches appropriate to your equipment, era and theme. So if you want modern high speed railroads, you haven't chosen an HO single track plan with 18" radius and 6 ft siding lengths . The other key is to be able to "wipe off" the details of the other design. Forget about locale or commodity orientation. Yeah so its an Appalachian coal hauler, it could just as easily become a steel mill road road or a logging line or an agricultural road. The two things you can't change easily are grades and vertical separations. If has a bunch of grades, its not going to look like Kansas. If it has a high track density, its not going to look rural or at least it going to be harder to make it look rural.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Now this is going to sound a little like I'm jumping the gun, but what direction would you want the observer to face? To the east, so that you can use Bald Eagle Mountain's ridge for your backdrop or to the west so you can head more into a less scenic point of view?
This also could help nudge in a direction of scale. If you face the west, the mountains are further in the distance and the scenery could be less important. But if you face east, the railroad is much closer to the ridgeline and N scale might be a more prudent decision. Assuming you want to emphasize the scale of the mountains. And later down the line, the smaller scale might help get the feel right in the Pleasant Gap area where things are more wide open and flatter.
Tony Koester likes to design with Layout Design Elements he calls them. Basically pickout the primary scences you want (quarry @ Pleasant Gap) and design that area as close as you want to prototype. Once you have those scenes you basically "connect the dots" to fit your area. He describes in the book mentioned above or it might be in one of the special editions that was packaged with the Model Railroad Planning annual.
Chris
Some books from Kalmbach are Track Planning for Realistic Operation by John Armstrong and Realistic Model Railroad Design by Tony Koester. There's also Realistic Model Railroad Building Blocks by Tony Koester, but I don't have a copy so I don't know how good it is - but Koester's a good author.
One thing to keep in mind is that you can't fit it all in. You have about 30 ft for mainline (depending on how close to the walls you get) which is 1 mile in N scale. What you'll need to do is determine what are the essential features of the NBER? With a space the size you have, 3 or 4 features is the most you can fit in. You mentioned coal, rock, and lumber. Each of those can easily fill one side of your space and the 4th side is your interchange. Even then you will probably need to compress the scenes.
Enjoy
Paul
Thanks Paulus, that was some really great insight. But it's already starting to sound like I just don't have the room. And the committee (wife) already said that I couldn't have all the room in the basement. YET! lol You can send that track plan to wrench1103@yahoo.com
thanks
Heyyy, Nittany Lion. Yeah, I thought that the compression might be a little much too. I may just take chunks of that line and use them. Like the limestone plant in Pleasant Gap, and the crossing at Port Matilda, maybe a nice open stretch to simulate the run between Rt. 350 up along 220 to PM. Lots of possibilities. Maybe that's why I was having such a hard time putting it down. LOL
Thanks
hi,
you picked a nice little railroad. Some time ago I had a thread on my layout and I faced the very same problem. A reality check first. You have a small space available and if we forget about double deck plans, in HO you can have two scenes. My guess is that every town you mentioned, when modeled to scale, takes ten times as much length as you have. In scale N you can get two towns in, when using a lot of selective compression. For a decent model of your railroad in HO you'll need a huge basement.
So, what can you do: go to the tracks and make drawings (trackplans) of all the stations, spurs and junctions along the line. Including roadcrossings and important buildings, like depots or industrial plants.
The more you know about all these sides the more difficult the next stage will be. You'll have to choose; so you first have to list all your little plans (LDE's they are called) and throw away and away till only a few rest.
Beside the choosing you have to think about a schematic.Do you want laprunning? How do you feel about staging?
I will give you a nice trackplan in HO: the HOG, gives you an idea about the possibility's in HO.
The red part I copied from their webside.
At the bottom of the plan is an interchange. A train from "the rest of the world" comes in, in the deep dark night and places a couple of cars on the staging tracks (top right); picks up the cars parked there and sneaks out of town. (in reality you have to do it with your own hands; it's called fiddling). Your local has fresh cars for all? the spurs the next morning.
No recipe; your imagination only.
That sure is a lot to fit into that space. I'd even say that Milesburg to Lemont would barely fit into that. If it was me, I'd be picking that area because of the scenery but that would require vast chunks of the layout to be open space. The tracks about halfway between Lemont and Pleasant Gap (in front of the prison) go through a rather manicured and well tended grove of trees along PA 26.
What I'd do though, is to forget your space requirements and just start drawing the map out as if you were going to build inside an abandoned walmart. Once you've got that, then take your towns, industries, and important places, and try to fit those pieces together.
Ah, just found out, it's a Lime Stone Plant in Pleasant Gap. This has a lot of operation potential if I can figure out a good track plan for it.
Can anyone give me some insight on how I go from a map of a proto-type railroad I want to model to my 9.5x9 shelf layout? I'll be wanting to do this in HO, but would be willing to do it in N to get it all to fit. I'm trying to model the Nittany and Bald Eagle RR (NBER) from Tyrone PA, to Lock Haven PA, with the branch line at Milesburg PA to Bellfonte, Pleasant Gap and Lemont. It will be mostly a coal hauling line with some rock quaury, lumber, and a few other industries I haven't identified yet. Here's what I got, is there a book by Kalmbach that will teach me how to do this too? Thanks for any input, I've tried to draw this up in XTrkCad, but just can't seem to get it. My imagination sucks sometimes. Think I'll take my plan to the club sometime soon to and maybe ask them how to get started.