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Model Railroad Design Theory 101
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I have Malcom Furlow's "San Juan Central" book actually. Beautiful work. Tried to ebay it because I heard one went for $175, and I read through it 10,000 times already on a trip halfway accross the country as a kid. No such luck with mine on ebay. <br /> <br />Spacemouse: I have Track Planning for Realistic Operation or whatever it's called. It's pretty good, but slightly dated. <br /> <br />101 track plans - DA-TED. Man, as someone said above, I don't know why MR still publishes that thing. I want to unload mine on someone, but would almost feel irresponsible giving it to someone else! (No offense to anyone, trying to be funny here too - but it is a book of 101 "spaghetti-bowl" layouts). They're actually quite amusing, and they satisfy what I liked in Model railroads as a kid - trying to figure out where the train would pop out next. This is in opposition to the current trends - the train is clearly going from here to there in a very logical manner. Again, I'm sure they were very fine layouts at the time. It's just interesting how contradictory many of the track plans are to the trends that seem engrained by the guys writing in MR. <br /> <br />For some current up-to-date design materials, Seriously, I say find Joe Fugate's thread on layout design on our very own favorite model railroader forum! He had really good info in there about lengths of sidings in relation to car lengths, train lengths, etc. I don't remember everything he said, but it sure got me thinking about that stuff - can't think about desiging even a small shelf layout without thinking about a lot of the stuff he said - very cool. <br /> <br />I like David Barrow's articles in MR also - he's into linear designs - no U-turns on his layouts, that's for sure. I'm probably such a huge fan of all of his stuff because his previous layout - Cat Mountain & Santa Fe just blew me away when it was in MR in 1990 or so - very linear design. His layout was quite big, but the simplicity of it and realism was so convincing. <br /> <br />People mentioned Iian Rice - I have his "Small Smart & Practical Track Plans" and I totally dig it. Although none of the track plans were perfect for me, his overall philosophy happens to suit me well at this stage in life - small, portable layouts. <br /> <br />Lastly, what I plan on doing with my layout design is posting it on here and asking for some feedback (tried once, didn't get much feedback, but I've changed it since then anyway). <br /> <br />There is a lot of good stuff out there from the guys who are standing on the shoulders of Linn Westcott and John Allen, know what I mean?
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