Track plan advice

[trainguy4466]

I've been working on my plans for a potential shelf layout that I would like to build, and I thought I'd come to the forums in order to gain some advice from others on things I should change, add, etc. I am modelling the port of Morehead City in North Carolina in HO scale as it is currently. This is a fairly interesting little operation. Norfolk southern brings trains in on its line from New Bern, and switching is handled by the Carolina Coastal Railway and their GP10 that resides at the port. The layout is to be built in a dormer in a bedroom, with the left side of the plan facing out into the room. Removable cassettes will be used for staging so I can essentially only have staging up when it's needed. This cassette will stick out into the room and be removed when not in use, thus letting me use the whole dormer for the layout. My big issue is that the plan is much too big for the dormer. With the dormer being 3 feet wide and 10 feet long there just isn't room. My question is whether or not it would be possible to reasonably compress the plan any more than I already have to allow it to fit. Otherwise I'll probably end up building it in a shed behind our house in less than ideal conditons. I'd also like to hear your take on the plan itself, and anything you'd add or take away.

This is the prototype location. as you can see, it's rather large with quite a few yard tracks and industries

And this is the latest incarnation of the track plan. I've roughed in buildings to show where they would go and get a general idea of how the plan will be layed out. As I said, if I can make the plan any smaller or narrower without taking away from it, I'd be able to fit the plan into my dormer. Any advice?

[rrinker]

 At first glance, the top-most passing siding seems to serve no real purpose for switching those industries, there are plenty of runaround opportunities afforded by the other sidings and the main, so you mihgt consider elminating that. That would make it slightly narrower. Also if you moved the building labeled "Office" more to the left and closer to the tracks, you could also move up the warehouse, and flatten out those sidings some, to make it narrower. The switching moves and track capacities would be the same, just trading width for a bit of length.

                 --Randy

 

[CTValleyRR]

The obvious suggestion when you're dealing with very limited space would be to switch to N scale.

Assuming that you can't or won't, I'll second Randy's advice about eliminating the top-most yard track. Push the office and the lower left track in tighter. Eliminate the X crossover and put in another turnout facing the opposite direction on the track by the water tank, so that you reach the warehouse with a switchback move, and have the track parallel the warehouse instead of butting into it. Rotate the tank car loading area and woodchip loading to parallel the mainline, and you can probably get your layout down to between 15-18" wide. Stil tight, but manageable.