To all the individuals contributed to my post, thank you very much!
Wyatt
to the forum Your posts are delayed for a while in moderation. If you have no Russian brides to sell us, you are in.
With imgur, if you copy the BB code, we can see the photo in the forum (control C Control V, don't use any icons)
I'm not the layout guy, but is there access into the center of the layout.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
I like that yard and terminal plan, looks good.
Yes, it would be nice to understand how the benchwork is configured.
Sheldon
Henry,
Thanks for posting my post and the Imgur suggestion.
Sheldon,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on my post and for the compliment. The benchwork will be 1 x 4 open grid, 3/4 subroadbed.
After a few posts your contributions will not be delayed my the moderators any longer. Please stick around with us.
That looks like an excellent yard/engine terminal arrangement. I have the same questions Henry and Sheldon had about benchwork and access.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Hi Wyatt,
Overall the yard looks great. However, I suggest that you give some consideration to a couple of things:
The first is the lengths of the yard leads. Ideally your yard leads (the tracks that you move your trains onto to allow them to be switched from one yard track to another) should be at least as long as your longest yard track. Your current yard leads are not quite that long. The solution is simple in your case. All you need to do is move the turnouts that are on the ends of the yard leads further along the mainline away from the yard. You can get away with the shorter yard leads as they exist, but that means that you might have to move a long outbound train onto the departure track in two pieces, or fowl the mainline with the long trains. If you don't plan on running long trains then there isn't an issue with the way you have planned the yard.
The second potential issue is the reach in distance to the center of the yard. Even assuming that you can access the yard from both sides, by the time you add in a few inches of benchwork on either side, the center of the yard will be difficult to reach while standing in the aisles. I made that mistake in a couple of spots when I designed my old club's new layout a couple of years ago. The result was that the members had to climb up onto the layout to install the track. If you are willing to do that then the problem sort of goes away, but climbing onto the layout is very uncomfortable and potentially damaging. However, once things are done, it won't have to happen very often. Recognize that you probably won't to be able to manually uncouple cars in the middle of the yard.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
hon30critter The second potential issue is the reach in distance to the center of the yard. Even assuming that you can access the yard from both sides, by the time you add in a few inches of benchwork on either side, the center of the yard will be difficult to reach while standing in the aisles.
The second potential issue is the reach in distance to the center of the yard. Even assuming that you can access the yard from both sides, by the time you add in a few inches of benchwork on either side, the center of the yard will be difficult to reach while standing in the aisles.
This was my concern. The benchwork as drawn appears to be over 5' wide. I would have no more than 36", but ideal for most is around 24". We had 36" in spots on my old O scale layout. It wasn't too bad to re-rail a locomotive, but I'm also 6ft tall and the benchwork wasn't very high.
Ed
Semi newbie HO scale modeler coming from the O scale world
As another example, I am 6' tall and my layout surface is 36" off the floor. I can reach in no more than 40".
Rich
Alton Junction
This plan does require access from both sides, and it woul be nice to know what the desired operational scheme is.
ATLANTIC CENTRAL This plan does require access from both sides, and it woul be nice to know what the desired operational scheme is. Sheldon
I would also like to see an operational plan, or at least a detailed narrative describing the OP's modeling philosophy and objectives.
It is certainly an interesting layout. I've been pondering it for a coupla days now. So far my impression is that it's four yards cabobbled together: one lower right, one lower middle diagonal, one upper middle horizontal, and one upper horizontal; plus, a turntable/roundhouse tossed in for fun. A lot of activity.
Access from both sides is necessary, and the reach-ins are not all that bad. That is, they wouldn't be all that bad except for the delicate work required for typical yard operations: coupling, uncoupling, derailments and re-railing, throwing and closing millions of switches, etc.
All in all an interesting challenge, and I always like a good challenge.
Just my observations and opinion, of course. Good luck.
Robert
LINK to SNSR Blog
Hi Dave,
Thanks for reviewing my post and your suggestions.
That's why I made this post was to lean on everyone's experience and hopefully have a majority of my mistakes pointed out and corrected before starting construction.
As far as the yard leads that is something I definitely overlooked and will extend them.
Adding a few additional inches to each side of the layout edge will decrease my reaching the center of the layout and was also something I overlooked. I was trying to keep the layout around 5' 1/2 wide for the most part. Do you thing if I were to delete the passenger station siding, one freight yard classification track and one arrivial / depart track that I could gain enough back to where it world be workable?
Thanks again Dave for your input...
Hi Ed,
Thanks for reviewing my post and your comments on layout widths.
This is something that I need to give some additional consideration to and see what changes I can make.
Thanks again Ed...
Hi Rich,
Thanks for reviewing my post and taking the time comment.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for pondering over my plan and your detailed response. BTW, love your layout, very impressive!!!
As far as my plan goes yard operations is my favorite part of the hobby so thats why I'm starting with the yard first. I like a lot of track, cars and switching. I don't have an operational plan as of yet, I was going to leave that up to the person I hire to design the rest of my layout.
By angling freight and arrival yards allowed a majority (not all) of the turnouts to be within reach. Turnouts would be operated by switch machines, uncoupling would be done by hindged magnets and I planned on installing two re-railers per track in the freight yard.
Based on your input and the input of others, I'm looking (open to specific suggestions) to see what I can do to reduce the with of my plan without comprising the integerity of the plan unless enough fellow modelers suggest I start from scratch.
Once again thank you for your time and input and look forward to additional comments and/or suggestions.
Operational plan?
How many people to operate the yard?
I believe that simpler is often better.
It seems to me that the number of tracks could be reduced. Are 7 freight yard tracks needed? 5 passanger yard tracks? Why not just 2 A-D tracks instead of 3?
Keep the functions but simplify. This would make it easier to keep track of the operations and have the benefit of reducing the necessary width improving access.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Wyatt MDo you think if I were to delete the passenger station siding, one freight yard classification track and one arrivial / depart track that I could gain enough back to where it world be workable?
Doing those things would help a bit, but I think that the biggest issue is that the two center yards are on an angle. That effectively widens the benchwork by about a foot (I'm guessing). If you were to eliminate or reduce the angle you could reduce the benchwork width.
Unfortunately that would shorten your yard tracks a bit if you were to use the same turnout arrangement, so let me suggest a couple of options:
1. Rotate the roundhouse and turntable counterclockwise so you can move the turntable north (up) about 8" until the bottom of the turntable is even with the southwest corner of the roundhouse. That will allow you to move the yard ladder up so you can reduce the angle of the yard.
2. Change the turnout arrangement on the west end of the main yard so it looks something like this:
That will allow you to fit the yard entrance around the turntable. You will have to move some of the garden tracks to the top of the turntable.
3. In order to keep the main yard tracks as long as possible, consider using a pinwheel yard ladder on the east end of the yard, something like this:
I know it is not ideal because of the curved ladder, but you are not likely to be coupling or uncoupling on the curves if the straight sections of the yard tracks are long enough. All the turnouts are straight by the way. No curved turnouts.
4. Eliminate the tracks as you have suggested, and eliminate one or maybe two of the tracks leading to the turntable. Lots of roundhouses only had a single access track.
5. As an alternative to all of the above, consider putting the passenger station and all the corresponding track somewhere else on the layout. You will be constantly reaching over the passenger station where it is now. It will most likely get damaged. Also, consider moving the stock pens away from the passenger car yard. With their current proximity the passenger cars might arrive at the station carrying a certain odour!
One other thing you might consider out of defference to us old folks is to increase the size of the print on all of the track labels. When your plan is printed at letter size I can barely read the words even with my Optivisor on.
Food for thought,
Wyatt M As far as my plan goes yard operations is my favorite part of the hobby so thats why I'm starting with the yard first. I like a lot of track, cars and switching.
As far as my plan goes yard operations is my favorite part of the hobby so thats why I'm starting with the yard first. I like a lot of track, cars and switching.
Yeah, I kinda figured that.
I understand this is Phase 1, and the loop of temp tracks around the room is to allow entrances and exits to and from the yard and to take trains out on excursions to stretch their legs.
Any (rough) ideas for Phases 2 and 3? I'm asking because my initial thought is to remove the passenger station (as discussed with Dave) and the uppermost 2 or 3 tracks/sidings and possibly move them on the other side of the room or along either of the sides. You could pick up 6 or 8 inches, which might not sound like much, but it is a lot more than you might think. Plus, moving the station would solve the aromatic issues. The last thing you want is a bunch of irate passengers posting obnoxious videos on YouTube. Have you flown lately?
Good luck.
D Schmitt,
Thanks for taking the time to review my plan and your suggestions. Your suggestions have been added to my list of options.
Thanks again...
Dave,
Thanks for your suggestions and your illustrations. With all the suggestions received to date should give me enough to start revising my plan.
Thanks again Dave...
Robert,
Couldn't agree with you more and I appreciate your time and suggestions. I believe I have enough comments and suggestions to start revising my plan.
Thank everyone who took the time to review my plan and post suggestions and examples. Once I make my revisions I'll repost.
Wyatt MThank everyone who took the time to review my plan and post suggestions and examples. Once I make my revisions I'll repost.
Hi again Wyatt,
I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I hope my suggestions made sense to you, even if you don't use them.
By the way, it is very nice of you to respond individually to each person's posts.
When you have a chance please review my revised layout plan and lets me know your thoughts.
Thanks in adavnce Dave
When you have a chance would you please look at my revised layout plan
Thanks Robert
Wyatt MHi Dave, When you have a chance please review my revised layout plan and lets me know your thoughts. Thanks in adavnce Dave
I definitely will!
When I first saw your plan I said to myself that it was just too interesting to not take the time to help with the design. I have already spent at least an hour studying it, so I can't give up now!
I'm curious to know what program you used to draw it up. If it was 3rdPlanIt I'd love for you to post a link to the plan so I could play with it. Even if it was not done on 3rdPlanIt, I believe 3rdPlanIt can import designs that used different software. I could be wrong, but it would be interesting to try.
By the way, if you haven't guessed already, I love large yards!
Thanks for looking at my plan.
The plan was drawn using the software AnyRail, I'd don't have a problem posting a link herein, AnyRail only allows me to export my plan into a photo like the one posted or I just don't know how to do it, sorry...
Thanks for responding Dave and look forward to your thoughts
Wyatt MAnyRail only allows me to export my plan into a photo
3rdPlanIt allows files to be imported in the following formats:
3DS
DXF/DWG
STL
I haven't a clue about what those formats mean or how to use them (I pride myself on being a computer dinosaur!!!). Maybe somebody with some actual computer knowledge can help out.
Wyatt, I have to say, this is an ambitious plan and it looks good.
I have three questions (and the answers may be in your previous replies).
One, where is this space where you have unimpeded access to 24' x 24'?
Two, how will you gain access to the center of the layout?
Three, are you planning to install a passenger station somewhere on the layout?
I have to assume that the eventual layout will be larger than 24' x 24' based upon the the track plan to date.
Unfortunitily the file formats that you mentioned are not compatiable with AnyRail.
Thanks for your time abd effort
Thanks for taking the time to comment on my post.
Ambitious plan maybe yes, maybe no. My favorite part of the hobby is yard operations and my strengths are benchwork, laying track, wiring and basic scenery. I dislike and struggle with structures, bridges, and detailed scenery as you see on most model railroads.
(1). The 2 ft x 2 ft acess space indicated on the plan is a man door. (2). You would gain access to the center of the layout through a door located on the right side of the layout room. (3). First of a couple planned passenger stations (Bonn Passenger Station) is located on the left side of the layout below the roundhouse. (4). My Maximun layout area is 24' x 24' and I plan on expending the layout around the room. I've thought about doing a multi level layout although I haven't made any decesions at this point.
Thanks again for commenting on my post Rich.