Looking for layout design and track plan design advice

[JeremyDavis]

Having bought my house and recieved the green light from my wife, I took the step of designing a layout plan. However, I need some serious help on the track plan. Scale is HO, room size is 12ft long by 13.5ft wide. I have attached my layout design that I came up with. This is by no means set in stone, but I do prefer to keep the basic u shape.

I am a fan of many different railroads so I am not doing a specific railroad in a specific era. I am focusing on the diesel era though as I have some F7's and GPs. I would like a double tracked mainline that is set primarily in the West VA / VA area with some mountains and track running along a river for part of it. I am hoping to have a medium sized town with a yard and a few shops, kinda like Clifton Forge or Grafton back in the day. I would like to put a roundhouse and freight yard in and maybe have a little section to do some street running.

These are just my ideas but I have a hard time putting them into practical visualization on paper. Any help or ideas or advice you might be able to provide will be incredibly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[pcarrell]

JeremyDavis

I would like to put a roundhouse and freight yard in and maybe have a little section to do some street running.

Thats a pretty ambitious wish list for that area in HO scale, but with some careful planning it could be done.

[ratled]

You will have troubles reaching a lot of places in your diagram.   Here is a little reading that might help you get a better handle on things.

ratled

http://mrsvc.blogspot.com/

 

http://www.layoutvision.com/id8.html

 

http://www.layoutvision.com/id23.html

 

http://www.layoutvision.com/id18.html

  

http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?2337

  

 

[HHPATH56]

You say that the room is 12ft x 13.5ft. , but your diagram is confusing. What is the area to the left of the "Door"?? Must you have access to the "Water" ??? How do you get to the "Workshop ??? Does the arrow indicate that there is a doorway? Is it available for additional layout space ? If you plan to run your F7s and GPs , the 3.5 ft will not allow for the required 22 inch minimum radius loop. It seems that you could have a G shaped layout, if you extended the two facing peninsulas, to form an S shaped walkway, and round off the corners of the peninsulas. You don't need a 6ft. wide central walking space. With your available space, forget the "roundhouse and turn table". A two stall "Repair In Place" pass through, would be more feasible. You could make a 4-6 track freight yard, with an overpass loop for the mainline, on the lower left "Extended peninsula", (as in my 7 track stub ended yard, with an overhead loop "mainline"). A 2.5 ft. reach is the maximum you should consider ! Bob Hahn Click on photo to enlarge it. Then, click on photo series to the left, to view other parts of my layout. ]This shows the entry to a harbor. I used the random pattern plastic used in inside doors for the water, since it comes in fairly large sheets, that when scribed, can be snapped perfectly to any size desired. I painted the smooth bottom side with the uniform blue-green of harbor water. For cascading rivers, I use either Envirotex, or Magic Water. Use Woodland Scenics "Water Effects" to show "white water " of water falls, or cascading water flow around rocks. Have you considered a "drop-in" or "hinged" access to a "doughnut" layout. This would allow for a continuous run for two tracks,(if you so desire"., with no "dogbone loops at each end". One other idea that you may consider is the use of a pull-out work table on casters. I happened to have several old 4-drawer dressers, that I use to support parts of my 24'x24' layout. They are great for storage. Also, consider "train length run-arounds" to allow high priority passenger trains to pass slower freights". With your size of layout, are you considering DCC rather than DC? I divided my DCC layout into four power districts, with each of the districts controlling 24+ electrical and manual turnouts . With 6 reverse loops, on 270 yards of track, my layout is, actually, too large for one person to operate, and the upkeep is a little tedious. Have FUN with your layout.! Note the green lines in Paul's suggested layout idea. The green lines represent 2'-3' high background dividers, that add to the "forced perspective", and double the scenes available on thr two sides of the dividers. Incidentally, one can use SceniKing 7"x11" sequential photo sections, for ready made background. The fairly uniform blue color at the top of each section makes it easy to go to the paint store with a section, to electronically match the color with flat blue paint,for extending the sky blue to the top of the divider. The following photo shows how one can achieve "forced perspective" with these panoramic SceniKing sections.. This last photo shows how a HO railroad with an N scale railroad (slightly raised, and directly behind), with the background of low hill photo sections, gives a good feeling of "forced perspective. [URL=http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w78/ROBTAHahn/?action=view&current=IM000773-1.jpg]

[Paulus Jas]

hi,

 Did you consider different footprints?

One nasty blob less, a branch and a longer mainline.

Paul

 

[JeremyDavis]

The room is actually bigger than 12x13.5 but that is the space I want to stay in. As for the water, it is the main access for the house so I need to be able to get to it if I need to. How would 3.5ft not allow for a 22inch minimum? Wouldn't it be more than enough for that?

[steinjr]

JeremyDavis

How would 3.5ft not allow for a 22inch minimum?

 

3.5 x 12 = 42"

The diameter of a circle is is 2 times the radius:  2 x 22" = 44"

44" > 42" :-)

Actually, it is worse than that - 22" radius means 42" from middle of track to middle of track on the opposite side.  Add an inch extra on each side to get to the outside edge of the track - 44" diameter. You want 2" extra space outside the track on each side to avoid that things that derail make the big drop. --> you need about 48" (4 feet) for a 22" radius loopback curve.

Your arms can comfortably reach about 2 feet in from the edge, if the track level is at a sensible height (about 50" off the floor).  Reaching in across 3,5 or 4 feet is not a good idea, if it can be avoided.

 Smile,
 Stein

 

 

 

[JeremyDavis]

So given my available space, is a layout with a mainline loop even feasable? Would it be possible to design more of  G shape and include a loop? Thanks for the help.

[Paulus Jas]

hi Jerry

thx for the nice reply.

And imho Stein made an error. From middle to middle is 44", from outside to outside 46", and with the 2"extra on both sides it even means your pike is 50" wide.

BTW I draw my footprint with a 18" radius. In 48 Top-notch Track Plans John Armstrong gave a lesson about footprints for pikes like yours. He suggests a horse-shoe-aisle-way; at the prize of a drop-in however. 

Paul

[steinjr]

JeremyDavis

So given my available space, is a layout with a mainline loop even feasable?

 

 Sure.

 Btw - I know I say this way too often, but not every new poster has considered this: it is not a given that "continuous run" must mean the same as "turnback curve at the end", or "loop of track on a table".

 My layout room is a little less than half the size of your room. This is my track plan:

 

Mainline curves have 22" minimum radius (24" in the upper left hand corner, where I anticipate a lot more pushing strings of 7-8-9 40-foot cars up a 3% slope around the curve).

Works okay for my era and my cars - 40-foot cars are 5.5" long in H0 scale, my main engines (a GE 44-tonner and a GE 70-tonner) are less than 5" long, and my longest engine (an RS3) is a little under 8" long.

 So 22" curves is about 4x (22" = 4x5.5") curves for switching purposes, and 2.75x curves for the longest engines.

 I wouldn't expect it to work very well to have the RS3 pick up or drop off cars on the curves, but it makes it through the curves both pulling and pushing cuts of cars the length I need without derailing.

 My widest curves are in upper right hand corner, under that bridge up there - where curves are around 40" radius.

 Of course - the flip side to doing a donut style layout is that you need to have lift-out or a duckunder or a swing gate at some point, so you can get into the operating pit in the center of the room.

 So I use this thing:

 

 Since my tracks at this point is 52" off the floor, it is an easy duckunder when the thing is in position, and it is dead easy to remove this thing when I want unobstructed access to the room.

 And my layout is designed to be point-to-point switching layout anyways - it is intended to be run without having trains passing across that liftout all the time.

 Your mileage may vary.

 Smile,
 Stein

 

[Paulus Jas]

hi jeremy,

The footprint I gave was a G-shape.

BTW you never gave any comment on my drawing, it had seven upfront locations, yours only three. So I am still curious and waiting.

Stein's design, your own design and mine are all more or less disguised loops. On a loop, or oval you can do laps.

Or do you mean a reverse loop? If the answer is yes; on your U-shape and my G-shape it is very easy to include a reverse loop; only a crossover is needed.

If you don't understand the above, please tell me. I have some drawings I can post. My previous layout was also G-shaped with a reverse-loop. 

Paul

[JeremyDavis]

Forgive me Paul, but the difference between a reverse loop and disguised loop is what? I'm pretty novice at this whole design thing so bear with me. Looking at the design stein put up, I could in theory make my design totally enclosed with an opening in the middle and use a duckunder or lift out section right? Am I correct in thinking that if I did that I would save some considerable space based on the design?

 I did like your design, the more upfront space there is, the better. Also, with enclosing it and bumping the sides back to about 2.5ft, would I have space for a bigger yard perhaps?

[Paulus Jas]

hi Jeremy,

no problem, just ask.

On the left layout I forget to remove the crossover. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

On the left layout, you can only go around and around (this is called laprunning). The basic form is the same as on Stein's layout. It is an oval or loop. Not everyone recognizes the basic form, so you could call it disguised.

You can only change directions when you add a loop. On the second layout a very visible reverse-loop at the left side is added. On the other side only a crossover is added; it creates a second but a bit "disguised reverse-loop" at the right.

JeremyDavis

Also, with enclosing it and bumping the sides back to about 2.5ft, would I have space for a bigger yard perhaps?

These are two questions?  Do you mean reducing the depth from 12 feet to 9.5 feet?

Enclosing the layout by a drop-in is possible, but would lead to another footprint. Depends on the answer on the first question

More important however is the kind of railroad you like. This can lead to a pretty abstract debate. I like to talk in pictures and my feeling is that two books just do that: 102 Realistic Track Plans and 48 Top-notch Track Plans. Both published by our host, the second one is a bit older and still sold by Amazon Press. Beside the trackplans Andy Sperandeo ( former MR-editor and a great author in 102 TP) and John Armstrong (the dean of trackplanning and realistic operation in 48 TN) added very valuable pages to these books.

Some good (IMO) online resources on track planning/layout design/operations:
- Article collection, Gateway Division, NMRA
- Layout Design Special Interest Group Layout Planning Hints
- Byron Henderson's Layout Design blog  

and  http://www.chipengelmann.com/

Paul

 

[steinjr]

JeremyDavis

Looking at the design stein put up, I could in theory make my design totally enclosed with an opening in the middle and use a duckunder or lift out section right?

 Yes, that is one (of many) options you have for getting continuous run in your layout space.

 Your layout space also is big enough for a track plan with turnback curves at both ends of the mainline, if you prefer to have a walk-in footprint rather than a cockpit style footprint. Like your first plan.

 And of course - you have the space for a very nice big point-to-point layout (ie without continuous run). In some ways more realistic than continuous run layouts, since real trains often comes from somewhere, pass through the place where you are (possibly stopping to do some work), and then heads off in some direction again (either back towards where they came from, or onwards on their journey).

 There is also the option of going down from H0 scale to N scale - where everything is smaller. N scale is about 55% of H0 scale.

 So where a sharpish turnback curve in H0 scale may take 4 feet of benchwork depth in H0 scale, a gentle turnback curve in N scale could be fitted into 30" (2.5 feet) of depth. Which is within the normal arm reach of an adult. So with N scale you can do turnback curves without worrying much about reach from the edge of the layout.

 There are advantages and disadvantages to all footprints, styles of layout and all scales. Otherwise everybody would have been using the same scale, the same footprint and the same style layout :-)

  Both Paul, Ratled and I have posted some links to webpages you may want to read. It may be somewhat overwhelming to deal with reading quite a bit instead of just having people answer your question here, but getting a basis for discussing layout planning is (in my opinion) not wasted time.

 Among other things, it will allow you to figure out which of the many possible ways of doing things might work for you, and for you to consider some options you hadn't thought to ask about.

 I would recommend starting by following this link (http://macrodyn.com/ldsig/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Primer) and reading quickly through at least the first three chapters:

 - The Why of Building a Model Railroad,
 - Types and Styles of Layouts, and
 - General Layout Planning Principles

Smile,
Stein

 

[Paulus Jas]

Hi Jeremy

Two other footprints, drawn with Atlas-RTS. As you can see (grey arrows) you can make your layout less deep. But the left design, as the others mentioned earlier, depends on 18" radii; great for a double track mainline in N-scale. Sufficient for a single track branch in HO 

A double track main in HO can only be done with a donut.

This layout (a donut with a penninsula)  is based on a trackplan in MR-Planning1996 by Allen McClelland: The V&O Muddlety Creek Branch. I used a 30" radius  and #6 switches on the main, and 18" to 22"radii with #4 switches on the branch. The single track river crossing with the small yard is inspired by Thurmond along the C&O. The underground part of the main is used for staging (storage). In reality he C&O main goes straight through, it is the Loup Creek Branch that crosses the river before heading to even more coalmines.

Paul