I need help coming up with a layout. I am wanting the layout to kind of be based on nebraska and kansas rail networks.It also needs to fit on a 6x6 board.
Thanks in advance
Hi and welcome.
A good place to start is my beginner’s guide clickable from my signature.
What scale are you talking about here? HO that is smallish while in N that is large. Why 6x6? That is a pretty awkward space as it will be hard to get to the center to work on.
Nebraska & Kansas rail networks covers a lot of options. What time period are you talking here? What type of rail networks? There was more railroad track in Kansas in the 1880s than there was in New York. There can be everything from high speed passengers from the 1930s, modern day heavy duty transcon double stacks, to rickty branch lines and short lines left over from the Rock Island bankruptcy. Dodge City Kansas to La Junta Colorado was the Santa Fe’s “race track” where its high profile trains like the Chief and El Capitan regularly ran over 100 mph. The BNSF has just completed a double track 80 mph mainline from Kiowa Kansas all the way through to the eastern boarder. The UP mainline has run end to end through Nebraska since the late 1800s. The Dodge City, Ford & Buckland is a short line that used to connect the Santa Fe mainline in Dodge with the Rock Island main in Buckland. The track now is overgrown in some places with 3" saplins, it seems they run a train about once a year. In the western part of the state the KYLE short line goes gang busters during grain season and then sits idle for the most part of a year.
You’ve got some good advice already. I would start with track planning books. Find out as much as you can before you start. I’m a Rock Island fan, and I grew up in Iowa, so I have an idea of what your expectations might be. Check out the Rock Island Technical society as well as other midwestern railroad historical societies, for some 1:1 information Atlas has some very good books aimed at beginners and intermediate builders. That 6 X 6 foot size seems a bit ackward to me also. It would also be helpful to know the statistics of the room this unit will be occupying. What else will it be shared with etc.?
So many great modeling opportunities within that general guideline. I lived in Lawrence, Kansas for several years and enjoyed the constant parade of UP power, including the U-50s back then. AT&SF was hosting Amtrak and had CF-7s doing local work. Many opportunities for large industries such as grain elevators to have their own little switcher, too. And if you are speaking of earlier times, Santa Fe’s Blue Goose ran out there, as well as all the wonderful variations of steam earlier than that.
We do need more information about scale, era, and surrounding space to be able to respond contructively. If you want to model those large diesels (U-50s, Centennials, etc.) in HO, they are going to be difficult to run realistically in less than about 28" radius. I concur with the observation on the overall dimensions given - it is difficult to do good modeling if you have to reach any more than about 24" from the edge of the table. Again thinking in HO, you could possibly develop that space into a walk-in, with a stub-ended yard on a fairly narrow shelf, a slim aisle, and then still enough space for an oval with about 20" radius curves for your mainline running.
Bill
i am planning on running in N scale. For era i was thinking some what modern but I don’t knowfor sure what i want to do i realy want to do something in nebraka though, so i know i will have alot of UP. The room i am working in is my family’s work room. I can can easily reach all around the table.
I would stipulate that this is a erroneous assumption. Take a piece of track and put it on a table 3 feet away. Then take a cup and set it infront of the train. Now take another cup and place it on the edge of the table near you. Kneel down so that you are at a height similar to your layout height. Now reach over both cups and re-rail your train with out touching the cups. Now move the track closer until you can rerail the train without touching the cups.
Possably, but he’s talking Nebraska here.
Yes, in western NE, there are a few hills, but other than a few trees along the streams and rivers, and the odd farm/ranch, NE is like a sheet a plywood ( think Kanasas only further north ) - Flat as all get out, and outside the major cities, so unremarkable, he could model almost 70 yrs of rail roading just by swapping out the various trains and engines.
So he has no trees or buildings or towns or yard structures or telephone wires?
Depending on the specific area he models, he may not or if he does, they are probably to few to really matter.
As I mentioned, western NE is some hills - sandy low rolling hills, and unless someone actually planted them and took care of them for the first several years, about the only place any tree would be found naturaly are the creek and river bottoms.
Get on one of the higher hills in this area, and you may be able to see 50-60 miles of nothing but grassland, and unless a populated area happened to be in range of vision, no telephone lines, no buildings, not even any trees, unless there was a creek that ran for most of the year.
Think Cheyenne WY, and you wouldn’t be far from the mark. Leave Cheyenne, and head east on I-80 and you will see very little between Cheyenne Wy, and Kimball NE, and about the same between Kimball and Sidney, It really isn’t until you hit North Platte that something interesting comes up ( UP’s Bailey Yard that covers more than 2,800 acres ) - take a look at this popu
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Greg, No one is arguing that Nebraska isn’t very flat. I live in that part of the country and in fact drove from Cheyenne to Nebraska on I-80 just last weekend. The point is even for a person with 3 foot long arms (very few people) it is hard to work on something 3 feet away - flat or not.
If a 2’x10’ x 2’x8’ “C” shape layout which would take the same amount of space won’t work, I would consider making a 2’x2’ hole in the center of the 6’ space making it a donut.
Greg, No one is arguing that Nebraska isn’t very flat. I live in that part of the country and in fact drove from Cheyenne to Nebraska on I-80 just last weekend. The point is even for a person with 3 foot long arms (very few people) it is hard to work on something 3 feet away - flat or not.
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Does that not also depend on how high the layout is?
The table which I am slowly building my layout on, only comes up to just under my waist ( 29 1/2 inches ), and at that level, I can pick up something on the oppisite edge of a entire 4x8 sheet of plywood, and perhaps my shirttail will brush up against something, but that’s it.
That’s one of the reasions I decieded to build it at that level - I can raise it up after I’m done with the minor work. If I need to get something closer to eye level, its at the right level that in a comforable kneeling position, will put my chin just above top of the plywood.
Perhaps it is from this perspective, that I see, few problems modeling the plains of NE or KS, in a 6x6 area.
Greg,
Obviously you are convinced that you can reach your layout just fine. However, lifting a train off the track and filing a turnout are two different things. Just because you built a low railroad to maximize reach doesn’t mean that he might like his view plane a little higher.
Either way, performing a reach test at the height level he is planning to build is just prudent, especially if his proposal flies in the face of the common wisdom of setting maximum reach at 30 inches.
To me it makes more sense to test before you build than to trust you guessed right.
If one builds a 6’ wide RR (length could be sort of regardless, unless it’s less then 6’), and one models the plains, logically, you could place the tracks closer to the edge of the layout, and the middle would/could be just scenery. Assuming no trees, modeling grassland could be a fairly straightforward operation, just paint the base, and apply the grass (either on the wet paint, or glued down with white glue. You could even go the static electricity grass method if you wish.) As such, once finished, you wouldn’t really need to reach into center of the layout any more (at least not on a regular basis.) As for layout height, well, we all know that’s sort of a personal preference thing, mine’s currently at 42", though I might would have built it a bit lower (maybe 39" or 36"). I concur that reaching into a higher layout (even for scenery construction) would be more difficult, but a simple step stool could help address this issue.
Personally, I would not build a layout section needing more than a 30" reach, with the possible exception of a return loop at the end of a peninsula, using 30" curves, and maybe 6’ of bechwork. In that case, I would plan on the middle of the peninsula being 4-5 feet wide.
Brad
Without worrying about the relative flatness of Nebraska…
I would say that a 6x6 table is not ideal for several reasons.
First is access, reaching to get something on or off is one thing, to actually work is something else. I think many of us have been overly optimistic about this at one tome or another.
Second, I think it is a pretty inefficient use of space. To move around the layout you need at least 2 feet on each side (I’d say really a little more, but I’ll stay optimistic), so a 6x6 layout takes a 10x10 space. And you can’t really use the middle part of the table well. I think that it isn’t far off to say that in the 100 square feet of space you end up with about 20 32 square feet of useful railroad, about 16 4 square feet you can’t reach well, and 64 feet of space to access it. In that space, especially in N scale, you can make a walk-in and not have any reach longer than about 2 feet, and then only in the turning ‘blobs’ (hard to avboid unless you either go true point to point, or duckunder, which I’d avoid). If you stick to the 10x10 area, and make a U, you can easily have 52 square feet of railroad, and reach it all from the remaining 48 square feet. You end up with much longer runs, a design that isn’t so much of a variation of an oval, much longer linear scenes, and better allowance for backdrop.
Of course there may be canstraints that change this analysis some. So, if I was going to help out here, I’d back up a bit, and want to know what the space there is to work in is, and what the constraints are.
EDIT to fix math error…actually helps the 6x6 a bit, though I still would very much recommend against it!
so go to a 10x10 layout size or what then
for layout im still not what sure on what time period i want to do
The common theme is ease of: first, construction…lots of leaning, reaching, tweaking, painting,…it gets really tiring having to reach to build stuff. Walking around to get at it from another side of a wide table is not much better unless you can afford to have the entire layout standing pretty much in the middle of a substantial space…taking it all up, in other words. If you have to back it into a corner, or just against one wall, now you have a whole bunch of area inaccessible along that wall. Secondly, during operations, you will have to rectify something. A misaligned turnout, a derailed car, a set of points that won’t lie flush against their stock rails,… Reaching into a pretty layout to fix things in the back 40 is playing the odds. The odds are not good for your gut, your elbows, or whatever. They’re especially bad for delicate things that take a lot of patience and stillwork to adjust them nicely so that they look good.
All this to say that planning a layout must be a cold, pragmatic exercise if the results are to be enjoyable and have longevity. A badly thought out layout is every expensive when it is destroyed early…or if it merely sits collecting dust.
Let these guys coax you into figuring out how to get a nice, interesting trackplan with maximum efficiency for the overall area you have, but also the overall shape.
Just my two cents.
You misunderstood me, or I didn’t make myself clear. In the original post you said it had to fit on 6x6. My intention was to try to remove any preconceived notions, and to come up with a layout to fit the space. If you look at John Armstrong’s ‘Track Planning for Realistic Operation’, every plan starts with a diagram of the space, including entrances, obstructions, exclusion zones (for lack of a better term), and any other issues; and a list of givens and 'druthers. From the space diagram you can come up with the general shapes that the layout could take, then take the givens and 'druthers to figure which fits the situation best. To get the best (or at least the best until you think of a better one) solution isn’t a ten minute job, and takes quite a bit of thought.
So the question I would ask is what space do you have to work with? Then you’ll need to know what sort of railroad in time and space you are after, which will indicate what will need to run on it, which will dictate minimum radius and grades, and may also give an indication of what general schemes would be suitable. By the way, if you want to design a trackplan, Armstrong’s book is pretty much considered the first reference you need. You might want to get a copy, if you can.
[#ditto] for my comment about a “C” shaped layout. If one has a 6x6 table sitting in a room there is generally at least a 2 foot isle around it on three sides. Hence reversing the isle space with the table space give s a 10xsomething shelf layout. Much more interesting possiblities - especially in N-scale.
Since you are undecided on the time period, is there a certain scene that has caught your attention, or a specific locomotive or freight car? Many layouts have been developed around a single item of specific interest.
If you haven’t already done so, create a drawing of your room or available space, like mine below:
Mine is drawn to scale (at least very close), and it would be very helpful to yourself if you did the same. You can draw it out on paper, or (like I did) use layout planning software (or CAD, or whatever). I used the layout software (Atlas was what I used), so you don’t have to draw it twice. Just start out by drawing out your room, then save it for future use. Then, make a backup file so you don’t accidentally erase the original. Then, just load the drawing to start planning your layout. I’d draw in the (proposed) benchwork first, then add track.
I get the impression some other folks are suggesting an “around the walls” type layout, and quite honestly, it does usually make the best use of space rather than an “island” style layout. In N scale, you could use reversing loops and avoid crossing in front of a door, that’s generally sort of impractical in HO scale (I model in HO). That’s what I’m planning, though I still have much drawing, trial and error, thinking, brainstorming, and (last but not least) prepping the room (it’s unfinished, no drywall, floor covering, etc.)
An around the walls style layout in a 10x10 room would be called a 10x10 layout (using the outermost dimensions), but the center would be vacant floor space, usually with 24-30" wide sections of layout. Thus, you would still have a 5x5 (using 30" width) or 6x6 (using 24" width) area in the center for working, standing, or whatever. Most folks who go this route use some sort of removable section next to the door (or entry) of the room (assuming you are making a complete loop). You could either use a lift out section (completely removable), a lift up or drop down section (hinged on one end), or a swing away, gate s