a friend and I are going to build the plan # 100 in L. Westcott’s 101 track plans . I would like to know if anyone has built this layout or has information more then the book has to give us a little help. pictures speak a thousand word. scenery and buildings will difer, but track plan will be as in the book. thanks for any help you can give…ray
It’s not exactly obvious, but all of the layouts in 101 Track Plans were designed nearly 50 years ago – the book has not been updated except to add the N scale calculations and to change the cover art. In some cases, there are issues with the plans in the book that many designers avoid today.
Plan #100 has a few of those issues. In the amount of space an HO version would require (including aisles), there are probably a number of better alternatives. The “prairie dog village” concept of popping up in multiple access hatches for construction, operation, and maintenance will likely prove to be a problem in the long run. Unless you have open access all around the layout in HO, there are some impossibly long reaches. Although I have not scaled it out, it appears that many of the turnouts and crossings will require hand-laying to make everything fit as drawn.
Linn Westcott (designer of #100) was a talented draftsman/illustrator and a clever designer for the time, but some of his renderings in 101 Track Plans make the designs much more appealing in print than they would be in plaster and plywood, IMHO. The premise of most of these designs is winding the maximum mainline length into the smallest space. Modern layout design best practices, based on 50 years of experience since 101 Track Plans, include more focus on designs that are more readily constructed, accessed, operated, and maintained.
Regards,
Byron
You mean this one?
I am not certain what more information you are looking for. Step by step on how to build it, or wire it, or operate it? All of those things?
While I agree with you that current trends are toward more linear type of layouts, there were advantages to the old style, spaghetti bowl layouts. As you pointed out, they offer the maximum in mainline running for a given space. They also offer some dramatic scenic possibilities with mainline track passing over the mainline below it. This does happen in the real world but problematic with around the room type layouts. While my own preference is for a linear mainline
You missed my point or I did not make it well. I was not commenting on spaghetti bowl vs. linear layout design concepts, although that is one aspect of the designs in 101 Track Plans.
My point is that there are issues with access, reach, and overall “buildable-ness” of many of the 101 Track Plans layouts, regardless of concept. Whether one chooses spaghetti-bowl or linear layout concepts, a design that may only be built or operated through multiple pop-up holes, requires hand-laid trackwork, and contains areas that cannot be reached without an aisle all around may not be the best choice for the available space.
There has been a lot of design thought and discussion over the last 50 years. It is a shame if a newcomer to the hobby is not at least exposed to these ideas along with the classic ideas.
Regards,
Byron
As with linear vs. spaghetti bowls, there are tradeoffs with access holes vs. aisle access. Certainly, it is a major convenience to be able to reach all areas of a layout from your aisle. The trade-off is you give up depth o
I plan on modeling one of the earlier plans in his book(?#28 as I recall)–it’s a 5 X 9 that I’m going to expand to 6 X 12. One of the problems with that plan is that the grades are absurd–0 to 4 inch elevation over around 5-6 feet of track run–this would correlate to a 6-7% grade! So, obviously there are some issues with a variety of aspects of his plans, they’re still not bad for a general template as long as one realizes what aspects of the plan are unwise to duplicate or simply won’t work.
By the way, Wescott’s benchwork book, on the other hand is excellent and I strongly recc. it for anyone.
Jim
Most of the plans in the book are from Model Railroader in the 50’s. They had a feature called Layout Plan of the Month, but these were not actual layouts that someone had already built. While some have been built since (asis or modified), there have only been a few articles on them. I would suggest you use the book as an inspiration for your own plan.
Enjoy
Paul
Those layouts have probably come full circle for a reason I don’t really understand. They were designed in an era of smaller homes (mostly 800-1200 sq. ft.) and every inch was valuable. Today with 3000 sq. ft. monster homes we are regressing to 18" radius curves and smaller layouts. Go figure! They are still excellent starting points with excellent yard throats and prototypical features. Allan McClelland built one of the plans into the first V&O so don’t necessarily discard them without doing some out of the box thinking.
I’ve seen this posted before on the Internet, but I do not believe this is factually correct. Referring to McClelland’s book The V&O Story (Carstens, 1984), he shows the preliminary V&O design as Figure 3.3 (page 27). This is actually nearly identical to John Armstrong’s backwards-Z-shaped design study in Track Planning for Realistic Operation (Kalmbach). The Armstrong plan is Figure 8-4 in both my first- and second editon copies of Track Planning for Realistic Operation, but it might be labeled differently in later editions. In any case, I don’t think there is anything in 101 Track Plans that resembles this design.
If you are referring to McClelland’s 1950-era 5X12 or so Miami Valley layout (Figure 2.7 in The V&O Story), this is a pretty simple oval-and-branch, was built before 101 Track Plans was published, and does not seem to relate at all to the later V&O.
Regards,
Byron
As I recall the layout was called Puget Sound and something or other. It may have been a John Armstrong MR article so I may be wrong on the source. I remember I gave that layout a lot of serious thought before going a different route. The original was for a one car garage (I think).
You’re right, the Armstrong design was originally published as the Montana & Puget Sound in the July 1959 Model Railroader. I should have mentioned that, as it is probably where McClelland first saw it.
The layout was discussed again in an article in the November 2004 Model Railroader. In that article, it is noted what a departure Armstrong’s plan was for the time, with walk-in, no duckunder, no pop-up operation and rudimentary staging. All of these things differentiate the Armstrong plan from most of the plans in 101 Track Plans.
The logic of a return to smaller layouts with sharp radii curves is a response to the realization by many that, (1) most of today’s larger linear layouts take a great many years to bring to any state of completion, while their train run-time (the time it takes a train to return to the same section of track) can be equaled on a much smaller, more compact, layout employing multiple loops and (2), as already pointed out, one can often develop far more dramatic/impressive scenery for a train to pass through by traversing the same general, compact scene multiple times at varying track levels, especially when the trackage requires passing over bridges, through tunnels, etc. in just a short distance. Realistic? Perhaps not but a lot more fun!.
Somewhere along the line the guys who happen to like running very long trains on linear, point-to-point, pikes seemingly hi-jacked the hobby with their ideas of what is correct when, in fact, the majority of hobbyists still would rather run far more modest-sized trains on layouts where the action all takes place right in front of them (as opposed to walking around the room to follow their train). For those reasons, many of the older layout designs by Linn Westcott, et al., are just as vaild today as ever and the average hobbyist may be better off attempting one of those smaller designs as compared to the over-hyped, basement
POP-UPS!!!
To really see whether you want a pop-up on a layout, take your dining room table and spread it apart where the leaf goes. Pretend that is the pop-up, crawl under the table a few times and up through the pop-up.
It will get very old, very quickly.
Next pretend excercise. Put a box over the opening and pretend that is the liftout. That gets even older more quickly.
Just a thought
Harold
Some of my favorite plans from “101 Layouts” are the point-to-point shelf layouts, many of which are downright nifty, and range from miniscule shelf switching games to basement-spanners that are relatively easy to build but don’t require back-breaking acrobatics. Those ones remind me more of contemporary track planning ideas, although some modern concepts like mushrooms and helixes hadn’t yet made their appearance.
101 Track Plans is a wonderful look at where we have been.
Nine years ago when I started my present railroad the duck under to maintain the turn back loop in a corner looked pretty good. Today I hope I never have to go back there. One gets older and today at age 65 duck unders are not what they used to be.
If I had to do it again there would be no duck unders. The railroad would be a lot narrower. Less scenery to build. Not so far to reach. All track switches would be hand throws. If a switch is too far back for a hand throw it is too far back to maintain.
Just my thoughts.
Ralph Hougesen
I’m generally of the impression that layout plans are suggestions that we can take or leave as part of the process of building a model railroad. As far as good ideas / bad ideas go, there is really no perfect layout geometry–they all have advantages and disadvantages. I personally would not be happy with a modern mega railroad because I don’t like maintaining that much track and scenery. No problem, I stick to the 10 x 12 average spare room, and other peopke go bigger or smaller depending on desires and resources.
Some of the ‘Old 101’ plans have some beautifully-hideous features that often balance work and discomfort against modelling pleasure. Duckunders are a pain, but they permit for continuous running (among other things), and, in the case of ‘operating pits,’ are the forerunner of what we today call Virtual Reality, where the user is immersed in the railroad or the computer stuff.
It is all a matter of figuring out what you can live with and going for it. Good luck.
One thing that no one has mentioned is that sometimes the plans that are drawn that book don’t work with current materials. I had the ambition of building one and took the time to re-draw it using current software. The plan simply could not be drawn in the space shown. In fact, to make it work, I had to increase the space of the layout by 20-25% in both directions.
If you are considering building this plan, make sure it will work by drawing it out using one of the layout software programs.
[quote user=“CNJ831”]
The logic of a return to smaller layouts with sharp radii curves is a response to the realization by many that, (1) most of today’s larger linear layouts take a great many years to bring to any state of completion, while their train run-time (the time it takes a train to return to the same section of track) can be equaled on a much smaller, more compact, layout employing multiple loops and (2), as already pointed out, one can often develop far more dramatic/impressive scenery for a train to pass through by traversing the same general, compact scene multiple times at varying track levels, especially when the trackage requires passing over bridges, through tunnels, etc. in just a short distance. Realistic? Perhaps not but a lot more fun!.
Somewhere along the line the guys who happen to like running very long trains on linear, point-to-point, pikes seemingly hi-jacked the hobby with their ideas of what is correct when, in fact, the majority of hobbyists still would rather run far more modest-sized trains on layouts where the action all takes place right in front of them (as opposed to walking around the room to follow their train). For those reasons, many of the older layout designs by Linn Westcott, et al., are just as vaild today as ever and the average hobbyist may be better off attempting one of those smaller designs as compared to the
I appreciate the “101” book because it had a “bowl” plan that I could modify to fit my long rolling stock and space. Mine is patterned after #58 from “101”. It is expanded for 36" minimum radii (35 on loops) and a 20-track 130’ table. The righthand loop fits over the mains more like #57, and the mains are on the level, with both loops elevated. With overall size of 16.5 x 11.5, I was able to keep grades to 2.5%. The sidings are so long I did have to add an access hole next to them. The height is 48", which (for now, anyway) means I don’t have to get down on my knees.
I used 29 blocks as per the original, which I grouped into 6 power districts. Each district can be switched between DCC and DC, and when DCC, are fed thru TT Power Shields. When DC, cab A or B available with BLI Sidekicks. Lenz modules protect the DC supplies from shorts to DCC (track is Peco 75 w/electrofrog large and medium turnouts modified for best reliability with both old locos and DCC).
Status: trackwork meets all expectations; beginning scenery work; problems: minimal.
Hal