What should I include in my track plan?

[UPJohn]

I have part of a 20x20ft garage to build an n scale layout in but i cant seem to come up with a good track plan. I want to be able to run long trains and have a decent sized yard but am confused about where to place it and various industries in the track plan. Ive drawn some plans but they dont appear like they will provide realistic operation so i need some suggestions. [?]

[UPJohn]

i would also like some suggestions on keeping the garage warm in the winter and keeping bugs and mice away from it.

[Bikerdad]

For keeping the garage warm, I'd suggest hopping over to www.woodcentral.com or www.sawmillcreek.org and asking. Them thar woodworkers spend an inordinate amount of time worryin'bout being warm, so they've come up with a lot of solutions. Ditto for bugs and mice.

How much of the garage do you actually have? Can you do multiple levels? Are you willing to start small, and then add-on or expand the layout later, rather than building the MOAL (Mother Of All Layouts) first time out the gate?

[UPJohn]

I was planning on using half of the garage to start out and expand later. And i would also like to use multiple levels. I have built and worked on some small layouts in the past.

[UPJohn]

I would really like to incorporate a yard and a big stretch of mainline to watch the trains run. but i also want some industries too

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Bikerdad

For keeping the garage warm, I'd suggest hopping over to www.woodcentral.com or www.sawmillcreek.org and asking.

I stumbled on the sawmillcreek.org site the other day while researcing some laser cutting equipment. It's a great site for woodworkers of all varieties. Spent too much time there that should have been spent working.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

Other than heat & cold, humidity & dust may be your biggest issues. The most obvious solution, if you are going to be driving a car in and out of one side of the garage is to partition off the railroad half, providing it with it's own door and preferably, a window also. Insulate the ceiling & hang sheetrock there if there are exposed rafters. This will go a long way to keeping the dust down, the insects out & in general, give you a tidy room to build your layout.

If the RR half has its own overhead door, I would frame a wall against the closed overhead door, insulate it & hang some sheetrock. Leave the overhead doors in place. From the outside nothing will change & it won't attract the attention of nosy neighbors, building inspectors and tax assessors, all who will want to know, as Tom Waits asked in his song, "What's he building in there?"

An electric heating unit, hard wired with a thermostat is probably your fastest, cheapest & cleanest way of getting a heating system into the space. Probably the most expensive to operate, though. A small room air-conditioner mounted in that window I mentioned will help you keep your cool on those sweltering NJ days I remember so well.

Plan carefully, both track & the partition wall if you build it, so expanding into the other half of the garage is no more painful than deciding the Hummer will live outside. If you build the partition as large panels that can be separated by unbolting them with only a minimum of sheetrock cutting, you can reuse them when you expand, or at worst, remove them without covering everything in demolition dust.

Track planning is such an individual/preference oriented task that is hard to know where to begin. A multi-level layout would require a helix or a natural "ramping" up. A helix does seem to give more linear feet of mainline. I would suggest first making a list of the industries you are interested in modeling, and arrange them in a logical order along the mainline. Iron mine -> furnace -> ore dock for example. Or Logging camp -> sawmill ->papermill -> interchange. Life isn't always this tidy and industries aren't always laid out in a logical order along the tracks but it can be in your world and if it makes switching & operations easy yet interesting so be it.

A multi-level layout with a helix would suggest a point to point configuration, possibly with an interchange at one end & your big yard at the other. In a two level layout, the starting & end points could conceivably be above & below each other. If this is what you build, it might help to locate the helix at a point where you might logically expand into the other half of the garage in the future. To that end, I'd suggest making the helix easily removable from the mainline. When you remove the partition, or a portion of it, you detach the helix, move it into the new space and extend the mainlines on both levels to reach its new location. This way, your expansion doesn't disturb your existing benchwork or scenery or disrupt the operation scheme you've perfected. You've only added distance & new opportunities to the run.

I love planning! No wonder I hardly ever get anything built for myself. What I'd give for that space. The Hummer would be out of there so fast it would make your head spin!

Wayne

[UPJohn]

Thanks a lot. Now ive started to draw up some plans that are based on operation and seem a lot better than before.

[turbine682]

Hi,

To START with...

I highly recommend the books 101 Track Plans (Linn Wescott) for Model Railroaders, Track Planning for Realistic Operations (John Armstrong), How to Build Railroad Benchwork (Linn Wescott) and Basic Model Railroad (Jeff Wilson)

1) Benchwork references speak for themselves
2) Armstrong provides a great deal of info explaining different facets of railroading and why railroads build the way they do, e.g., mainline, yards, terminals, sidings, spurs, etc.
3) 101 Track Plans speaks for itself. All plans are in HO, but dimensions and calcs are provided to convert to any scale.

I would recommend working a small plan (that allows for expansion into 1 of the larger plans.... blah, blah, blah. For example, I like plan # 75 which is a switch-back operation. Approx size in N Scale is 2 1/2 ' X 7 1/2'. I have considered extending the ML to incorporate a temporary WYE shown as part of plan #98.

The key thing is to get trains running (don't short-cut) so you can enjoy some operations while you add scenary, structures, details. Big-bang railroading sometimes leaves modelers frustrated with nothing ever completed. You can always expand a smaller railroad if you plan for it.

Key things to include in any track plan:
1. Reasonable mainline with passing sidings
2. Any yard should have at least 1 run-around so engines can drop a cut of cars then be able to run-around the cut to get to the other end of the cut.
3. Spur or interchange that you can expand from

Think of the purpose of your railroad. What goods does it move? Industries served? Any maritime opertions? Intermodal? What era? The list goes on, but is essential for planning.

Good luck...

--Ed

[scottlamers]

For garage heaters there are some really nice natural gas heaters out there designed for that use. I have a 4+ stall garage that I wanted to heat in the Wisconsin winter for doing woodworking and holding craft sales. They put in a 100,000 BTU Reznor heater. It can warm up the garage from 40 degrees F to 70 degrees in an hour or so.

Make sure you have insulated garage doors, insulate your walls and insulate the ceiling (or as the heating contractor put it - the outside of your house will be like a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer day - wet!)

It has a big fan (electric) that works with a thermostat to keep the place warm. The fan is a little strong - so you would want to make sure you appropriate direct the airflow. Its a bit noisy, but not bad for the garage. Other than that - I love it.

[claycts]

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! Design in some FUN! That has a habit of going away if the project takes to long or if the project gets a life of it's own. FUN is the part of the hobby you enjoy! Whatever that maybe design it into you layout! Remeber this is a hobby and it is supposed to be FUN! My FUN is on hold till next November due to the show season but I have some FUN just looking at my design and tweak it no and them. Maybe this will be the year I can do some actual construction but the FUN of the hobby is still there.

[BRJN]

Try putting that yard along the long wall of the garage. (Saying the obvious.)

I have found from research that a box-making company will be able to ship boxes to almost every other company on the layout. Such a factory should be within easy reach as it will be busy. OTOH, an industry that rarely needs a car (maple-syrup distiller?) can be back against the wall, or at the end of a shared spur.

I concur in the advice to read books. Try building a few small temporary pikes to see what you do / do not want. Maybe a 4x8 on 6 legs, later you can make it into 2 2x8s and put them together lengthwise for part of the yard.

[Anonymous]

Think about the layout in sections. Possibly as several feet by several feet organized into towns. Each town can have a group of industry. The yard can then have a long track for each town so the locals can just grab the town's cars and go.

A nice mainline with some run is a must because you keep expressing a desire for trains.

The main does not have to visit all of the towns one after another. They can leave the yard and go thru one town and take off cross country until it hits the next town.

At the last town on the line maybe you can think about how you would like to return to the yard. You can simply disappear under the layout or behind a long backdrop and have a staging track for entire trains to sit waiting for it's turn onto your "stage"

These trains can represent "the rest of the world" bringing in materials for your industry that you dont have room for.

My example was to use a tug and barge to carry loads to a steel mill, coal/ore dock and a number of other industries on the "other side" of the harbor. This removes the need to build space eating industries and creates a place of action that is likely to keep you or a crew man busy for an hour or so.

Use several different types of towns that depend on each other's industries for commerce. Try to keep it rather simple or you may find yourself constantly tending the industrys in local switching while the through or inbound trains may get neglected.

Think about the potential for these industries to have enough siding room about equal to the yard's capacity. Eventually you will understand just how big you are able to go and still feel that you can get a day's work done with each of the towns.

Example: Town with a Factory, Cold Storage and a Cattle yards

The Factory may hold 4 boxcars at a time, the cold storage 7 reefers and the cattle yard can either rest and water live stock in transit or be a part of a suggested Meat slaughter house. Let's say you can fit 6 stock cars in this cattle yard.

We have just assigned a total of 17 cars to that town. Assuming 40 foot cars, your assigned yard track for the local that services just this one town can be about 9 feet long in HO scale.

Puts that large yard into perspective doesnt it?

We never are going to have room for everything so if you allow your central yard to service a group of towns; each town with it's set of industry you will quickly understand just how much "railroad" you are willing to put up with.