Layouts and layout building

 toughen up, things will get better. it all takes time.

now about your model railroad.  my entire basement layout is done in the "urban grunge" theme.  i have never enjoyed making trees etc. so my railroad's neighbors are other railroads (as in E St Louis) and factory buildings.  my walls are lined with walls and instead of pastoral scenery, i have streets and sidewalks.

justification for this idea came from two sources.  when i first went to work on the old Big Four at Brooklyn Illinois, we had to climb through the Wabash yard to get to our yard and across the main line was the GM&O yard.  at least four other railroads used our main line.   second source was my first train ride from Philly to New York.  almost a hundred miles and we were never out of town.  every time i looked out the window all i could see was the back side of a building with an occasional street or highway.

grizlump

 Found another interesting one - from the Carendt site. Switching urban layout with elvated mainline at front of layout, looking down over the front structures for the switching.

  Original can be viewed here: http://www.carendt.com/scrapbook/page62/index.html

  An adaptation to 8 1/2 foot long with 2 feet cassettes and 30" deep (little deeper than the 24" you wanted):

  Allows you to have a mainline train arrived on the elevated rail, run around its cars and shove the cars "onto a car float" or "into a siding" or some such thing (ie onto cassette).

 Then move the cassette down to the switching area at the bottom rear, and have a smaller switcher come out and start grabbing outbound cars and inbound cars and do it's thing.

 Smile,
 Stein

 Stein,

 I took your idea and transformed it into using Atlas Code 83 track and no.6 turnouts. Another step in the right direction.

 Here it is:

A suggestion to MR´s staff - why don´t you run a series or even make a book about "scenic" shelf switchers? Not all of us have the space (and the money) to build one 0f those 15´by 30´ or even bigger layouts, filling an entire basement.

The do have a book out about Shelf Layouts. It is written by Iain Rice. It doesn't have too many layout plans but does discuss the theory and a lot of options in building a shelf layout. I found it very useful as I try to design my first shelf layout. Good luck with everything.

Hey Ulrich

I'm so sorry you are having problems.  The economy is hitting a lot of us hard.  It seems everyone, except retires, is effected by the downturn now.

The pier front switching layout you are working on looks like a good fit.  I have several variations of a pier front I've done myself.  The advantage of a pier front layout is you can use short wheelbase switchers which handle R18" well.  So you can get away with #4 turnouts if you want.  (Providing you don't have anything over 50'->55' scale feet cargo wise)

tcf511:

The do have a book out about Shelf Layouts. It is written by Iain Rice. It doesn't have too many layout plans but does discuss the theory and a lot of options in building a shelf layout. I found it very useful as I try to design my first shelf layout. Good luck with everything.

... was delivered to me last week - a good book for those who have not yet built a shelf layout. Could have more track plan examples, for my taste.

Sir Madog:

 Stein,

 I took your idea and transformed it into using Atlas Code 83 track and no.6 turnouts. Another step in the right direction.

 Here it is:

 

 Looks good to me! 

A suggestion to MR´s staff - why don´t you run a series or even make a book about "scenic" shelf switchers? Not all of us have the space (and the money) to build one 0f those 15´by 30´ or even bigger layouts, filling an entire basement.

 Well, they have several books which show small shelf switching layouts. Several (most) issues of Model Railroad Planning has shelf switching layouts.

 MRP 2006 has Ian Rice on sectional shelf layouts and Mike Aufterderheide's "Modeling the Monon's Hoosier Hub", Linda Sand's excellent "Industrial Railroad on a shelf"and an excellent article by David Barrow: "From model railroad to railroad model" where he shows a linear shelf layout based on LDEs, and a scene (Elevator A) from Chuch Hitchcock's Argentine Industrial District Railway

 MRP 2005 e.g. has Scot Osterweil's adaptation of Linn Westcott's Switchman's Neightmare and Byron Henderson's Alameda Belt Line

MRP 2004 has en interesting plan based on Long Island's Oyster Bay Branch and a 4x8 Illinois Midland model railroad improved by turning it into an L shaped shelf layout

MRP 2003 was a theme issues - with 9 bookcase layout (small shelf layouts that would fit on top of a bookcase): including Bernie Kempinski's New York Cross Harbor and two good plans by forum regular Dave Husman, plus some ideas by Tony Koester on how to model big industries on small shelves.

 Most issues of MRP has some good shelf plans in addition to bigger plans.  This was just a random selection of four issues from the pile next to my computer.

 Smile,
 Stein

DigitalGriffin:

It seems everyone, except retires, is effected by the downturn now.

What makes you think that retirees are exceptions to the rule?  Have you noticed the stock market and/or interest rates and/or home prices during the recent economic disaster?  And remember that retirees don't have the time to recover that younger folks do.  We all are being hit hard, some obviously and tragically harder than others.

Dante

 I know we should not get political in this forum, but this financial crisis is affecting all of us, whereever we are in the world. Our hobby is also affected, with more and more companies filing insolvency or just going out of business. Marklin/Trix/LGB and Mehano are only the more spectacular cases. It is not only a credit crunch anymore - it is a desease which may impose a threat to many a democracy all over the world - also Germany! We will have general elections in September and I expect a tremendous gain in votes for both the socialistic "Left" party as well as ... (expletive, deleted) "national Rights".

I am woriied!

Stein,

you are a fountain of information!

Unfortunately I do not have the "change" anylonger to purchase those issues of MRP you mentioned 

 i know what you mean, Ulrich.  i don't want to get too political either but the way things are going, the whole country could find itself in a fuhrer, oops, i meant furor.

grizlump

Sir Madog:

Stein,

you are a fountain of information!

Unfortunately I do not have the "change" any longer to purchase those issues of MRP you mentioned 

 Then again - look on the bright side - if Kalmbach had published a series of books with shelf plans only (as I think you suggested), those books would have been about three times the price of an back issue of MRP, and would have been even further away from being affordable.

 And having the old MRPs, it is quick to summarize ideas from such track plans. E.g. Linda Sand's 1 x 8 foot layout from MRP 2006 looked roughly like this (my interpretation of her plan, not a photo copy of the plan):

 Some ideas of making such a small plan more interesting operationally - some mentioned by Sand in the accompanying article in the 2006 MRP, some mentioned by her (and others) in other articles elsewhere:

 Modeling _one_ larger industry with multiple car spots makes for a more interesting flow of traffic than modelling four or five tiny industries that take one boxcar each - and will spend three weeks using up the stuff inside that one boxcar.

 Here there is not a lot of structure to build - two or three flats along the back track, two or three chemical tanks (or trackside pumps) and a shipping building at the front left. But you can build those background structures big - say 4 stories big. Plenty of space to make them seem like a part of a big plant.

 You got three  little bridges over a creek here. One built for the in-plant switch lead. One built for one railroad (in Linda's article Wisconsin Central) main. One build for an interchange track from another railroad (in Linda's article C&NW, later UP). Can be built in totally different styles, with totally different balast colors and styles.

 You can have the crossing of the two railroads over in the front right corner, and scratchbuild a small tower in a suitable style.

  This plan has 10-11 car spots - I've labelled them R1 and R2 (for receiving spot 1 and 2), P1 and P2 (for powerhouse spot 1 and 2), W1 and W2 (for Wood unloading spots 1 and 2), C1 and C2 (chemical spot 1 and 2), S1 and S2 for shipping spot 1 and spot 2 and T1 for "Team track" spot 1.

 You can add all kinds of interesting rules - like "Kaolin sludge in covered hoppers must be delivered to R2, where they can be unloaded into a tank truck". Or "road must not be blocked more than 15 minutes at a time, to allow town emergency vehicles access to houses on the other side of the WC main". Or "Old WC main between the interchange track and the old C&NW/WC tower can be used for temporary storage of cars".

 It would even be possible to have an engine from the railroad the plant is located along take the cars from the interchange track and shove them into the plant, where the plant switcher takes over, thus modeling two railroads (within-plant RR and class 1 RR) in this tiny amount of space.Of so, you could drop the in-plant runaround.

 Or you can just allow the plant switcher trackage rights on the main over to the interchange track.

 Lots of options packed into a small layout, isn't it ? 

 Smile,
 Stein

 The deeper I dig into the subject of small shelf-type switching layouts, the more I start to like them. They are a challenge to design, to build and to operate - may be even a little more, than bigger layouts. Is that the reason they are so popular in the UK?

Anyway, I am still collecting ideas...

 Did some finetuning work on my favorit plan - the fictious Milwaukee Fed Str. Yard. Unless I come up with something better, this will be it...

Found a way to squeeze out the extra couple of feet of space needed, but this is the max now SWMBO will allocate to me.

Sir Madog:

 Did some finetuning work on my favorit plan - the fictious Milwaukee Fed Str. Yard. Unless I come up with something better, this will be it...

 

Found a way to squeeze out the extra couple of feet of space needed, but this is the max now SWMBO will allocate to me.

 

  Well, if that's the one you like the best, that's the one you like best.

  I don't think I would have picked that one if I was picking a design for myself. Track plan creates too convoluted moves for my taste when it comes to switching - there seems to be very few moves that can be done in an easy way from the yard tracks to to the industries or the other way around.

 Anyways - what are your favorite features from this plan? 

Smile,
Stein