hi Jim,
two plans for you. One loop to loop with staging, the other a double oval without. The first one would be my choice, though i would use the 72 ft ConCor coaches for my passenger trains.
The double track oval has all turnouts at the front, so it can be operated also when it is not away from the wall.
When running longer cars the 2,25" spacing will not be sufficient.
Having one or two trains out of sight is something you will love in the future. It will give you time to do some switching along the main. It gives the impression your trains are really going someplace. The visible yard is used for exchanging cars between the local and the mainline.
Smile
Paul
Paul,
I like both of your designs. Any chance of getting them in another format other than bitmap? I can't enlarge them to see the grades without the picture becoming distorted. Eyes aren't what they used to be.
Thanks for your efforts
Jim
I want to thank everyone again for giving me some insight into layouts. I've been playing around with XtrackCAD and though I'm learning a little at a time, I still have a long way to go. I'm getting the hang of adding track and turnouts but haven't made much progress in actually coming up with an operable design but it's still an interesting learning experience. I've got my double mainline around the layout but haven't figured out the crossovers yet. The third inner track was an experiment in loops and industry rails. Not very operable but at least I can get a train all the way around. I know there are many problems with this version (once a train is run through the loop I can't get it back to where it started). At least I'm getting a better look at what I want in my layout, the double main for one, and then I'll need to figure out the yard location and size and how to fit it in. Although staging would be nice, I don't think I'll worry about that for a while. Probably going to stay away from any elevation this time around. This is definitely more complicated that I thought it would be but what's life without any challenges.
Thanks again for looking - Jim
http://mytrainlayout.shutterfly.com/pictures/29
Getting the basics of XtrackCAD. Here's what I've come up with for my HO layout. Could use some finessing. Does this look like it will work? I'll plan a staging area off the lower right corner in the future.
http://mytrainlayout.shutterfly.com/pictures/32
Thanks for looking - Jim
I've been watching- and I actually think you've come a long way on the whole computer design concept in a very short time. Glad to see that you stuck with it.
I'll let the experts here comment on the layout design but I think you are getting close to what you are looking for. Elevations and complex terrain are fun to model, but agree they do complicate things. You should be able to get up and running long before I finish with my phase 1!
Huntington Junction - Freelance based on the B&O and C&O in coal country before the merger... doing it my way. Now working on phase 3. - Walt
For photos and more: http://www.wkhobbies.com/model-railroad/
Walt
Thanks for the encouragement, it's been a difficult learning process but kind of fun at the same time. I'm hoping to just get a close blueprint idea and adjust it as I go along with the flex track. I'm getting to where I want to be but I know the folks here know better ways to improve function and form. This forum has been a great help. Plenty of information and helpful people. Good luck on your layout.
One of the best parts about the program is that it is exactly scale so it won't let you "cheat". Suggest that you be careful about being creative with the flex track on the fly. I think that works OK for the guys with the big expansive layouts with plenty of room, but when working on a small layout its easy to get overly tight radius curves by accident (been there, done that, NOT going to do it again). One of the best things I did was transfer my plan directly to the layout with printed pages and carbon paper. Took all of the question out of it.
Since you haven't got any other responses yet, I think your plan operationally is better than mine. But my goal is different (more about modeling, and if it takes years to complete that's OK.) Looked for potential trouble spots and to my relatively untrained eye everything looks good. Make sure to use gentle turnouts for the crossovers between your mainlines since those produce a natural S-curve and I am sure you will want your all of your cars to go through easily without uncoupling. Also remember to give yourself a little extra spacing on parallel tracks around curves to make sure long cars will have enough clearance.