Excellent Ideas Dave but can I add that you can get ready made templates for turnouts from http://www.peco-uk.coe m/page.asp?id=tempc100 and if you are clued up about it, you should be able to get some track sections and print them off using a combination of paint and Word or (better still) Open Office to get some printouts to actually lay on the board. I know that means Peco but as you say the difficulty is equating a centreline to the nuances of track etc and at least the spacing would be there... and little outlay to prove a point!
Cheers from Australia
Trevor
MisterBeasley Missouri Pacific BNSF 20/25 car trains. Ooops. I forgot to ask the more important question. What scale? In HO, getting 20-car trains into 11 feet would be difficult, even if you don't need to allow for a yard throat. Even using 40-foot boxcars, that's about 2 cars to the foot.
Missouri Pacific BNSF 20/25 car trains.
20/25 car trains.
Ooops. I forgot to ask the more important question. What scale?
In HO, getting 20-car trains into 11 feet would be difficult, even if you don't need to allow for a yard throat. Even using 40-foot boxcars, that's about 2 cars to the foot.
Try impossible, since 11 feet is actually how long that train would be.
I'm guessing the O.P. is in N or Z.
My HO switching layout is the same size (pretty much) as the O.P.'s stated space, being 12 feet long by about 21 inches wide. It consists of a 5-car runaround, a switch lead at one end that will allow the whole runaround track to be pulled, and roughly half a dozen spurs including an interchange track and a parking track for my switch engine. This was very carefully engineered so that I would have enough switching room to switch out the runaround track (I built a previous layout to a published plan from an old MR that really only let you move a single car at a time, which was very cramped and limiting) and an interchange to represent my operational connection to the rest of the world.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
Three thoughts. First remember that when doodling track plans, nothing is as misleading as a line to represent track. You can cram all sorts of lines together but when it actually comes to recreating those lines on paper with track on roadbed, it can be very disappointing to learn that what seemed spacious and impressive on paper is toy-like and cramped in reality. This is particularly so when drafting a double ended staging yard - you can have turnout after turnout but then see that some of those storage tracks hold only three cars or so -- at the cost of an awful lot of money for turnouts, controls, etc. Similarly when doodling with a pencil you can create a very nice industrial siding - which you then learn is too short to hold even one 40 ft car!
So my second thought is that you have such a clear notion about a neat scene involving those old coaling towers and other facilities and it seems to me that to do the scene you are dreaming of in a way that would make you happy would take up most of your available space, both length and width. Or the space you have would give you a pretty decent amount of staging capacity - but only if ALL of the space is used for staging.
The third thought is true staging/storage is not very scenic and need not be "modeled" with ballast etc. It can be out of sight. It might be possible to create a backdrop behind your favorite scene and have some (not a lot, but some) storage or staging track behind it. I think to cram the staging yard visibly along side your favorite scene would detract from the scene. You do not have much width to play with however.
This is one instance where playing around with real flextrack and (perhaps Xeroxed copies of) turnouts, plus cereal cardboard mockups of your chosen structures, might be as good for planning purposes as putting a track plan down on graph paper.
Dave Nelson
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Getting everything incorporated? You go to the county courthouse, fill out the papers and pay the fee. That is why it always pays you to place a courthouse on your layout. It is also a good place to collect the graft on your layout.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Everyone is making great suggestions. You have the area, and you have sufficient space to do what you want to do. Just start layout out track and structures, or cardboard mock up of structures, and find what works best.
Rich
Alton Junction
Get some graph paper, decide how big each square of the graph paper can be to get your 20 inches X 11 feet as large as you can and start playing with designs. It certainly sounds to me like you have addequte room to do what your wanting to do!
Or, if you have design software, use that.
NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
So. You want someone to design a layout for you.
Right?
For me, that's almost the most fun there is. I don't understand why you'd be giving that up. You get to spend hours and hours of daydreaming. And, unlike painting and weathering a model, NOTHING can go wrong. Yet. Why give up that much fun?
Ed
Phase 3 of my layout, now under construction, is something like that. It's 17 inches wide and just under 20 feet long.
I put 4 long staging tracks against the wall, on the right side in the picture. These will eventually have a removeable scenic cover. On the left, there is a single-track branch line which terminates in the foreground, where I'll have a small station and a turntable to turn the engine and a runaround track, plus perhaps an industry or two for operational interest.
In my case, I needed to start with a 90-degree turn and I had to go from one track to five. I didn't want to waste space and wanted the yard throat to be compact, so I used specialty turnouts. These are Walthers-Shinohara, utilizing a curved turnout, a plain #5 and a 3-way, all Tortoise-driven.
In your space, you can probably squeeze in 6 tracks. Since the coaling towers are abandoned, they can be "decorative" and just be placed over the staging tracks. I'd suggest placing the engine house and fuel depot at the far end, beyond the staging tracks, so you'll have a longer run out there.
How long will the trains be that you intend to stage/store in the yard?
I have an area about 20 inches wide and 11 feet long and am wanting to create a storage/staging yard as well as a service facility in that space. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to include a 3-stall car shop, a 2 track fueling facility, two abandoned coaling towers(which are like the ones in my home town of Marceline, Missouri), and a yard office into the space, still providing maximum staging/storage? Layout plans or pictures would be great!