I am building a small 2-1/2 by 5 foot n-scale layout. How far apart can I place two towns on this board and make it look real? How do you run a train between them and make that look like it should. New at this hobby after 40 years in R/C planes. Why two towns? So I can have more industries to leave cars at and have a varity rather than service just one city. This is a 1050's scene featuring the Great Northern in Minn and N. D. Thanks.
Hi Louie,
I have a 30"x48" layout, Unfortunitly in n scale which is what I model in as well I think you are going to have to put a diagonal scene diveder to make it look correct. I am running into the problem with my layout of trying to put to much into the scene. To be honest with you I think to look realistic you are only going to be able to do 1 town with the size of layout we are modeling in. take a look at my fotki account to see what I am doing.
www.http://public.fotki.com/curtw944/my_n_scale_layout/
Let me know what you think.
Curt
louie1 wrote: I am building a small 2-1/2 by 5 foot n-scale layout. How far apart can I place two towns on this board and make it look real? How do you run a train between them and make that look like it should. New at this hobby after 40 years in R/C planes. Why two towns? So I can have more industries to leave cars at and have a varity rather than service just one city. This is a 1050's scene featuring the Great Northern in Minn and N. D. Thanks.
A divider or backdrop would work the best. I don't know if your layout is accessable from front only, 3 sides or all around.
Another possibility is to separate the towns by a hillside or major industry at the layout's edge. The hill alone could work and just run around through a cut or tunnel. The landform divider(hill/ mountain) would at least put some scenery between towns. This would eat up more real estate, though. Passing through a scenery divider or backdrop gives you the availability of utilizing all the area up to the backdrop. By using some clever structure/ scenery placement, you could hide the hole in the backdrop.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
louie1 wrote: This is a 1050's scene featuring the Great Northern in Minn and N. D.
This is a 1050's scene featuring the Great Northern in Minn and N. D.
I would NOT have two towns on an N scale layout 2 1/2 by 5 feet UNLESS the layout was divided by a viewblock or double-sided backdrop down the middle. It just would not be visually convincing enough to my taste. (If it works for you, okay....)
For me to believe two town scenes are actually two towns, I think there should be at least one train length between them UNLESS they are separated with viewblock. Depending on the size of the layout, one train length might be a foot and a half on a layout that runs 4-car trains, or it might be ten feet on a layout with 35 car trains pulled by multi-unit lashups.
I HAVE built an even smaller layout than the one you describe, 2 x 4 feet with the scenic divided down the middle, with two "towns". It was the Norton Brothers Connecting Railroad, "NBC", featured in Model Railroader Sept 1981 p.94. One side was Grainball Junction, an agricultural town where the shortline connecting railroad had an interchange with the Grand Funk Trunk. One turnout for the interchange track and a second turnout for a pair of local grain elevators. The other side was a condensed prototype scene from the Port of Corpus Christi with a shipside export terminal grain elevator and a dock. One turnout there allowed acces to a 6-car spur for the elevator, plus a switchback off that spur to a short spur at dockside for loading and unloading flatcar-type loads. Machinery, etc. A 15" long ship, actually a medium- to large-size large ocean-going fishing trawler, served as a very small ship. Entire port scene in 4 feet long by 1 foot deep.
One trick about the double sided layout is that if the end of a train extends through the viewblock to the other side during switching, it is out of sight and the space for the end of the train requires no extra space in the visible scene.
Just my two cents worth. Or since I am promoting the viewblock down the center idea, maybe I should say my one inch worth.
One other idea for two "towns" on a 2 1/2 by 5 foot layout. I don't think they can realistically appear as two separate "towns" as such. However, they could be made to appear as two different OPERATIONAL AREAS.
Imagine there is a mainline railroad running through a town. It has one or two local industry switching spots and a general setout track. Perhaps an interchange with a foreign railroad. Now imagine in that same town there is an industrial district which for some reason is not part of the mainline railroad. Perhaps it might be an industry that has its own in-plant trackage and switcher. Perhaps it is an industrial district switched by a belt or switching shortline for reasons of ownership, labor union rules, some kind of bureaucratic regulation.
Mainline railroad switches its own industrial spurs and leaves cars on a setout track for the "switching line". Switching line's loco has to come over to the setout track, pick up cars, deliver them to its side of town, switch them and then leave outgoing cars back at the "setout" track. Appearance of one built-up town, but the operation of two interconnected areas. Plus the complication of different but related jobs having to be done by different crews/loco. A hidden or inconspicuous track where the mainline could disappear when it left town would add to the feeling of the scheme. I don't what kind of setup would be prototypical to your part of the country...
My present layout is a bit larger than yours.... 3 feet wide by 7 feet long, divided visually by an 80-scale-foot-tall tree line two thirds of the way back from the main town scene. A Santa Fe secondary main has through trains through my town scene, services 5 industries in the town plus a freight station spur and a setout spur for a logging shortline. The logging shortline runs all of four feet through the woods to a five-foot-long sawmill scene on the side of the layout away from the town. The logging shortline picks up fuel oil and other supplies from the mainline, and sets out finished lumber. And the loggin shortline also runs TO town, THRU town via "trackage rights" over the Sante Fe line to a logging reload spur just on the far outskirts of the town scene. So there is only one actual "town", but an additional main operational area, the sawmill complex which is not exactly a "town", plus one logging spur just beyond the town proper.
I tried to model the town, by the way, with a sense of the things a real town should have--- courthouse, high school, movie theater, filling station, restaurant, post office, bank, church, drugstore, grocery store, furniture store, jewelry store, ice cream parlor, clothing store, barbershop, residential district with 6 homes, etc. besides the railroad and industry related features such as station, peanut butter plant, bulk oil dealer, farm implelement dealer, and a cresote treating/ wood preservation plant with its own 2-foot-guage tramway rail system. But then I have 1 more foot of width and two more of length than your planned layout...
I too, am returning after years, and am building an N scale 2 1/2 X 5 foot layout. It will be seen all around. I would not try for more than one town or use a divider as suggested.
mine packs a lot in the space. 3 outside loops with a reversing loop bisecting the center. on one side of it I have a small town, a few spurs for industry.
On the other side of the reversing (divider) track I have a round-table based yard with 2 tracks for steam service, 2 for diesel service, two bay engine repair shop, and two tracks for equip storage, and two empty tracks for reg car storage/RIP. Thats a lot! there will be a coal yard, a lumber yard, industry is grain supply, manufacturing, recycling. downtown business has 4 business buildings, and a few houses
extra houses/"town" are at the 4 corners of the layout.
Good luck!
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
Modeling the Rio Grande Southern First District circa 1938-1946 in HOn3.
GOOD QUESTION. PROBABLY HORSE AND WAGON. BUT THEN AGAIN THE SIOUX WERE STILL CHASING BUFFALO AND OTHER TRIBES AT THAT TIME. MUST HAVE BEEN THE MOUNTAIN MEN. DO YOU THINK?
You might try a lake, mountain range or forest as a divider. I'm also an N scaler and my layout is three and a half feet wide by six and a half feet long, and I have problems with making just one small community look right...
Tracklayer
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956