This is a question for those who have familiarity with an old track plan called the Oakville Central, from a book called Track Planning Ideas published way back when. It's a very small plan using 15 inch sectional curves and other sectional track. I was wondering if anyone had ever actually built this, and was there a specific list of track components used that I could follow? I have the diagram, but the article has no information on these specifics, i.e a list of all track pieces and switches used as you see in some other books.. I can't quite get it together using the Atlas track planning software, the outside loop doesn't quite line up. Either I have made a mistake on a piece size (though I have substituted all sorts of things trying to make it all fit), or there were some switches with a slightly different curvature used back then? I'm not really familiar with switches from manufacturers other than Atlas.
Any information or advice on how to get this together will be appreciated.
Dirty little secret 1 is that even with all the exact track components, a lot of sectional track plans don't line up perfectly. Usually you discover this after you get to the last piece, because you connected all the rest snugly and now all the error is left for one last piece. To make it work, you sort of have to allow small gaps all the way around instead of nice tight joints and oen moster gap that can't be closed.
This can get even worse if the plan calls for mixing different brands. Each track manufacturer has built their components to work together and form half and complete circles, but there is no standardization from one brand to the next. Dirty secret 2 is that many plans like this require you to trim various pieces to fit.
Dirty secret 3, many times plans found it books and magazines were drawn but never built and proved to work. That's not the case with all of them, but many times the person who drew up the plan was a bit optimistic, or rounded a bit and it fit on the plan but the actual pieces may be slightly different.
The best chance of success is to forget the section curve and straight pieces, and use flex track to fill in the connections between turnouts. An HO layout with 15" radius curves is going to limit what sort of equipment you can run on it. If all you have are short locos and short cars, go for it, but even an 18" radius will open up more possibilities.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
rrinkerDirty little secret 1 is that even with all the exact track components, a lot of sectional track plans don't line up perfectly.
+1
In this particular case, the plan was drawn by Don Mitchell, an experienced professional track planner, so it was certainly carefully designed. But it still might not be possible to build it without some tiny gaps or displacements. It might never line up in CAD – it was most likely hand-drawn in the first place.
Randy is right, the best way to build this layout would be with flextrack in place of the sectional track. The turnouts look like Atlas #4 Customline, but there were no specifics in the original article in the December 1978 Model Railroader nor in the reprinted plan in Don Mitchell’s Kalmbach book Walkaround Model Railroad Track Plans (sadly, out of print).
And, of course, if you have a bit more space, the best choice would be to expand the plan a bit to use broader curves – these would be more reliable and allow you to run something other than the smallest equipment. I'd also try to lengthen the very short runaround in any redesign.
Good luck with your layout.
Byron
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
Guess I should look up the plan first, didn't realize it was a Don Mitchell plan. Far from just some random person submitting a plan to a magazine. But then again, most of the plans in the Atlas books were drawn by Johm Armstrong. Just the nature of sectional track that it doesn't always line up if you make other than basic shapes - and some of the train set junk can't even do that. There was a review of a bunch of HO and N train sets years ago in MR, and I think of all the ones, only one made a complete oval without obnoxious gaps - and that was because the set included Atlas track.
Thanks for the replies. I suspected there was some wishful thinking going on in the designer having all this line up. With these very sharp curves, I really don't want to go playing the "wiggle 'til it fits" game, I suspect I would be getting a lot of derailments. I don't want to use flextrack either, i just want a very simple plan I can snap together without any fuss, once I plan it.
I may just try to design something simpler. Space is a problem, which is why I was looking at this in the first place. It needs to slide under a bed and will be covered to keep the dust fluffs off. 39 inches is about the max that will slide under without sticking out and be vulnerable to damage. 18 inch curves would be riding on the outer edge of that and there would be no room for an interchange outside the loop, or for that matter much of an outer edge at all.
Conversely a 15 inch radius oval does not leave a whole lot of room for spurs and building inside of it. Conundrums.
rrinkerGuess I should look up the plan first, didn't realize it was a Don Mitchell plan
All your comments about the challenges of sectional track are still true. As you note, John Armstrong designed many of the Atlas track plan book designs and some of them are notorious for not quite lining up, requiring slightly kinked track joints or “springing” track sections in or out.
I don’t do a lot of sectional designs myself, but the few I have done are challenging just in getting things to line up across the layout once one moves beyond a basic oval.
Whoops, I realized as was said above that I'd got that plan out of "Walkaround Track Plans", not "Track Planning ideas", as I said before.
I photocopied the article awhile ago, and confused the titles.
After playing around some more I realized that I could swap in a Snap Switch on either end of an 18" radius oval and get a (short) interchange track and extra industry spur that way. It does expand the "minimum" board width to 41 inches though, which is a little sticky.
I guess no one has ever made a switch that can be inserted into a 15" radius curve? Another thing that would be interesting is a section of 18" radius curve with a crossing in it, so you could run spurs over the loop and make more use of those corner spaces outside.
A superset of such pieces would be interesting to have, and might make some of those "jiggle it" plans more doable. I suppose it would not pay to manufacture them, however.
I am not aware of any sort of Snap-Track type turnout that had a 15" radius. I don't doubt that back in the day people handlaid such track. Closest I think that can be found is the Peco Setrack #2 which is around 17.25" radius but I'd really wonder what, beyond a trolley, could actually negotiate such a small frog. Remember smaller British outline freight wagons only have 2 axles, not a pair of 2 axle trucks.
Another option for limited space is switching to N scale - 15" radius is actually prettty generous for N scale. Same layout, same space, but N scale instead of HO, and you'd have a lot more scenery space. Have to adjust a few things, like the track center spacing if there are any parallel tracks, because HO spacing would be way too far apart for parallel tracks in N. Any reach in distance would remain the same.
I see plenty of people blowing up an N scale plan for HO, which can result in serious reach issues, and I've heard plenty of shrinking an HO plan to N size, or at least slightly smaller. Why not try an HO plan to its full size but use N scale track?
I don't want to switch to N as that is just too small for me, and I already have a bunch of HO stuff anyway. I'm not going to abandon HO simply because a nobbly track plan from a book didn't work out like I'd hoped.
I'll try to put together something interesting in 18" radius, at least I'll have some bonus spurs. I'll have to put it on a board, rather than the foam I was considering, since that would have to be framed, and I'll be skating close to the edge as it is.
My only regret is spending some $$$ on that 15" sectional curved track, though it is not much. I'd rather not use it at all, if I have to go bigger on the loop.
At least it looks like Walthers has code 83 straight and 18" curves back in stock, though now apparently the snap switches are gone. Is this common? I'd really like to buy everything I need at once when I'm ready.
Maybe I should order what I can now while the ordering is good.
Looks like my last post got dropped somehow, to update, I went back to the 15 inch radius oval and added a useful number of spurs and an outside interchange. This keeps me comfortably within my spatial limits for layout storage. I have a little SW-1 and 40 foot freight cars which all make it around the oval quite nicely, so no problems there. Can't find room for a passing track but in this space you settle for what you can have, I guess.
I'd like to have something more sophisticated but indeed sectional track really limits the possibilties without cutting and trimming, as further experimentation has shown me. I'll have to wait for the day when I have a spare room and a big table to get fancier. Well, it was a useful lesson to learn, in any case. For now my tiny plan will at least let me run some trains about and do a little switching.
Much better to have a layout with some compromises than no layout at all. Too many of us wait too long for the "right" situation when we could have enjoyed something in the meantime.
Since you are building an oval, you still have a runaround path (all the way around) even without a double-ended siding.
By the way, Walthers is usually not the cheapest retail option, since they are primarily a distributor and often sell at list price to protect their retailer customers. Many folks have had good luck with modeltrainstuff.com.
While you build and enjoy this layout, you might eventually also buy a couple of pieces of flextrack and experiment with cutting and curving and soldering to get ready for a future layout in a different space.
Congratulations on getting out of the armchair – more should do the same!
P.S. Your first several posts here are moderated, but soon they will show up immediately.