I am in the design stages of my layout. What I have to work with is a 11x10 room that is a multi purpose room. As of now im focusing on a single level shelf layout that has a maximum 24’’ deep shelf. Im modelling the Seaboard Airline around 1966-1967 so there is mostly 40’ and 50’ cars. Also I have one passenger train. I have multiple LDE’s that would be perfect for modelling but they are on different branch lines. Is it possible to combine all of these into a layout and still make it into a beleivable scene. How do I mend all of them together? Two of them are stations. I know that in a space this small I have to give a lot to keep with the prototype but I find it easier to model buy looking at photos of the prototype so I thought the LDE concept is perfect for this. Also the staging is really confusing me. Since space is valuable what should be
You seemed to make a pretty decent start in this thread from January 2010 about a CSX design in an 9x11 foot shed : http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/167292.aspx?PageIndex=1. Your previous overall design concept was switching in an industrial park.
Now you are apparently starting over again with a 11 x 10 foot room. How much staging you will need, and your overall track plan is dependent on your overall layout concept - your layout vision.
If you were to describe how you want your new layout to run, how would you describe it?
Are you modeling one town/place? Two places and the track between them? Three places? More ?
You are mentioning “two of them are stations”, which would seem to indicate that you want to model at least two different towns?
Somewhere in the middle of a mainline? Somewhere in the middle of a branch line? Junction town? End of the line?
How long trains do you want to run (number/type of cars and/or train length in inches)? How many trains do you want to run (both during a session and simultaneously)?
How do you want to run your trains? Local turn - out from a yard to switch and then return to point of origin? Train passing through and dropping off or picking up cars on the way through? Meets between trains?
Try to describe what your overall vision for how your layout should work.
It is often well worth it to attack a design problem from several different directions to get the focus right - looking at the prototype scenes for inspirations for each scene on your layout (i.e bottom-up design) at the same time as you also look at your overall concept and do some top-down planning.
I believe Tony Koester popularized this concept for designing layouts. Taking prototypical scenes and using selective compression to blend them together one after another (explanation in a nutshell). There has been articles published by kalmbach on this. Maybe someone here would care to elaborate a bit more.
Layout Design Element. A scene on a layout heavily based on a prototype location (possibly with some selective compression). Name was coined by Tony Koester in Model Railroad Planning.
As you have noticed I changed my layout vision back to Seaboard Airline. After alot of research in the local I have been able to come photos and track layouts thats would be great to use as lde’s for a layout. What I would like is a: single track mainline with passing sidings, two seperate towns both with stations, continuous mainline run, some type of seperation between the towns and also the feeling of once the train goes through one town that its going to a different place( is running a train through the backdrop and using one of the 4 walls as a staging area good for this or is doing this not good use of space? ) As for operation I would like to keep 2 operators busy. I would like for a periodic passenger train of no more than 4 car lengths to be able to pass a local doing switching in town. As for through freight, the train would be no more than about 10 to 12 car lengths. The local can be out and back operations but the others would be continuous running. Here is a list of the area that I thought would be great for LDE modeling:
Plant City, Fl downtown diamond The SAL ran north to south and curved west after crossing the diamond with the ACL. Their was a interchange with the ACL, freight depot, passenger station in the shape of an L and also a REA building. The REA building was moved from its original location between the SAL track and the interchange when the depot was restored. This was and still is a mainline for CSX.
Leesburg, Fl The area around the depot The SAL brick depot is still standing right next to the A.S. Herlong & Co packing house. The tracks have been pulled up but you can still see the outline of where they would have been. The depot is almost a perfect match for the Pella depot from Walthers with a few modifications. The packing house was one of the largest in the area and would make for a busy industry during picking season. Also there was a f
Your other thread mentioned HO scale. With the druthers you mentioned above, I think N scale might be a better fit for your 11’x10’ space. You’ll be able to get a much better sense of distance between towns and be better able to capture the feel of single track running, IMHO.
Mmm - I agree with O’Dave about N scale probably being a better idea than H0 scale if your main design goal is get the feeling of running between several towns, rather than being in a town.
From your description of what you want, I am thinking something perhaps more in the style of Bill Darnaby’s Maumee Route (Model Railroad Planning 1998 or Model Railroader Oct 2003) than in the style of Lance Mindheim’s Miami industrial switching layouts.
Surround staging (behind buildings or behind a low backdrop) should work on a layout that size.
FWIW I have a somewhat similar space in HO (10’X18’), and my plan calls for distance to be simulated by holding trains behind backdrops on “layover” tracks, or just running laps, depending on the mood of the operators.
I was shooting for a similar operation style as the OP until I had the good fortune to operate on a couple of excellent large layouts in my area. I then realized that I really couldn’t replicate the feel of travel between towns and single track running, so I changed my focus to be more on local switching than through train running. I did not select N because of some physical limitations with my hands, the legacy of a long ago mountain biking accident.
So while you could probably satisfy your druthers in your space in HO, I would take a look at N scale and see if it gives you a closer match.
CR&T is being designed with each Layout Design Element as rails going from neighborhood to neighborhood, or community to community, instead of looking at it from trying to fit everything into one town. N Scale, circa 1956, and shorter traction track-radius also makes this planning easier.
Thus, the layout’s LDEs, are thought of in terms of “a shelf layout” and this helps to stop visualizing the layout as one big town on a sheet of plywood.
Layout design became easier to think of each LDE, whether neighborhood or community – as a vignette – a scenic vignette.
I am commited to HO scale since I already have multiple locomotives and cars in that scale. Now another possibility that I have been playing with is using a very condensed rail yard LDE with 3 storage tracks that can hold 10+ cars with 2 long arrival/ departure tracks, a drill track and a long siding. I saw a plan that has this set up and thought it could be modified to resemble a small version of Baldwin or Wildwood yard here in Fl with the addition of RIP tracks, scrap yard, or icehouse. It also has a small diesel servicing facility along with clean out tracks and a caboose track. The drill track would not foul the mainline so a switcher could go about its business while other trains proceeded by. The use of mirrors and photo backdrop might make the yard look bigger than what it really is. All of this is along 2 walls of the room. The other long wall I thought could be for 1 town with a depot and some local switching (1 maybe 2 industries). The third wall could be just for scenery such as a low bridge and swamp area to seperate the town and yard scenes. I would have to give up the idea of 2 towns on the layout, but thought a yard like this might allow for interesting operation to make up for the loss of another town and allow me to keep the continuous running aspect and make the trains seem like they are going somewhere when they leave the yard. What do you all think about this?
Use the backdrops as an opportunity to give a forced-perspective (impression) that your yard and industrial district are each in the foreground of something larger beyond. For example, the yard & industry can be part of “two distinct neighborhoods” – two vignettes – all connected by rails – the railroad.
I have a similar space that I’m working as a Southern branch line in the Carolina’s. You’ve picked a pretty nice area, especially if you model all the groves that were around there before they turned everything into trailer parks. And yes the station and packing plant in Plant City would make great scenes.
From my layout I’ve learned that fitting LDE’s into that small a space is hard. A prototypical LDE takes more space than you might think. I can think of two options to consider (I’ve used both on my layout). The first is to eliminate a town. I run from staging through a rural area to the primary town on the layout. By eliminating a town, the layout gains some open space and distance. This would allow you to model the Plant City area more thoroughly with all the interesting detail in the packing plant. The second option is to make the LDE more of an abstract representation of the scene. May have to give up tracks, combine sidings, etc. The end result would be more of a Florida citrus town, sort of an “I know I’ve been there, but can’t quite place it” thing.
Hmmm - that is a rather big change in how I perceived your original vision.
Instead of modeling a place where you have one local turn switching industries, with a few passenger trains and a through freight or two passing by, you now are thinking about using 50% of your space on modeling a small classification yard, complete with several A/D tracks, a RIP track and engine service.
A classification yard (small or big) is not really a place where complete trains are stored. It is basically a routing point, where trains come in, cars get resorted into new trains, and new trains depart for various destinations. Do you have anywhere for trains to come from when they enter your yard, or trains to go to when they depart your yard?
If what you want really is a place to keep say three or four trains of up to 10 50-foot cars (let’s say about 7 feet long including an engine and a caboose) stored until they make their appearance on another part of your layout, you could just put some staging tracks along one wall.
Single or double ended depending on whether you plan to reuse your trains in staging (e.g to simulate passenger trains passing by “once an hour” duri
I agree with Stein about clarifying your goals, especially developing a fairly clear purpose for the yard. That purpose will keep the yard design focused.
Don’t feel bad if your vision is unsettled at this point. Better to do some concept wavering now than building something you hate in the end. The tricky part is deciding when to stop navel-gazing and just pick a direction. And even then you may be tempted by other visions as you build.
Here’s a suggestion in the form of a sketch (not a track plan), done in Paintshop Pro, based on some of your latest druthers. I think it has a shot at delivering on your “trains appear to be coming and going” druther.
It is semi-to-scale, meaning that the curves drawn are 30" radius for your passenger equipment, but the turnouts are just eye-balled. Staging is in yellow, behind a low backdrop, which is blue. The meandering main is just a suggestion, as I don’t know what your LDEs look like or how they would fit.
Note that there are some flaws, as I ran out of time at lunch to correct them. Reach into the upper-right and bottom-left staging will be too far, so you’d want to curve the staging tracks around or make the benchwork narrower. Bottom-left is too wide too. And I left out the passing siding, which would start in “Yard” and end in “Town”, giving a bit of single track running in each “rural” scene.
The staging is what’s called “X-Factor”, which can help resetting trains between sessions. But since the staging access tracks cross each other, you’ll have to choreograph trains coming and going.
