HHPATH56-
Nicholas has been able to manage the 7 turnouts we have on the current layout. he has been running trains on it for almost 3 yrs now. so I am not too worried with this design.
the track is all level, the landscape on the country side will rise up and the farm will be on the hill. I thought of what you mention, having a track go under the hill and into the city but I wasnt able to agree with where it was coming out.
I didnt think I was going to have any shorting with the layout of the turout tracks, other than the turn table, I didnt think I had any reversing loops in there. can you tell me what you mean?
the 3way is there because, well I have one, and it also provided me with two storage tracks one on each side of the round house and at the same time continues to the round house. this will allow me to have a place to store nicholas' passenger cars, 3 70' cars and a place to store maggie's passenger cars, 3 40' cars that get pulled by her K-4. she doesnt run often so having a place to keep them is key.
what is the angle degree on a peco double slip? is it 19.5? or something else? the atlas program I used for this does not have peco in the list, so I would substitue a 19.5 degree crossing for a double slip if they use the same angle. I have found that the atlas #4 turnout is the same as the peco medium so i am able to use the #4 for the design. i was suprised when I printed a #4 out of this app at 1:1 scale and placed the peco medium on it, it fit in the lines perfectly.
Kevin
Again, good points.
ereimer-
I have this layout designed the way it is so that one side, the side that will be out into the room, the country side is very uncomplicated. this way trains can be just watched as they roll through, the city side is where I will spend most of my time and nicholas too i suppose. but I see him walking around as the train travels.
I do hear you wit the around the wall idea. it would be much easier to scenic too. I guess I will revisit that plan before any bench work is done. it is pretty simple too, but it has several turnouts that create a staging/storage area and thats where the $ started adding up. that layout plan does not have a roundhouse.
it looks like a good plan , and the suggestions others have made will make it even better . but i have to wonder if a better solution wouldn't be to use the full around-the-room space you have (9x7?) but design a less complicated trackplan to fit it . you don't need to use dozens of turnouts just because you have the space , trains look very realistic running through fairly empty country between towns .
ernie
Autobus Prime-
Those are some interesting ideas...
The deal with the farm is, it has to stay. its the wife's request. the part with farm is actually up on a hill. and the land overlooks the two main lines. then the main lines actually go into a tunnel as it passes from the country to the city. thats what that green lines were trying to represent.
the idea of the mine isnt a bad one too...I could have that track go "underground" as it enters the hill the farm is on. I will think that one over.
the round house. I know it takes up a great deal of room. the son likes the idea of it, and I already have one built up and I have a atlas turntable in preperation of this layout. the round house I have is small, its only 7" deep and 7" wide at the entrance and 10" at the back. all the engines will stick out no matter what. unless I extend the back with sheds, which was a plan. I will mess around though and see how it looks. one thing that could be done if it was eliminated is I would be able to get to a 9x4, and that would make the building process easier as its closer to the standard 4x8 sheets of foam.
thanks for the ideas.
anyone see a major problem with using sectional and soldering them? I had issues with flex and the process I used for laying, i ended up pinching a curve too tight somehow in my last layout. I was thinking of the sectionals in order to keep myself from having that kind of thing happen again.
The thought process and practical learning experiences for the evolution of any layout are always interesting to read. Yes, I have a similar story about my son's layout. Unfortunately it has been over 10 years now and I am certain I only remember the most gross details of how it came about. Similarly it would probably take a couple hours to write it out in a prose that could be easily read and understood.
The design and transformation took and entire summer, and even then there was an immediate change to add a "run around" track out on the main line. The story there is that one can plan forever and still overlook something significant. Overall though, I am still pleased with the design and two people can still go down and play with it for hours without becoming saturated.
Comments about your layout. 1. Nothing says the divider between the city and country has to divide the board evenly, go straight across the board (angled), or even has to be straight (curved backdrops can look less contrived.).2. I think I would try to straighten the industrial tracks in the city a little more. Coupling cars on curves can be tricky to impossible.3. Almost the opposite for the country side. Maybe curve the industrial track to run back to and then parallel with the backdrop divider. That would add some capacity. For that matter you could even run it through the divider and hide the tracks with a factory on the city side.4. Do you really want a 3-way switch? They can be confusing for even experienced "older" people. What is the top most track from that turnout for anyway? 5. You realize the top most factory track (left) is a double switch back? Not really a problem just a bit unusual and one has to leave enough space empty on both the tails of the switchback to get at least a loco (and preferably one car) through to it.
the exchangable buildings idea is a great one. I will use that.
Well I can offer up a solution to keep the town interesting, I'm about to start my 3rd layout and one of the things that I found was that I get board with the stagnant look of my town after only a few weeks so I'm going to make all my building lots with the same shape and size foot print so that I can make new ones and rearrange them when I'm board, I just pick one up, building, yard and all and replace it like big puzzle pieces, I'm starting a collection of interchangeable lots.
The things that will remain the same is the tracks and streets of course and the telepoles, trees and bushes not on the individual lots, in the end it will look like any normal layout but with the abaility to change its look and function as I see fit.
good luck and have fun above all.
Jess Red Horse of the "Hard too please" Tribe!
Ok, so I am considering starting on a second layout for my son and I. the first was an attempt to get him and I into the hobby. well, we outgrew it quite fast, actually even before it was finished.
So, after looking at the reasons why we dont use the layout, we came up with a few reasons.
1. only one town, stuff comes and goes, but there is no feeling of delivery of either people or goods.
2. only one main line. limits how many trains can run at once without issues.
3. feels small. it started out as a 4x8 and then grew into a 4.5x9 with on section of line going behind a wall to hide the train as it "went to a different town". although this seemed to work for a while, it just didnt as a train could not be allowed to go out there and stopped for a long time without a second train needing to use the same route. again due to a single main line. a second train could keep running, but it never leaves the one town on the layout.
So, to fix this I came up with a wicked nice layout design, problem is it needs a lot of room. and well, I am not allowed to have the room needed. So I designed a 9'x7' hollow center layout, it uses just a tiny bit more room than the current 4.5x9 does once you consider how much room we use when we stand in front of the current layout. problem came with this 9x7 is there were a ton of turnouts and reach became a problem. I really need to keep reach minimum as Nicholas is only 7 still. we use manual hand throws. we find it makes operations better as we are constatnly needing to make sure the turout is the right way where as with electric, we might forget and cause problems. is a personal preference and seems to be working great so far. other issue is that with the large amount of turnouts, and the fact that I am not going to use non peco turnouts, there was a lot of $ that would be needed...$200 almost just in turnouts. I dont have that much to put to just turnouts.
So, the 9x7 has been scrapped.
I have a 9x4'8" layout that I have designed, its not a hollow center, but it has a full length partition. so on one side is the "country" and the other side is the "city" Now with it being two sidded we will need more room to be standing on both sides. so when in use the layout takes up 9'x6'8" pretty much the same as the 9x7. But the advantage to this layout is I can push it up against the wall when not in use. casters will be a savior here. Plus this layout has a lot less turnouts. in fact I will only need to purchase 3 lefts and 1 right. not bad since i have the rest already.
So here is the design:
ok, so its using 22" radi on the outter loop and a mix of 22 and 18" radi on the inner.. the inner will be the freight line, the outter the passenger line. we will be able to run the two trains in opposite directions with no issues, and a 3rd engine can be snuck in there somehow. we have 2 factories on the city side to bring supplies to the country town, and we have a place on the country to have a quarry and logging(both hidden but used by the siding in the country) so logs and stones can be brought back to the city to the "sticks 'n stones" company. we can also bring fresh food from the country's farm to the city. so we now have freight being taken and dropped and new freight being picked up and brought back. passenger service will run between the two towns. the passenger engine will run counter clock wise so when the engine stopps at the stations, the front of the train is not sticking out the other side of the partition. I have just enough storage for the cars we have, we dont have much, we are not talking 60 car freight lines nor are we talking more than 3 70' car passenger service, the last layout limited what we could run, so we just dont have the stock.
At first glance, the layout looks limited, but after considering how we seem to run trains, we dont run for more than say 45min at a time. so we dont really need a huge around the wall layout that I was designing. although it looked nice in the design, we really dont need it. this layout seems to tackle the shortcomings from the last layout without making the layout much larger. when pushed against the wall, it will only be 1" deeper than the current. Also, I can redo my track laying, wich I found there are several issues from the last one, I messed up pretty good and my wife's K-4 derails every time when coming into the turnouts. I need to have the layout run well this time. with that I think I will stick with sectional track and solder the joints so I know I have good allignment. there are sections of flex in there, but they are yard lines.
Ok, so enough rambling. this was a much longer post than I planned. took my whole lunch period. I am just wondering if anyone has been able to realize their desires in a layout that would normally seem limiting.