i posted pics of my newly built benchwork on Friday with some good replies. Now I have another procedural question since I have never before created a layout of any kind. Here's the question: WHAT DO I DO NEXT????? Do I find a track plan (I'm too ignorant to devise my own track plan at this point.) or do I create the basic landscaping onto and into which my rr will run, or is there some other step I am not thinking of? Need some good advice on this. Thanks, Doc
Normally, you chose a track plan then build the benchwork to accomodate that plan. You could do it the other way, but you may have to design your own plan. A good place to start is with John Armstrong's "Track Planning for Realistic Operation". My benchwork came first. However, I was building a switching layout, so planning the track was fairly easy.
Doc, you need to come up with a track plan that will give you the operations that you want, and will fit on your bench work.
I kinda figured you had a track plan in mind, since you started the bench work, but no matter, you can do it this way.
You can draw right on your bench top, and plan your track work. The odds of finding an established track plan that will fit on your bench top, are going to be slim at best, so draw your own! You have levels for straight edges, curves and radius can be done with a home made compass, made from a piece of wood, with a nail in one end, and a pencil on the other, and draw something you like, and what fits.
After you have a track plan you like, then plan on the scenery, and track grade, you know, up and down any hills, across creeks, etc.
That oughta keep you busy. As your planning all of this, and drawing it, different ideas will come to mind. One bit of creativity leads to the next.
You can do this.
Mike.
My You Tube
I think building benchwork before you have any track plan is putting the cart before the horse, if you are going to do the scenery next that is putting the horse's harness in front of the cart.
You need to answer some basic questions for yourself.
What are geographic area are you modeling? Cities, rural, small town, logging, mining, desert, mountains, waterfront?
How do you want to operate your railroad. Do you just like to watch it go round and round? Do you want to do a lot of switching, maybe some of both?
Closely related is what is your railroad purpose? The recent article on the Winston Salem is what I mean. There are specific industries to be served. The Beer Line is another, different set of industries.
What time frame are you modeling? While not important for landscape, it makes a difference in the industries. There aren't any more reefer ice stations or active coaling towers if you are modeling the current era.
This website has a whole index of track plans and you would do well to read John Armstrongs book Track Planning for Realistic Operation.
Once you come up with a plan, ask for opinions here before you buy track or nail anything down. As a newbie, you will cram too much into too little space, you'll design impossibly tight turnouts, yards and run arounds that are too short or a railroad that only works in one direction.
Atlas track planning books are mentioned just to be avoided. Atlas sells track so they have way too much packed into the space available.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Hi, and a belated welcome to the forum!
Building a layout - in my experience - starts with a blending of a track plan with available space. Once those are meshed - best on a scale drawing w/o cheating - then its time to build the benchwork.
Ok, you didn't do that, and now have a benchwork space w/o a plan. Really, I think more than a few of us started out that way, so all is certainly not lost.
At this juncture, I would urge you to buy a couple of Kalmbach layout plan books. Usually there is a plethora of them on Ebay, online, or of course your local hobby shop.
You should be able to find what will suit you, at least the basics to which you can add or subtract general size, sidings, and so on.
Once you get the plan, and fall in love with it, its time to put down roadbed (I prefer cork), then lay the track, then add the wiring. Trust me on this, your time, energy, good work, and money is best spent on these phases. Take your time, and test, test, test.
When this is done, and you are happy about it, then its time for scenery, etc., etc.
ENJOY!
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
After looking at your bench work pictures again, Doc, if you want continous running, your going to have to add a 4'x4' piece to the other end of your bench, like what you have going around the basement column. You'll be able to at least fit a 22" + radius on it.
Just thinking outloud :
Now you lay track and wire,get trains running, work the bugs out...befor scenery.
I myself ,do not use any kind of track plan, I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted, and just did it. If it [my mental image] didn't fit I changed it.
If your bench work is up, you may have ahard time finding a track plan you like that will fit, but not inpossible.
If your not sure where the track is going to be; pretty hard to landscape
Was it me; i would get a hand full of flex track and run a loop along the outside edge of bench. Stick a coulpe of turn outs in whereyou think they should be. Do NOT solder or spike track at this point. Wire track, and run trains.
You will learn as you go,and while running your train, you should get a feel for what you want.
When the track police show up, just explaine that your a newbe, and some old guy told you to do it, they will let you off with a warning
I would suggest that you paint the table top now, before track ,way ezer then after track is down
At this point you are somewhat committed, but echoing the others, usually you find or come up with a track plan that fits your available space FIRST, then build the benchwork needed to support it. You are now restricted to looking for a plan that fits your benchwork, which may or may not be the best plan that fits in the space you have.
Next would be to paint the top of the benchwork in some sort of earthy brown color, something representative of the area you are trying to model. That way, any place where the scenery is sparse, it will show the brown color rather than bare wood. Sometimes you cna find something suitable on the "mistake" rack at the store, this is much less expensive than having something made up.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I suggest you look into some kind of single main line, folded dogbone. It looks like you can have a modest yard in the north part and several railserved industries in the south part of the benchwork, that bigger peninsula. However, on that north part,with a 36 inch width, it iwll be difficult to get a decent radius curve, assuming HO scale.
Bear "It's all about having fun."
OK, thanks to everyone for the help. To save time and coserve space, I'm going to try to reply to everybody in this one post, answering all questions. First off, I will be modelling an English countryside scene marking the way from Stowe-on-Cotswold to Wells. This is in a particularly beautiful part of southwestern England The Cotswolds. I will model the post WWII era in OO scale and will be modelling British trains from that era. I didn't know where to begin so I began by creating and utilizing the maximum space I could sequester in our basement, just making the bench as large as I could. I have been very fortunate to find a ready made layout plan and have copied and pasted that plan below. It is just backwards and has to be reversed but i've already taken a pencil and marked out a rough draft on the bench and it seems to fit well with a few modifications the major one being scaling down on the conglomeration of tracks on the long center portion of the layout. That is the narrowest area of my layout (2') and I will probably just fill it with countryside and 1 large estate/castle. The towns of Stowe and Wells will be on the opposite ends of the track in the loop areas. I'm really very happy with the way things have gone so far and now I think I need to:
1. order track (I don't know what kind to order...I'm thinking on this first layout I'll use the track with the pre-formed track bed and change it later to be more realistic but I don't know what brand to get and where to get it at the best price...maybe somebody could help with that.)
2. start to order major scenery structures to see how they are going to fit in the layout
3. purchase a DCCt ready train
Now, if I am missing nything or have anything out of order I hope some of you will give me some advice here because I'm just going blind. When I say I know nothing at all, i am serious...I know nothing at all so all advice/help is surely appreciated. Fellows, let me know what you think of this plan and what i need to do that I'm not thinking of. I really appreciate the help you are giving me. I'd be dead in the water without it. Doc
Home Iskar Gorge themed HO Scale Train Layout
This HO scale layout design represents parts of the Iskar Gorge near the town of Mezdra in the Western Balkans region of Bulgaria. It consists of a double main line that passes through a small train station, then crosses the Iskar river (like in the reality) several times, passes near a small village and then goes back.
Gallery 10 images
I plan to overlay the greenboard with 1' extruded foam board. Doc
Thanks, Randy. I used greenboard instead of plywood because we had 5 4 x 8 sheets of greenboard left over from re-modelling our bathrooms. I plan to overlay the greenboard with 1" extruded foam board. Doc
Mr. Slammin, I'm assuming a switching layout is an alternative to a closed loop layout but I'm not sure of much after that. Doc
Well, Henry, the purpose of the line will be passenger transport between the two towns and then on up and down the line to parts east and west. Doc
Well, Mr. Mobilman, would you recommend using flex track since this is my first layout? I had assumed the snap together track would be more for a modelling virgin like me but let me know your thinking on this. Doc
Thanks Mike for the encouraging word. I can do it if I've got good help like you and the others. Doc
Mike, I think I can get by with 18" radii for OO scale. I added a "wart" to the outside of my bench on the 36" end and I think I'll be OK with that. I'l have to build a bit of restraining structure to make sure if the train derails it won't fall to the floor. Doc
I am still of the opinion that you will not be able to run anything more than a 15" radius loop in that northern penninsula which is only 36 inches wide. At 15 inches, those long pasenger care may not be able to negotiate a loop that tight. I also dont think you can run a double track main through that 24 inch wide west side of the layout. But, I will defer to others on this forum who are more knowledgable than me.
As a fellow rookie I feel the need to tell you that you have greatly narrowed down the options you have by building the benchwork first, there is absolutely no way to double track in a 36 inch peninsula, you'll be hard pressed to do it as single track! Now if you're doing N scale yes but not HO or OO in your case. I suggest you read Armstrongs book on Track Planning for Realistic Operation it will give you more understanding of what fits. Good luck and have fun!
Steve
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!
My first two HO layouts were with sectional track. They worked out fine, but I lusted to be with the "big boys", to use flex track, KD couplers, wire in reverse loops, and the like.
No question about it, properly using flextrack requires some skill and certainly that gets better with experience. The sectional track route is a workable start, but if you end up truly "into" the hobby, there will be flextrack in your future.
Aprofitt002 you don't have to write a separate post to each of us, I usually highlight the name and then respond individually
Aprofitt002
rrinkwer
BigDaddy
I wouldn't go with track and preformed roadbed, though a lot of people do. It's more expensive, as is, it doesn't look realistic, and it's just not that hard to curve a piece of Atlas flex track and glue it down to a piece of cork roadbed, that you also curved, glued down and sanded the sharp edge off.
Let me say a word or two in favor of building the benchwork first -- which I did -- but I was using the David Barrow "domino" system of repeated 2' x 4' dominos which after constructing several I could not only physically move around the layout room like big chess pieces (or like, well, domino tiles) to give me a very tactile sense of the possible, but I also used a large scale 1" = 1' drawing (using one inch graph paper) of my layout room and 2" x 4" cardstock domino tiles to try various arrangements of how the benchwork could fit and what could be done with it. By lucky coincidence I also had a plastic commercial track planning template which was to 1" = 1 foot (no longer made I think).
Barrow's idea is that the 2 foot width creates the discipline which in turn informs the track plan - and he favors linear track plans as do I.
That is obviously different than what our friend has done which is to construct a rather traditional type of train table. But certainly there are many track plans in books which can be freely adapted to nearly any existing "train table" arrangement.
Dave Nelson
OK, I seem not to be understanding the matter of curvature. It would seem that board that is 36" wide ought to accept a curve with an 18" radius. Admittedly, the rails would come up right next to the edge of the 36" bench but shouldn't it work??? Doc
Well, NWP SWP, You make the same point made above by Bearman. I trust both yours and his judgement and know you must be correct...This would mean that I need to ditch the layout plan I have and go in another direction and Armstrong's book sounds like the place to go. I'll see if I can pick one up on Amazon tonight. Doc
Thanks Tex...I'm sure you are right...it's just that I'm a little wary of using flex in my first attempt at things. Doc
Big 'un, I've wavered back and forth on which track to use...just one of the unfortunate circumstances of never having any experience at all with either. Doc
I'm going to get Armstrong's book and recalibrate. I can't (or won't) tear down my bench but surely I can find an acceptable layout track design that will fit. I'll try to keep everyone posted to my progress in revising track plans. Doc
aprofitt0002 I seem not to be understanding the matter of curvature. It would seem that board that is 36" wide ought to accept a curve with an 18" radius.
The radius is determined from the mid-point between the rails, so the inner rail will be a little less than an 18 inch radius, and the outer rail will be slightly more. So an 18 inch radius curve, or 36 inch diameter, will slightly over hang your 36 inch wide table by 1/2 track width on each side.
Steven and all...I just ordered Armstrong's book...should be here late this week. I'll have to recalibrate, read the book, and then get back with everyone on this. Doc