What stays, what goes? (prototype layout designing)

[Anonymous]

I'm about to move into a new house that has a 15x20.5' bonus room that my wife has given me free reign to turn into my new layout room. I've decided to model my local railroad, CSX from Lithonia, GA to Social Circle, GA in HO scale. Good many through trains between Augusta and Atlanta (Mainly Intermodal, but also coal and mixed freights). Lithonia has a small 7 track yard with three industrial spurs, I'm skipping through Conyers, (the next city on the line) because the industrial areas are too spread out) then Covington which has a storage track for local industry switching, 7 industries (of which I've decided at least 4 will be modeled) and an interchange with the Great Walton Railroad, then on the way to Social Circle is Alcovy Trestle, which is a very tall, rather long plate girder bridge over the Alcovy River, and then Social Circle itself, which has a very long passing track, historic train station (now a CSX Dispatch post), a plastics processing plant, and another GWRR interchange track.

Now, all that being said, I've been playing around with Atlas Right Track 5.0 lately, and I've found that it's going to be nearly impossible to include everything in proportions that would be reasonable and without overcrowding. Could somebody give me an idea of a starting point on how to decide what stays, what goes, and if there is a better way to design a layout between three small cities other than a point to point around the wall(with hidden looping mainline and staging tracks). Minimum mainline radius can be 22", minimum yard/siding/branch radius 18". Road traffic typically has 6 axle diesels, and all the local switching is done by 4 axle Geeps. Anybody with prototype modelling experience, please help! :-D

Thanks

Jeremy

[leighant]

Your space is 15' x 20.5 feet. The fifteen foot width means you can have a peninsula with a three foot aisle on each side and a two foot shelf on either side of each aisle. Depending on where your entry door is located, you can have two lengths of layout 20 feet long along outside walls, and two lengths about 15 feet long along peninsula plus 15 feet along the end wall where the peninsula doesn't connect. That adds up to about 90 feet of mainline length.

[Anonymous]

It's important to have a few showcase or feature items that set the theme for your layout but when space is at a premium, most of your industries and towns can be compressed or only partially modeled with good results. That's where each needs to be studied for what stays and what goes.

I'm modeling the Adirondack Mountains in the early 1900s. The main industries are logging, sawmills, an iron mine, a blast furnace, a paper mill and some early tourist traffic. Also some smaller manufacturing businesses. What stays? Rail operations related to these. What goes? For most of the industries, the bulk of the structures related to the industries.

Example: paper mills can be huge propositions, but the related rail operations can be represented in a proportionally small area. Much of what doesn't make the cut can be represented on background flats.

Example: Even small logging operations would be enormously huge on a layout. What stays? The bunk houses, shops, cook shacks and dining halls and also the log loading areas. What goes: Many thousands of acres of clear cut woodland, some of which gets depicted on backdrops.

Example: Iron mining operations could eat up a significant portion of the layout. What stays: The mine hoist shaft and some surrounding support buildings, and downhill , the scintering plant where ore gets its final heat processing prior to loading into ore cars for shipping to the furnace. Also the power house stays since it brings in coal traffic. What goes? Mountains of tailings and much of the space-consuming separator buildings which can be off-stage or on a backdrop.

Similarly, a sawmill can be compressed or selectively modeled, though my N scale sawmill complex occupies a 2'-8" x 7' piece of real estate. It's my "showcase" industry though and I decided to give this model as much space as it needs. In fact, the space wasn't adequate and a "company town" is springing up on the next section down the line.

What I've found in building a mock-up of the sawmill town, is that a hillside town may appear larger and more interesting than even more structures on the flat.

Focus on the rail operations of the industries you're interested in. Represent the bulk of the industry either on backgrounds or by an illusional trick such as a conveyor that disappears over a hill (as if to an off-layout coal mine, for example.). Use off-layout staging to reduce the real estate needed for interchanges. Super detail what you do model and few will notice what you've ignored.

Scenes set very close to each other benefit from having a visual separation, such as a small hill, from its neighbors, such that if you move your position to the new scene as your train enters it, the proximity to the previous scene should not be noticable.

Wayne

[orsonroy]

I'm working my way through this issue now with my current home layout. Everything's a compromise in this hobby, even when you've got a big area to play with.

Right now, I'm working on the buildings for my east end city, Bloomington. (yeah, yeah: why are you making the buildings before you've got track down? I'll explain) Bloomington was the onlu big city on the line I'm modeling, which is the NKP between Frankfort, Indiana, and Peoria, Illinois. It was a big industrial center and interchanged with three other roads in town. I've alloted well over 30 linear feet just to Bloomington, and I'm still having to make a lot of compromises and selective compression decisions, just to get in what I feel are the major areas of interest.

The NKP's mainline through Bloomington was about five miles long, and can be divided up into three major railroady chunks: the east side yards, the downtown industrial district, and the west side interchange with the GM&O. Each of these operating areas are divided by long stretches of residential neighborhoods, and dotted with online sidings. Considering my entire mainline is only a little more than three scale miles long, there's no way I'd be able to model all seven miles of Bloomington faithfully.

What to do? I'm keeping the three operating areas, but I'm shrinking them down significantly. I'm also dividing each with neighborhoods, but only one street wide or so, and without the small online industries. The east side yards and IC interchange will still be there, but the yard is shrinking from two tracks to one. The IC interchange will be large enough for two cars, not 12. The downtown industrial area will include all the LARGE warehouse/factory buildings, but they're getting shrunken a LOT (like by 2/3 or more). It'll still be a brick canyon, but not as large as in real life. I'm modeling the one depot and two freight houses downtown, but they'll all be compresses as well. And finally, the West side is losing it's yard track and will have it's interchange track shrunk from 30 car capacity to about 10.

And why am I creating the buildings before I'm laying track? Simple: the big warehouses downtown and the depots are scenic markers that are still (mostly) there today. Anyone who knows Bloomington should recognize the area when they enter my basement. Building the key structure first will ensure that I make them recognizable, and will allow me to move them around to fit the track arrangement I'll need for decent operations. Laying track first won't really let me visualize the area, and I'll probably end up providing too little space for the buildings I need to have on the layout.

Anyway, back to hacking away at DPM modules this weekend...

[johncolley]

An alternative thought: At the base end of the peninsula do a helix and multi-level with your major yard on one side of the room and your switching town on the other with the peninsula between. That separates the operators and gives you more mainline running, too. By playing with layers you could put one staging very low under the peninsula, come up a couple or three turns to your switching town level, then another helix up to your main yard and top staging. Try to double track your helixes for passing and/or more staging. Another option would be a raised floor on one side of the room and mushroom the peninsula. Lots of ways to approach a problem, eh? Happy Railroading New Year. John

[Anonymous]

I should probably add that the room is above the garage, and part of the walls also comprise the ceiling due to the roof (aka, the walls are vertical for about 4 feet, then angle inward up toward the ceiling). The angled walls are on the 20.5' sides, and the door is dead center of one of the 15' walls, and the other 15' wall has a window dead center that I'd like to keep accessible (not going to cover it over). If I were to do an E with the back bone of the E being on the long side, I'd be hunched over anytime I moved between the peninsula and legs. And since the doorway into the room is dead center of one of the 15 foot walls, I'd have to chop one of the legs anyway just to get into the room. I'm thinking the only real way to do the benchwork is a dogbone around the walls (5x4 table on either side of the door, 3 feet wide down each wall (to compensate for the angled walls) wide corners, and at least 3 foot wide in front of the window.

I want to keep as much operation as possible, without overdoing it. I've already reduced the yard in Lithonia down to only 3 tracks (from 7) not including the passing siding, kept the three industries there (only one actual 'online' industry, the other two I can model from a distance and hide most of the actual buildings offscene, I'm thinking about doing a hidden loop in the first corner (hide with trees) and then have the track crossover itself (which will limit trainlength, something I just considered), and then have it pop back out in Covington, that way the train is 'hidden' between Lithonia and Covington, instead of the front of the train pulling 'into' Covington while the tail is just leaving Lithonia (the two towns are about 15-20 miles apart). Covington is gonna be difficult because all the industries are spaced out, but I've already reduced them down from 7 online industries, to 4 with one offsite industry. Unfortunately, Covington would be on the 15' window side, so I don't have a ton of linear space to do the storage/interchange track AND all the industries, without pushing around along the 20.5' wall. That then limits the amount of space for the small Social Circle yard, (2 tracks, mainline and passing siding), and rules out the long plate girder bridge at Alcovy Trestle road. That is one thing I DEFINITELY want to keep, but it's going to take up at least 3.5 linear feet to do it justice.

I'm kind of thinking out loud, sorry for the long post, but I think if I follow some of the suggestions and just keep 'hacking away' at the size of things, I can probably fit things a little better. Instead of a 6 car siding in Covington, like I have planned (which is down from the 30 car siding that's there on the prototype), I might be able to reduce it to 4, and cut a few inches off each industry's tracks to reduce the number of cars on each track, and thus the amount of space required.

Thanks for the suggestions, and keep 'em coming, I had a dream last night of just switching to N scale to give me more room to work, but I think I'd be much happier with myself if I just stick with HO in the long run.

We close on the house next week, and I want to get started right away, so back to the drawing board!

Jeremy

[Anonymous]

25'x15.5' is a lot of room. I am going to have a 1 foot shelf going around a room, and I am managing to fit a 30" radius curve on it. When talking to the guys at the hobby shop, they said even 22" radius was sharp, and that trains would look bad on it as well. My point is if you have so much space, you should be able, if you want, to use a larger radius curve. Another option is to base your railroad on the prototype, but edit it to your liking. The only scene that is going to be exact in my railroad is going to be my house and yard. Happy New Year,
Morgan

[Jetrock]

It sounds like a lot of us are in the same boat--I'm modeling a downtown belt line that, like orsonroy, should hopefully be recognizable to anyone who lives in that city! City modeling means a lot more emhasis on buildings--since they are scenic elements, much of the track plan has to be based around them and it's not uncommon to have the buildings at least laid out and mocked up before trackwork is complete--otherwise you might discover you have to reroute the mainline to avoid sending trains through some building's lobby!

Adapting prototype elements to model railroading is usually a matter of grossly compressing length, and then somewhat compressing width. I try to look at a scene and get a feel for its most distinctive feature, and try to replicate that, keeping in mind the original proportions and general feel rather than matching specific numbers of tracks and orientation.