I am planning a ho layout with a upper deck for staging and yard. what is a good rule of thumb for the distance between decks. the main deck is going to be aprx 48 inches high. I was thinking maybe 78 inches for the upper deck. Would 30 inch clearance be enough or do I need more hight between the decks. Most of the industries I am planning are small. The biggest will be a coal mine in a corner of the layout. thanks for any advice.
Leave enough room to reach all items on the lower level for cleaning, rerailing, etc., and don’t forget to allow for wiring of the upper level.
Consider your own height and the height of others that might be operating the layout. My layout has a lower deck at 35" with the upper deck 22" above the lower deck (57" above the floor). I’m 5’7" (67") tall and the upper deck is at a good level for viewing and limited switching.
I used 1 x 3 lumber for my upper level benchwork to keep the upper deck thin.
Also consider aisle width. If people are going to be working the upper deck and lower deck at the same time, there may be a lot of traffic. If people using the upper deck are going to need stools to do uncoupling or switching, they will clog up the aisle as well.
Suggest you do a cardboard mock-up of the upper level height to check out how the view and arm reach work out for you.
Also, consider carefully how you are going to link the levels. I assume a helix. That is a major planning and construction job in itself.
Hope this helps a little …
Marty
The biggest issue, and probably a show stopper, is how you will get your trains to the level you ultimately decide is ideal for you, as stated by Marty. If you settle on 18", what run and grade can you realistically provide and not screw up an otherwise good looking and functioning layout? Do you want a helix, 'cuz unless you have scads of running room, getting your trains 30" higher is not going to be easy. Consider esthetics; do you merely want stacked decks or shelves, or will you blend it all together in a big mountain scene?
I guess I could have specified a few parameters. the total layout room is 9x11. on one side I have a closet that is aprx 19 inches deep. I plan on using this closet along with a little extra space out to make my helix between levels. the basic helix on outward apparance will be a huge bottom layout to top of layout mountain. I am planning on access to the helix for poss derailments. the main two decks will be around the wall layout using the rest of the room. the door opens inside, so I plan on using a swing gate on the bottom deck and duck under on the top. I will try and post a picture of the layout space when I get home from work tonight.
What size curves are you going to run on the helix? Im thinking about doing a helix as well. So I would like to see what size you are going with.
I think that your upper deck is way too high. My upper deck is 56" high and I need a step stool to work on the rear side of the upper shelf ( I am 6’ 4" tall with a 36" sleeve length). This puts my lower deck at 32" above the floor with 24" between rail heads. 24" - 4" (shelf thickness) is plenty of room on the lower deck.
The other “problem” that you face is how to get trains between the two levels. Figure a maximum of 2 % grades and you will need 150’ of track just to change levels. I ended up using just short of 100’ of track to change levels 24". Watch out for the radius of curves in your climbing loops. I used 20" (all hidden in a mountain) and 18" radius curves in my climbing loops. Since I run all small steam, the 18" radius is acceptable. However, 18" radius curves (on the level) put almost a much “drag” on a train as a straight 2 % grade; combine 2% grade and 18" radius curves, and you may have a problem. I did extensive testing (with actual trains) while building my climbing loops just to make sure that everything would work as expected. I ended up using slightly over 2 % grade on the straight runs and under 2 % on the curves just to make sure that my trains could make the grade OK.
The following link will lead you to pictures and explanations of my layout.
I had almost the same deisgn issues with my layout room. I have some good construction photos showing the lower level, helix, and upper level. I could e-mail them to you or maybe someone can help me figure out how to post them?
Marty
Here dude they have a step by step here on the forums.
OK, I think I’ve figured out how to post an image. This shows the two levels of my layout with the helix in a closet that connects them. 18" radius track creates a steep helix of about 4% grade (assuming you keep the roadbed thin), and the curve creates an even steeper equivalent grade. I don’t have much trouble with 6-7 car trains, but I’m running Shays.
Marty
That was the other problem I was going to point out. With an 18" radius curve and 3" clearance above the rail to the bottom of the supports aove it provides for a steep (4% at least) grade on a helix. I have seem pictures of an elongated helix-basically ovals rather than circles, but they take up even more room. I also think your distance between decks are a bit much. If you plan carefully in construction you could probably get by with 12" which is a squeeze. I have a section of double deck planned with 15" between the layers. I want to use the nolix concept of getting my rise to the second deck by having a gradual grade around the room to get the height. Tweet
I have a double deck layout and the criteria I set for separating the two decks was that I wanted to be able to view the whole of the lower deck without having to bend over to see the back it. This meant the separation was dependent on the width and thickness (at the front) of the upper deck. Ideally the upper deck should be about chin to eye level in hight. However for practical reasons, such as been able to reach the rearmost track it may need to be lower. In my case the upper deck was 30 inches in width and to see the complete lower deck it had to be 22 inches below the upper deck. Note the upper deck is 5 inches thick.
Here’s my own solution for getting between two decks:
I call it “The behomoth helix.” It’s six tiers, with five inches between railheads, for a total climb of 30 inches. It isn’t quite finished yet (one and a smidgeon tiers to go), but you get the idea. The bottom layout deck has several levels of track, and adding in the thickness of the top deck structure, I’ll have about 20" of clearance for scenery and structures on the lower deck.
I like to run steam, so to haul a decently long train the smallest radius in the helix is 36", with 24" of straight between each semi-circle of track. This gives me 274 inches of travel for each tier, for a grade of about 1.8%. Trains easily handle the grade.
Here’s a couple of links to more info on the helix on my website:
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com/Construction%20Progress.htm
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com/CM%20-%20Behemoth%20Helix.htm
All I can say is WOW thats a very nice HELIX sir. You are running a 3 track main line? Id like to see Track plan for your layout if you are kind enuf to let some of us drool.
Thanks again and great work.
Thanks for the kind words, gottaB.
The mainline is single track, but it runs up and down the helix on the two inner tracks on it’s trip around the room. The third track out is a connecting line from a lower-deck staging loop and junction point to the connection to the mainline on the upper level. The fourth track, the outermost one, is a branch line from the upper deck to a level halfway between the upper and lower decks, and located away from the two decks.
Here’s a link to the trackplan page of my website:
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com/track%20plan.htm
There have been a few changes to the plan, which are detailed on other pages of the web site, but I haven’t taken the time to update the main track plan on the site yet.
Gentlemen, I’m a “new”,“old railroader”. Been model railroding since '58 but my last layout was in '84. Now I’m retired and want to get back in it. I was interested in this forum because I have some questions about distance between decks, when the bottom one is used only for staging.
Brunton. With all do respect and I do mean “respect”, your helix looks like more work than I care to challenge myself to. I simply want to know what is the minimum amount of inches I should figure for a lower dack and still be able to retrieve cars from a 10 track deep staging yard? 10 inches? 12? 8?
Sorry to interupt your “trains” of thought.
KCTRRWOLF
With 10 tracks you’ll be reaching roughly two feet in, allowing two inches between tracks and a couple inches to the front of the benchwork. I’d shoot for 12 inches clearance if you can manage that much. You might be able to get away with 10 inches clearance, but I’d think that would be tight. I think 8 inches would be nearly impossible - you’d have a great chance of knocking something off the adjacent tracks as you tried to retrieve / rerail something in the back.
Best plan - get a couple of pieces of two-foot foam board and try them out at different separations. That would give you the best idea as to what is acceptable to you, and you can use the foam later for scenery.
I see this question a lot, especially on the Layout Design Special Interest Group forum.
Like many things in the hobby, there is no one best answer … so the answer is: it depends. [swg]
First, deck separation depends on how high the decks are from the floor – in other words it depends on layout height. And of course, optimum layout height depends on how tall you are.
Here’s how I express optimum layout height:
- From your belly button to the bottom of your brest bone – this gets things up close enough you can see them, but low enough you can see over multiple tracks (important in a yard, for example).
As you can see, there is no one best height, because we all come in different sizes. [swg]
For a club, the best you can do is pick some “average Joe” member and use him to set your heights.
Unfortunately, with multideck designs (except the mushroom, which is why I prefer this particular multideck configuration over all others), neither deck can be at optimum height, so you must compromise. Here’s how the compromises work out:
Lowest recommended deck height: bottom of your rump (if you go much lower, it will become hard to even get under the benchwork to work on it.)
Highest recommended deck height: bottom of your chin (if you go any higher, you wont be able to see over front tracks to see if there’s anything on back tracks.)
The farther you separate the two decks of a multiple deck layout, the more helix tiers you will need to get between decks. Each helix tier of a 30- 36" radius helix (in HO) contains almost a third of a scale mile of track, and every 4 inches of separation between decks adds another tier. A 24" tall helix will contain almost two scale miles of track and could easily be the longest part of your layout with the trains spending more time in the helix than on any other visible part of the layout.
So the closer you can get the two decks the better. A separation of 8" is the absolute minimum to allow you to get your hands in
Three inches rail head to rail head, Joe? [%-)] That’s pretty tight spacing! You’d have to use some pretty thin sub-roadbed / roadbed to make that work (in HO, anyway)!
I use 4 1/2 inches. That gives me four inches subroadbed top to subroadbed bottom between tiers (subroadbed is 1/2" plywood), giving about 3 1/2 inches clearance over the rail head, based on my 1/4" cork and the track thickness. That’s none too spacious when I have to reach between tiers to vacuum construction debris off a lower tier (sawdust, drill chips, etc.).
Thanks guys. That’s a big help. Using the foam is a great idea. I’ll go get some tomorrow! I thought I knew a lot of the answers until I really started drawing the track layout to scale, then it became a bit more difficult. Trying to keep a maximum 2% grade in a 33 foot long shelf type space is harder than it looks. Thanks again.
PS. What’s with the clock. If its 3:10 am I need to be in bed for my beauty rest.