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Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Packed away all my train stuff to get ready to move. They are gonna be away for a while as we get settled into the new house. So in this non train aspect I guess I will really hunker down to come up with a trackplan. My request to everyone here is do you have a pic of your trackplan i could peek at for ideas and I would also like your opinion on track planning software. I downloaded atlas and I keep getting a runtime error message after I lay about a dozen pieces of track. I have reloaded it several times and still get the message.

Any pics of layouts would also help pass my long months away from trains.

Thanks Mike

2

Packed away for months!!![:O] Are you starting to get the shakes and cold sweats yet? I would have at least kept a building kit out to work on!

3

You think you are bored? My wife kicked me out of the house in 2000 and made me tear down my layout. I’ve been apartment bound ever since and am finally getting the divorce pushing thru - time to have a life again!

4

oooh sorry to hear that I guess i don;t have it too bad then. I have quick access to a couple trains so that jktrains and i can get together and he can show me his air eraser and his spray booth. I can’t wait, but the house will come first as it will need a little sprucing up. Good thing is that the basement is huge so i can have a big layout, big workshop, a pool table and movie room and a storage room. plus it has a ton of built in shelfs for my wifes doll house and my model car collection(1/24). good luck with the dicorce man sorry to hear about it. Hopefully you can get back up and running soon.

5

This is the track plan I finally settled on. Keep in mind that this is all EZ-Track.

6

I use 3rd Plan It.

There’s a bit of learning curve but it really helped me a lot when it came time to design and build my first helix.

7

Thanks for the kind words. It’s partly my own fault I waited this long to move on with my life and yes, I’m tired of being a collecter and want to be into building a layout and operating again!

Cheers!

8

I used XTrkCad, and came up with this:

Its in a three car garage (Arizona basement), the left and top are walls, the right is an open storage/junk/shop area, the bottom is where the car, or on a good day cars are. So the bottom and right are accessible, but not part of the designated layout area.

The bechwork is built, and most of the track on the left and bottom are in:

9

Mike,

Regarding trackplanning software, I’m using 3rdPlanIt. It has some quirks and a learning curve, but overall is a good piece of software. I can show it to you when we get together. I’ll show you my layout plan on the software and 1/2" scale model then.

The Atlas software has a number of limitations. I haven’t used it in years, since getting 3PI, because of the difficulty in using it.

1/24 scale cars??? Another thing to spend time on.

jktrains

10

Hi Mike,

You never did mention the scale of your trains, the area that you plan to devote to your new layout, or the position of the stairway to your basement. I was fortunate that I planned ,and built, a 24’x24’ garage, with an inside stairway to an unobstructed 24’x24’ loft, devoted entirely to my layout. Perhaps you can glean a few ideas from the (hand drawn) diagram of my around the room, (four power district DCC) HO layout with 102 electrically operated turnouts and six reverse loops and wyes, and an N scale dogbone loop across the top.

11

Hi!

I have an “almost done” existing layout of 12 years and am looking to rebuild in the next year or two. So in that regard we have similar situations. The following is my suggestion on how to attack the problem, which is what I am doing now…

  • Determine the layout space and its “outline”. Measure the space and replicate it freehand on a sheet of paper.

  • Get a 8 1/2 x 11 quadrulle or graph sheet and accurately draw out the outline of the layout space. Then make several copies of the blank.

  • With a pencil, compass, ruler, and/or template, scratch out your ideas on the blanks. Of course you can source ideas from this forum, mags, books, whatever to meet your goal.

  • When you get several of the rough drafts and have exhausted your imagination, do a comparison of them and narrow it down to the few that you like best. Hopefully that will end up being one or two at the most.

  • When you have the field narrowed down, either get a layout software or large sheets of graph paper (I taped 4 together) so that you can transfer the draft to a more finished and scale format. The most important thing here is to be realistic in spacing, and don’t “cheat” on spaces for turnouts or other firm space requirements.

  • Assuming you finish and get something to work with, keep a master and alter as needed when you actually build the layout. Having a master plan is invaluable when you wire to identify blocks and turnout controls, etc., etc.

Good Luck!!!

Mobilman44

12

This is my layout track plan in it’s most recent revision, as it has changed at least 100 times since it’s inception. The most recent change was to add a double crossover switch and a loop over the stairway thus allowing trains to enter the main directly from the classification yard without having to back up or reverse the locos.

Track Plan

3D View

The plans were made with 3rd PlanIT track planning software, the latest is version 8.1.03 and is a vast improvement over the previous versions. As stated previously the initial learning curve is steep, but with time and comitment it is a robust tool for developing accurate track plans. The library of track, rolling, stock, structures and such is a nice to have addition. For example the track library includes the following scales: Gm, HO, N, NMRA, O, OO, S, and Z.

Also, drilling down into the HO selections only, here are the available manufacturers:

Atlas 83, Atlas 100, Bachman EZ Track, Bemo, Bemo HOm, Bemo HOm code 70, BK Enterprise, Central Valley 70, Central Valley 83, Central Valley Imperial, Central Valley Metric, Fast Tracks HO Complete, Fast Tracks HO Sectional, Fleishmann Model Track, Fleishmann Profi Track, Kato Unitrack, Micro Engineering, Marklin C, Marklin K, Marklin M, Peco 70, Peco 83, Peco 100, Piko Setrack, Piko A-track, Pilz Elite, Roco GeoLINE, RocoLine, Shinohara 70, Shinohara 100, Shinohara HOn3, Tillig HOm, Trix Express HO, Walthers 83.

The nice feature here is that the available straights, curves, and switches are drawn to the manufacturer specifications that will match 1:1 with the actual pieces.

Here is an example of a 1:1 ratio print out of a portion of the track plan with the Walthers 83 curved turnout sitting on top of the plan:

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13

Looks good I like all the room you have to run trains. Good luck working on it and update us with pics.

14

Cool. I am looking at 3rd and xtrac and one other like 3rd. Atlas sucked it kept kicking me off and giving me error messages. The cars were something I did when I was in highschool and up through about a year ago. I have a bunch of them and most are super detailed with wires, distributers, metal exhausts, etched metal speaker screens and junk. I took alot of time on them and have them in cases with backgrounds, even made a custom garage with guys and lighting. So I just don’t want to toss them. There are also a few airplanes in the mix as well. Well I am a pilot would be weird if I didn’t have those.

15

I am doing ho. It is in my signature area. Got tired of writing it all the time. I am thinking the space will be around 10’x20’ with the stairs at the bottom left of the room opening to another full room on the other sid of the stairs. There is also a door to a workshop on the upper right of the room. Plus there are built in shelves on the end closest to the stairs. So there needs to be enough access to get wood and stuff to the shop without too much running into trains. My quick plan right now is to run it along the stairs to the back wall, run along the back wall then circle back towards the stairs maybe with some island sticking out somewhere. There is also I think going to be a service track that will run into the workshop so I can work on and program loco there. This will keep the chances of me dropping something a little lower. Still hashing out the house, the plans and what elevations and things i will have. But the house will come first. Fortunately the basement is already finished so that will help keep the cost down a little. Once I find a track planner I will post a room size and dimension.

Yours looks good. I like the way the stairs comes up into the inside of the track. No ducking!!

16

thanks for the info mobileman44. You all have been great. As soon as we get into the house I will get the dimensions of the room in question.

17

[quote user=“SilverSpike”]

This is my layout track plan in it’s most recent revision, as it has changed at least 100 times since it’s inception. The most recent change was to add a double crossover switch and a loop over the stairway thus allowing trains to enter the main directly from the classification yard without having to back up or reverse the locos.

Track Plan

3D View

The plans were made with 3rd PlanIT track planning software, the latest is version 8.1.03 and is a vast improvement over the previous versions. As stated previously the initial learning curve is steep, but with time and comitment it is a robust tool for developing accurate track plans. The library of track, rolling, stock, structures and such is a nice to have addition. For example the track library includes the following scales: Gm, HO, N, NMRA, O, OO, S, and Z.

Also, drilling down into the HO selections only, here are the available manufacturers:

Atlas 83, Atlas 100, Bachman EZ Track, Bemo, Bemo HOm, Bemo HOm code 70, BK Enterprise, Central Valley 70, Central Valley 83, Central Valley Imperial, Central Valley Metric, Fast Tracks HO Complete, Fast Tracks HO Sectional, Fleishmann Model Track, Fleishmann Profi Track, Kato Unitrack, Micro Engineering, Marklin C, Marklin K, Marklin M, Peco 70, Peco 83, Peco 100, Piko Setrack, Piko A-track, Pilz Elite, Roco GeoLINE, RocoLine, Shinohara 70, Shinohara 100, Shinohara HOn3, Tillig HOm, Trix Express HO, Walthers 83.

The nice feature here is that the available straights, curves, and switches are drawn to the manufacturer specifications that will match 1:1 with the actual pieces.

Here is an example of a 1:1 ratio print out of a portion of the track plan with the Walthers 83 curved turnout sitting on top of

18

Mike,

The train room from east to west wall is around 19’ 6" and the measurement from north to south is around 14’ 2" so 19’ 06" X 14’ 02"

You can send an email or PM anytime you have questions.

Cheers,

Ryan

19

thanks ryan

20

If your space is 10x20 I think you’ll find that you run out of space pretty quickly, particularly with the door locations you mentioned. A penninsula with any reasonable curve radius will just gobble up space. My layout is about 9x17. Here’s the plan (drawn in AutoCad):

It’s situated in a corner so there’s access to the top & left sides. Here’s an overall view:

Good luck & have fun

Jim