One thing I would like to mention with regard to your layout is the possibility that you are trying to put 10 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound sack. Some very nice layouts focused on a very small section of a railroad either free lanced or prototype and were able to achieve a very enjoyable railroad by being selective with their choices.
In my current plans for a free lanced theme based on my hometown and the railroads that operated there when I was growing up will be loosely based on a section of the country less than 15 miles in length. It will be something along the lines of what could have been instead of what has been. Most of the tracks are now gone and have become a path for bicyclists and joggers, the industries have also disappeared as well as most of the people who were employed there.
A great deal can be represented by staging and limiting the number of locations you try to incorporate into your final design.
hi Southern,
you made a major step, but avoid the word flow. I really do not understand why you use it .
More important however is, you are talking about a purpose. This has nothing to do with the scheme you will choose. Whether it is a point-to-point or a loop-to-loop or a continuous run; it is up to you to make operation meaningful.
The importance of knowing Track Planning For Realistic Operation (or the MR-bible by the late John Armstrong) by heart are his chapters how real realroads earn their money. Suddenly you are not only a model railroader but are you also modeling a railroad. These last words took me years to fully understand.
If you obtained the 2012 Model Railroad Planning magazine a view on Bill Darnaby's Maumee Route is worthwhile; changed into the Appalachian Ry however. You need a crew of about 10 for operation. My first thoughts when I saw his plan were about fear, I envisioned 8 crew members meeting each other in very narrow and long aisles, without the possibility to pass by. Only after reading more about Tony Koester's NPK plan I started to realise not that many trains were running at the same time. Operators were used for running trains in and out staging, paperwork, local switchers and hostlers.
His plan modeling a division between 2 division points, is like a point to point system. Just as Daid Barrow's continuous run plan for his Cat Mountain and Santa Fe layout. The 2 separate staging yards of Bill Darnaby were combined in one (visible) through yard.
Up to you is to decide which two "jobs" you want to have on your layout. IMHO a mainline engineer setting out and picking up a cut of cars in a station along the main and a local engineer to serve industries around town are sufficient. If this involves a branch up to a mountain to gather logs or a run down to a port, it is great. Doing both on a grand scale, you will find yourself heading onto a 10+ men crew layout again. W. Allan McClelland's design for the Virginia & Ohio Muddlety Creek Branch is a great example (MRP 1996) , though your mainline could be double tracked and made way longer.
In Europe the parade-ground layout with a branch is quite popular. A double track main (the parade-ground) with a staging yard, is best be done on your plan with the "one large" peninsula. Add a modest junction with a petite branch and you have enough for a small crew. No huge multi stall roundhouse, no big classification yard or a grand port. Maybe just a barge-to-rail transloading facility or when going up a few log loading spurs or a mine.
Going for an oval or loop-to-loop might depend on the kind of traffic. Open tops like coal-hoppers or log-cars do better on an oval; empties eastward, loads westward. When running those colourful reefers or fancy grain hoppers any scheme will do.
The danger of looking to much to the flow of the footprint is your point of view. Trackplans are like a view from a helicopter, while your view on your layout is more from upfront. If of course you build your layout rather high, e.g. 50" of the floor. When building at 30" table high, your view will be more like from the helicopter.
One more concern, also in MRP 2012 is an article by Lance Mindheim. Bottom line is, having a layout operating fast. Add his time-span of 7 years; like a marriage (lol), and you will understand why building a layout that takes 15 years to complete is not his way of having fun. That modest junction along the main becomes suddenly very attractive.
Once more, the above are my opinions only, not necessarily yours.
Have fun, smile
Paul
Hey Guys,
After some re-evaluating the area, I am just not sure this is the best use of the area...???...
I am going to give up the 2nd deck idea...Its just going to cost to much, and as you all have pointed out it might be to much for 1-2 people to run.
So....The lower left room could be used as a hidden staging area and/or placement of the yard and roundhouse, or could give the area up to a workshop ...????
This leaves the main area for everything else.
What is the though of a point to point? I wont be able to have continuous running but it might make the area flow better to have a purpose.
I need Ideas and comments on which way to go, YOUR ideas are needed.
The idea was to have the logging complex on the top right corner and hitting the grade up the mountain.
I might just go with a small town at the top to provide for the helper area, and add to the city scape along the left wall, Great Ideas Paul, Thanks!!
On a very beautifully built layout, I've seen a helper district. Out of the yard, a severe climb to the summit, pretty impressive. Arriving at the top was a big bridge crossing the mighty OHIO river.
How wonderful the seperate scenes were built, the concept would be a NO-No for me. Big river valley's are the lowest points in their area. I can not imagine a logpond and sawmill either up the hill while the logging it self takes place somewhere deep down in a valley.
More or less the same applies to the placement of your "big city"; it should be near the yard and engine terminal. If you want more then indicating your town on the background, you could widen the bench between the helix and the turntable.
After looking at all the input I went back to the last drawing and think that I can get up to the 2nd deck by using helpers along the penn. this will mandate the helper.
I think the 2nd deck will be more of a city scape for delivery from the main deck. On the Penn. I probably can fit in a logging camp in place of the Mountain / town, and at the top right fit in the logging mill and pond.
I did a mock up of the bench work at 40" and 56". It felt easy on the eyes as you could see and reach the upper deck. This space also leaves enough room to see the main deck. Problem is having Shays climb, they need a harder grade otherwise I wouldnt need them, so I can see the issue about height.
On the penn. I have not drawn the scenery divider but might build a large mountain into the underside of the 2nd deck to block the view. I need to rethink the length of the trains as for dividing the scenery up.
I still need to work on the drawing for the 2nd deck but as Paul says, start building the main deck. The spurs were a quick draw and will neaten them up when I get back to the drawing board as well as adding the yard in front of the helix and expanding the coal areas.
The idea is from staging, the train is stopped for service at the yard, pulls from the dock and the "load" gets iced at the platform then moves on.
On the Penn. It can be either the mountain or put in the logging pond (or both)so there is a destination from the 2nd deck. The logging pond could also be on the 2nd deck and just delivers cut wood to town on the main (the top right area, which I have access to both sides). In town I will have a destination for the coal. This is where it might become a city.
I might re-draw the main deck so I have the main run thru the deck and have the branch lines from the yard do the servicing. Still need to add a couple stops for the stations off of the main.
Yes I want it all and thats the problem.
I found this awhile ago and it is what started all of this, just need to make it fit
A few thoughts regarding this deck. ..
1. Most (but not all) tipple arrangements have a connected empty yard and a load yard. As cars are loaded they are typically drifted (gravity and hand brakes) in small cuts into the load yard. Some also had car pullers. With this much space you can do a real nice job with this. But, before finalizing the track design I would look at a few samples for ideas - keep in mind many prototype mine complexes were very large. And another point to remember, the number of empty cars delivered by a mine run would be 1/2 the total track capacity as the cars need to be put someplace when they are done at the tipple.
2. Tunnels on a logging line would be unlikely. Most logging track is considered to be temporary in nature and is pulled up when the camp is logged out and moved to the next. Grades can be steep and bridges (if any) are generally spindley. A few examples I've seen include running through streams and bridge-work (if you can call it that) biult up from cribbed log stacks. There are lots of books and other stuff online that can be a big help. Also, with the geared lokies (Shays, Climaxes, and such) you can get away with tight radii (18-20 in for the 3 truckers, some 2 truckers can get down to 15 in) so you can curve all this here and there to reflect the locale and job being done.
Rick
Southern,
what I am missing is an overall operating scheme and more information about altitudes.
1) you will have 4 levels of operation. A staging level, a main level, the bottom of your mountain level, then your trains climb higher till they reach the camps.
My eye-level is about 64"; having the camps that high could involve (un)coupling issues. How to reach in and use skewers reaching over trees. The bottom of the valley on this level could be 10" lower. Your main level is about 15" or 20" beneath that and your staging level another 8" lower.
Levels at 60", 50", 34" and 28" ; the last two seem pretty low for me. I am still wondering if you don't want to much since you will be merely the sole operator.
2)Maybe I am guessing wrong, but i would keep my shay's on the upper level. Working the camps only and bringing cars to a "gathering" yard. From there "normal" engines take over for the journey down to.....? To staging or a sawmill or both? Anyway a lot of open-top traffic requiring extended ante-sessions. The very same applies to coal traffic. You will need some kind of a yard here too, and maybe even a second mine and/or a coal-dump spur.
A double sided backdrop makes it possible to separate scenes. BTW if you run steamers up the mountain as well, you probably need a turntable or wye here too. On your footprint four larger areas could be defined. Since you will run shorter trains on the upper level maybe even 8 scenes are possible.
From the helix they could be:
1)just running, above the main yard on a lower level
2) in the alcove a mine and further against the north wall a coal yard.
3)opposite the coal-yard on the peninsula a log-gathering-yard and an other coal-mine, while the space opposite the entrance could be dedicated to log-camps.
These are just my impressions, the idea behind them is dividing your plan into dedicated scenes. Train-length and scene-size can't be seen independent from each other.
Southern4449 Steinjr.... If you only have 18" deck I take it you only go around the walls? What do you do for the penns/blobs?
Steinjr.... If you only have 18" deck I take it you only go around the walls? What do you do for the penns/blobs?
I would not have considered the peninsula one wide piece of landscape that I looked clean across, and where I run spurs from the edge clean across the peninsula to opposite side of the peninsula .
Treating it visually and functionally as one wider peninsula also has the added problem of tying both sides of the layout into the same scene - where you do not get a "once-through" track plan. Instead, standing between the stairs and the rightmost peninsula, you will see the train arrive from right-to-left in the background, go around a curve on the left, and then come back from left-to-right in the foreground.
Instead I would have considered a pensinula (except for the turnback blob at the very end) two not very deep shelves back to back on opposite sides of a shared backdrop.
The turn back blob at the end of the peninsula I would of course have have made as wide as needed for a sharp radius curve that still allows stuff to stay on track, but no wider. And then I would have hidden the way the curve looks with an outside backdrop (a Belina-drop) around the outside edge of the blob.
The theory is that the eye is drawn along the track, so instead of thinking "this scene is only 18" deep", you will find yourself thinking "this scene is 8 feet or 10 feet (about 1/6th of a mile in H0 scale) deep before the track goes around the curve down there" as you look down along the track.
The scenes on opposite sides of the peninsula becomes visually separate scenes - so instead of one large scene where the track goes first left in the background, so right in the foreground (or where the track pass over itself), you get 2-3-4 scenes (top of peninsula, end curve on peninsula, bottom of peninsula, right end of peninsula).
But the key to narrower shelves is using a view block along the spine of the peninsula, so the two sides of the peninsula becomes two entirely different places.
Mind you - I have never built a layout with a turn back peninsula myself - I don't have the room for this kind of stuff. So this is based on looking at other people's layouts in pictures and videos, and reading what others who have tried this for themselves have written about it.
Smile, Stein
your ideas about the second level are good. Not sure if you need that many camps, the spurs are OK.
What is missing is some kind of a resembling yard. Where trains from the mine and camps are made up for their journey to the valley floor.
I would focus on building the lower level........and on building.
BTW i would use a double sided backdrop on the peninsula.
Here is the first try on the 2nd deck
Mmm - not so sure about how smart it will be to have a 36" depth for the middle deck of a three deck layout. I would mock it up with three decks - staging, main deck, mining/logging deck and see how access will be.
For my height (about 6 feet), I think I would be tempted to put track level of the staging deck at about 30", track level of main deck at about 40-42", keep the deck no deeper than 18", and track level of upper deck at about 56" or so - and keep it narrow. But that's me - your height and your preferences will likely be different. I would try to mock up three decks and see how access will be.
I am trying to keep at least a 28" radius for the 4-8-4 steamers that I have. They don't like to run on less than 24".
I did a mock up today and it requires at least a 3 x 3 area for the 15" t-table and 6 stall Roundhouse, Then about 6' of track for the coaling bunker and switches.
As for the helix, a larger radius will ease the grade so I went with the biggest radius possible but can trim it down once I get more info/testing done.
With a 36" bench height it isn't difficult to reach 36".
You keep making your peninsulas wide and aisles narrow, and you keep placing tracks pretty far from the aisle. You also seemingly waste the bump-out of the wall at upper left, and make the bench work too deep at lower left.
If you look at the way Paul draws peninsulas (and shelves), they are narrower, so you don't get reach issues, and so you wider aisles. He also uses vertical view blocks instead of distance to separate the scenes on opposite sides of the peninsula.
Instead of trying to maximize layout surface area, try to mentally place yourself next to the track, looking along the track, instead of mentally placing yourself in a helicopter looking down on the landscape.
We are all used to looking down long and narrow corridors - it doesn't much bother our brains to look down along a strip of landscape say 15-18" wide in H0 scale (i.e. corresponding to 110-130 feet wide) and maybe 10 feet or so (corresponding to about 1/6th of a mile) deep.
Another potential trick to take down the width of the peninsula with the turn back curve is to hid the outside end of the curve with a Belinadrop (a backdrop hiding just the outside of a turn back curve - named for the late Jerry Belina).
It tends to discourage people from standing at the end looking at the end curves - makes for better scenic separation between the two sides of the peninsula, and means that you often can have sharper curves - since sharper curves looked at from the inside looks less bad than sharper curves looked at from the outside.
What is your longest rolling stock - what is it that determines the kind of curves you need, and the size of your helix?
I went with Paul's idea with a change or 2.
I am pretty happy and excited on how it is starting to come together, THANKS for all the input.
I will use the yard as a place to hook up the helper service for the run to the 2nd deck.
I placed the roundhouse on the back side so it would be easier to reach and still gives me room for the 2-4 tracks to the coaling bunker.
I like the place for the shipping port and added a ice platform nearby. I will have to look for more info on the port when it comes time.
Added a passing siding around the blob before it goes over a long trestle.
Now I need to start the 2nd deck. :) This is just a 1st draft.
hi southern
some alternatives,
I always start with indicating the kind of scenery.
just my view, not necessarely yours
Here is a link of a study done for heights on multi decks that i am going to base my heights on.
28" for staging, 36" for 1st deck and 56" for the top deck.
http://sluggyjunx.com/rr/georgetown_branch/layout/layout_height_study1.pdf
I have seen people talk about keeping separation at something larger than 1.5' between decks. But this depends on deck height and will be a personnel preference.
There was another thread on height difference:
http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/201296.aspx
Do you have a bookcase with adjustable shelves? It would be the best way to mock up the different heights. Keep in mind that decks have a thickness to them between 4" and 6" to have room for benchwork lighting and switch machines.
Chris
Check out my railroad at: Buffalo and Southwestern
Photos at:Flicker account
YouTube:StellarMRR YouTube account
As for the helix,
Staging at 32", middle deck at 44", top deck 60"
If my math is correct it would be,
12" rise at a 36" radius would require 3.5 turns at 1.7% grade with a 4" seperation between decks.
16" rise at a 36" radius would require 4.5 turns at 1.7% grade with a 4" separation between decks.
Does this sound good for deck heights?
Well, I took all of your ideas and tried to "condense" it a bit, and keep everything within reach.
I agree the 18' yard is a bit to much
After some more research I will have the hidden staging coming from the helix to the top right, thru the layout to the helix up to the 2nd deck where there will be the mining and logging areas. When it comes out of the helix on the 2nd deck there will be a helper service, or could place it on the first deck before the helix??
hi gentlemen
since Southern's layout is a bit smaller then he thought first, the most western peninsula becomes rather short. But the new found place for the helix could do double duty. Not only to get trains up to a second level, also to get trains down to a staging level if needed. If Southern wants to use his yard for switching he had better park his other trains out of the way.
Anyway, the other peninsula can now be elongated (drawn in red) and so avoiding the reach-in problems as on Southern's roundhouse blob .
The differences between the one blob plan and the two blob plan are obvious:
1) more scenes on the two blob plan but shorter trains.
2)larger radii (27" and up) are possible on the one-blob plan.
Of course in stead of undergroud staging the solution built by Bob Smaus is an option (having both lines side by side like a junction) , just as building a high line on a viaduct above and along the top-side of the plan.
Have funPaul
Yes, can only agree with Ulrich, "Less is Best", but would hazard a guess that it is a concept that most of us have difficulty accepting, myself included!!!
All the best,
Cheers, The Bear.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
I can only second Stein´s statement!
I have been following this thread with great interest, but I cannot help having the feeling, that the OP tries to "squeeze" in as much "trains and track" into the given space (which I think is huge!) instead of working from a layout concept. I can only recommend to re-visit the givens & druthers and trim down the concept.
Less is more!
For whatever it may be worth, the best idea so far is still this sketch by Paulus:
It has:a good walk-along flow for the main deck, room for 6-7 visually separated scenes along the main, sensible reaches and aisles, good approaches to to a staging deck under the main deck along upper wall, good approach from junction on the left peninsula via a helix to logging branch on a higher deck room for branch line on upper deck along left and top wall - perhaps also around right peninsula.
And it can be built and operated in phases. It is a good way to fit a layout into the room.
Your own latest attempt does not work as well:
Some challenges with this (in my opinion - other people may feel otherwise): - no staging - the runaround loop at right will have the same train run both right and then left through the same yard scene in short order, making it look less sincere - you don't get a feeling of trains coming from somewhere else and departing for somewhere else - fewer distinct scenes, seems unbalanced - huge yard, little run - reach issues for the track cutting across the base of the peninsula at lower left
- Very wide peninsula at lower left, which will take a lot of time and money to fill up with city scenery, adding relatively little to the railroading experience.
Then again, there is the "It is my layout and I will do as I like" factor. It is your layout. You make the decisons. But in my opinion, you could do a lot worse than take the basic concept Paulus sketched and use that to crreate your own scenes and personality for your railroad.
The 18' long yard concerns me because running 18' long trains will make this large space for a layout seam small.
Have you thought about something like this:
It is a little rough because all i did was take your plan two post above and cut the city out and lengthen the peninsula in paint.
Keep working it and you will find a design that works.
I am still looking for some feedback on what is correct and wrong with what I have.
This attempt makes it easier for the yard and engine service area with room for a decent size town/city and then off to the 2nd deck. The 2nd deck will have logging and mining operations.
I might give up on having hidden staging as I can "park" on the long yard.
On the left of the bottom door I thought there might be enough room for a shipping port? I am not sure on how much room is needed
I had some time today trying to find a better way and came up with this
Hope you had a Good Holiday!!!!
I had to re-think because my measurements were off by the stairs.
So I had time to look around in the basement and have cleared out some room for a helix. I will tunnel thru the corner wall and put the helix in the next room and might even place a small staging yard in there as well. I think I have more room for operations and the helix makes it easier to get to additional decks. I am thinking the train comes in the lower corner around the room and back to the lower penn. then back to the helix thru a 2nd tunnel.
I have to agree that this has moved a long way from the opening post on page 1.
Looking good!
Rich
Alton Junction