I thought I’d draw out what a straight yard would look like. I don’t mind cropping your table since it is arbitrary. You could scruch it a little if you weren’t using fixed track.
I’ve been working on that idea all night Chip, and while I like what it does for the yard, it exacerbates my reach issues too much.
After doing some measuring, I can reach 32" without leaning at 40" table height, and if I lean and stand on my toes, I can reach all the way to the back wall, 42", if I have to.
So the plan now is I’ll build the yard more like you suggested, although still with a kink in it, but I’ll only kink the mains and A/D track. The yard will stay a stub, but also be disguised as industrial tracks in the city area.
Also, I think I can put in a reversing track.
Oh, and fwiw, most of the track will be flex track when I build it… the fixed size tracks are only there for easy planning in RTS.
I like the curved yard much better. It is so much more interesting to have a flock of cars on a gentle curve than to have them on parallel straight tracks. Case in point, the cover of this months MR (Feb 1007). Love that curve of cars.
Why? If you put one in then a second will probably be desired to reverse it the other way.
I agree, the curved yard was cool looking and more organic. But this new way I cut down on turnouts and space usage. The whole left side of the table was beginning to look like nothing but yard with industries and a 5 finger stub yard.
The reversing crossover is just so I can turn engines, not entire trains. It’s my concession to the desire for that flexibility, but not wanting the (possible?) complexity of a turntable to maintain.
So without further ado, here’s the new layout:
Purple buildings are industries… lower left will be my grain elevator (on a siding/interchange track), far right on top of the hill the coal mine and a general goods warehouse. The city loop interior industries are looking like a brewery & bottling plant, another general goods warehouse, and 1-2 that could be a papermill, railroad tie industry and/or a baking soda / flour producing plant (not sure what you’d call that). Other area industries on the long list include pharmaceutical plant, aluminum plant or chemical plant.
Yellow is the station
Light blue is icing
Blue is water tower
Black the coaling station
Red a repair shed next to the RIP track
(not shown) but also on the reverse crossover which mascarades as an engine servicing track will be diesel servicing.
None of the building locations are to scale yet, and the industries’ track and placement is still very fluid until I get some actual buildings.
Now is the time to do some research. What works with the track may not work with the buildings/ I found that out by accident. I assumed I was seeing the dimensions correctly. I tried to place a structure I saw on eBay based on it’s footprint and found I wasn’t even close. I then checked the structures I had already built and the model I had not yet build and found I had to make more room.
I think you may need to do that as well.
Yeah, I think its time I started nailing down exactly what I want in there and get some real dimensions. Back to the Walthers Catalog 
Ok, here it is… the pretty much almost final draftish type layout
(I realized I was doing relief maps backwards previously… lighter colors mean higher elevation!)
Dimensions are 96" <->, 78" topmost to bottom-most, 42" depth on the left side. The legs of the triangle cutout in the upper right are 24".
Don’t take this the wrong way, because everything you are doing is moving you in a forward direction. You are trying to do too much and in doing so, you are limiting what you can do. On your mountain side you have 5 tracks going across it. Ideally, you want one track crossing that scene. Sometimes that is not possible, but tunnels help. Now how do we get you from here to the layout that reaches your highest potential.
You have way too much track. I believe the reasoning is–The more places you can go, the more variety I am creating. You have an active mind and as such no matter how much track you have, running the routes will get old.
In other words, you will grow in the hobby as you build this layout. You want the layout to support that growth and not limit it. Ideally, you want the layout to be designed at a level higher than you will be when the construction is finished. This layout will take you quite a while to build and other than help you learn layout building skills has little to teach you.
So the next step is for you to fine tune your knowledge of who you are as a model railroader. If you have not done so, read Track Planning for Realistic Operation by John Armstrong. If you have already read it, read it again. In addition, reread my “Spacemouse’s Beginner’s Guide to Layout Design”
One key to helping you with this layout is doing a schematic of your layout. This will show you the basics structure of you layout. The schematic for the Rock Ridge and Train City is:
(Actually I forgot the dotted line connecting the beginnings of the two staging yards for the completion of my loop.)
And here’s my layout design so you don’t have to jump back to look.
Goods and services flow back and forth from Sacramento and Virginia City and the towns on my layout re
Stop the presses!
Ok, you’ve had me thinking all day yesterday and today about different ways to get more on the board.
I think I’m going to work out a 2 level stacked dogbone layout. One upper loop, one lower, and leave room to squeeze farther into the corner of the L so I can reach all of the layout rather than just half of it.
I took the liberty of throwing together a plan based upon our discussions. This plan provides a lot of operational action and somewhat of a variety in railfanning. It is way short of completion, rather see it as a draft.
Features:
Small yard–yard lead shared with power plant. AD/Track shared with coal mine.
Industrial Switching
Double Main
Coal Mine/ Power Plant–empties of the power plant are taken to the coal mine for filling and full coal taken to power plan. Because the two are connected, you can do this all day.
Large staging–this allows you to vary the trains you will breakdown in the yard and service the industries. A couple people could work all day and not get the switch list complete. Then you just shuffle the car cards and you have a whole new operation that can take all day. It also allows you to set up several trains for railfanning. With the double main you can set a coal drag going one way and an Amtrak going the other. You could even put a third train running on the inner loop if you wanted.
I like it… very inspiring.
It wasn’t until I looked closely at your rendition of the coal mine, power plant trick that it finally dawned on me that you don’t run the engine through the hidden track, you just push the cars through from the other side! Now its such a beatiful thing!
Anyway, here’s my cross between the double dogbone I was doing and yours. What do you think? Lower level is the big yard and some city industry, on top is a smaller industrial town, and I’ve finally snuck in some hidden staging
Lower:
Upper:
What do you think?
They always look good on paper, but never quite pan out in real life. I operate on three layouts that have this feature and it doesn’t really add anything operationally. In fact the opposite. All three places have had to add special access panels so the cars can be easily accessed. It is probably where most derailments occur on the entire layout. Usually the only people in attendance are the operators who don’t really care if a car looks like it is loaded or not. The only time I could see this feature being of value is where one is doing a muesum type operation or where one was trying to show off to some really observant people. Most people don’t even notice that there are trains that have some full and empty cars, let alone that the same car goes into/out of a mine with the same load or lack there of.
It is definitely beginning to get a more heavy eastern railroading flavor to it. The uppermost track on the center “yard” is too short to buy much. The turnout and foul point reduce the capacity of the one track by one or two cars, and it only adds two cars capacity…
Thanks Zephyr, I’ll rework the yard to be more space efficient.
Hmmm… fitting in a runaround and getting more space out of those yard fingers is proving very difficult. I think I’ve got room for another couple inches on the end the way its drawn now though, and I can curve them gently, to get a little more worth out of that 4th finger.
Ok, improved and even expanded the yard. What do you think?
The two tracks leading to the upper half will separate a bit and I think the one closer to the wall will disappear into a tunnel for a bit to help hide staging more and break up the two tracks paralleling each other.
I’ve started work on benchwork finally too… I can’t wait to have trains running!
Whoa, I think you are moving too fast. But if you feel you have to, go ahead.
My thinking is that you are too anxious. In a well planned layout, every track should have a purpose. When you have more than one track going to a location the reason should be that the traffic is too heavy for just a single line. But, if that is not the case, a railroad would never spend the money to make more than one line. You have 3 tracks circling your layout where two would do the job. If it were a doubled mainline to allow bi-directional traffic, that is one thing, but yours shuck and jibe side to side.
This is a big project that will suck up a lot of your time and money. The better you plan, the less like you will build yourself into a blind alley. Think like a railroad. No extra track. Every track serves a purpose.
Plan all you buildings, access roads, landscape. Do you have room to landscape properly between grade changes? Between buildings and track?
When it’s done, how will it look? How can you achieve solutions to visual problems?
Have you come up with a plan or have thrown something together so you can get on with building?
At the very least, add tracks to your staging. You’ll kick yourself later if you don’t. Every so often there is a thread about “Mistakes I’ve made.” Perhaps the most common is, not having enough staging.
There you are!
I’ve been waiting for you to reply
It is doubled mainline… for bi-directional traffic up and down the hill to “Uptown” from “Lowtown”. There just happens to be a loop up top that connects them. Although I do plan to send the “up” direction track through a tunnel on its way up the mountainside to break up the image of just being a track going up and a track coming back down, and add some perceived distance to the trip. But on the lower end, it gives the appearance of a double mainline and junction with the other loop (through staging), which represents the PRR connection to the rest of the world.
Again, I understand the thinking here, but I don’t want a point to point layout, nor a loop to loop that has to be switched manually or automatically every circuit. Even a basic oval has the extra track that connects one end to the other.
I’ve spent every spare moment the last 3+ weeks planning, researching, replanning, drawing, erasing and redrawing. Heck, this thread is evidence of much of it but you should see the “Layouts” folder under the RTS folder on my computer, or the ream or so of paper I’ve got laying around with notes and scribbles I have no illusions that my layout is the optimal use of the space for X operations or Y-sized trains or Z prototypical railroad. But I do think its a good mix of what I want to see and be able to do, and if I don’t build it, I’ll never learn which bits I like most.
Maybe I should’ve listed some of the druthers and givens, but they’re all floating around in my head quite clearly, as is my vision of this layout… moreso than any of the other previous plans. But they include:
Continuous operation of 2+ trains (completly hands off), elevation change with a hand-built trestle, a decent-sized yard for train building (10 or so cars min), a tunnel or two, and at lea
Good. You have a strong sense of purpose.
I have two questions and a challenge.
What is the purpose of the two stubbed tracks on the right?
Why two short connected yards?
In any layout, certain things determine other things. For instance, available space determines size of the layout. Will your layout work within the framework below? This is one of the mistakes I made with my first layouts.
Road name narrows location.
Location determines landscape and industry.
Industry is limited by scratch-building skills and available models.
Available models determine space requirements and trackage needs. (Be sure to include access roads and support structures.)
Layout design must meet trackage needs.
Did you miss my first post with two pictures, right after your layout suggestions? The stub tracks lead to the upper level of the layout here:
I didn’t have room for one large yard fed from one track, but did have room for the 2 short, and it allowed me to create the runaround. I thought it was a creative solution, if not entirely prototypical. I can’t fit a whole train in any of the stubs anyway.
And it all should fit according to RTS… mainline min radius is 13.75", down to 11.25" in tight spots on sidings and 10" in one spot.
Edit: It just dawned on me that if you missed the upper level thing, then you probably see a reversing loop with siding in the lower right that’s really an implementation of the coal mine/power plant pass through idea you used.
Okay, I guess I missed the part about the upper level.
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You have three reverse loops. They can be handled, but be aware that you must isolate them and provide for reversing polarity. The coal mine must be on the lower right side, right?
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If the yard doesn’t work, do something else. It is the center of your layout. You want something that looks really good there.