I am working on my first layout and looking for some feedback. I am doing a coal layout and adding industry that utilizes coal like an electricity facility. I am also looking to add grain industry as well. i have two extra industries to work with also. I have added a yard and engine facility to my layout. I feel like I can still add something to the space between the engine house and grain elevator but I am not sure. Do I have too much or too little? I wany my layout to make sense even though it is a ficticious layout. I am not modeling any era, just modern day. I will be running norfolk souther locos. The yellow area is 4x8 and the blue is a extesion that I will be adding for my coal tipple.
Also, I left room on my track for expansions when I get to that point. Any feedback is appreciated.
Click the link below to view my layout. I am new to trains.com and the forum so I don’t know if the link to my picture works. Keep me posted.
I am the last person to be giving advice on track plans as mine isn’t even close to being finalized, but 2 things I noticed about yours is:
the track on the 8’ sides seems to be right on the edge of the layout. In fact in some spots it even runs off. Running right on the edge of the layout could be disasterous in the case of a derailment.
You seem to be putting a bit too much in a small space. if you fill the entire space with yards/engine facilities/industry spurs it gives you more operation possibilities but you’ll have little room for any kind of scenery or structures of any kind.
If you haven’t already installed the round house, a couple of thoughts. Since you are doing a modern layout, a more modern engine servicing facility without the turntable would take less space. You could have a couple of loco storage tracks close to it for extra locos. If you want a turntable, because you want a turntable, it’s your railroad, do it.
In the area between the engine facility and the grain elevator could be a hill to seperate the two and make your layout look larger.
It looks like a neighborhood that would tolerate a hog processing plant with few if any complaints from whining citizens. The stock pens would be smaller than those for cattle and modeling a mud wallow could be a challenge. It could also be moved downwind and out of town out by the coal mine later if civic rabble rousers made the stench an issue. I was considering such an industry for my layout when I came across your post. I enjoy fictitious RRs because it allows the owner/operator to make up their own history, characters, trials and tribulations for that little world. A hog plant fits mine and maybe yours as well. I like your layout which appears to me to be perhaps the industrial end of town (the town could be little more than a photo backdrop). If that is the case then you couldn’t overcrowd it with industries- they generally use every square yard of space and make eye catching prototypical cluttered scenes.
It looks like a neighborhood that would tolerate a hog processing plant with few if any complaints from whining citizens. The stock pens would be smaller than those for cattle and modeling a mud wallow could be a challenge. It could also be moved downwind and out of town out by the coal mine later if civic rabble rousers made the stench an issue. I was considering such an industry for my layout when I came across your post. I enjoy fictitious RRs because it allows the owner/operator to make up their own history, characters, trials and tribulations for that little world. A hog plant fits mine and maybe yours as well. I like your layout which appears to me to be perhaps the industrial end of town (the town could be little more than a photo backdrop). If that is the case then you couldn’t overcrowd it with industries- they generally use every square yard of space and make eye catching prototypical cluttered scenes.
Make a drawing of the room the layout will go into, showing the location of doors, windows and other objects the layout will have to co-exist with.
A 4x8 foot layout will need at least 8 x 10 feet of available floor space to allow access to both front and rear of the layout while working on the layout and while running trains. It can be on wheels and be pushed into a corner when you are not working on it or running it, but you still need to have the space available for when you run on it.
The combination of H0 scale and modern times with a continuous run loop on a 4x8 foot table, is often problematic for these reasons:
modern railroads tend to run longer trains (especially when dealing with bulk shipments like coal)
modern diesel locomotives tend to be bigger than older diesel engines
modern freight cars tend to be longer than older freight cars
the longer the engine and pieces of rolling stock the wider curves you need
Rule of the thumb:
Minimum radius for assured reasonable functioning while running: 3 x length of longest car/engine
Minimum radius for easy automatic coupling: 5 x length of longest car/engine
H0 scale loop on 4 foot deep table → Maximum radius 22"
3x: cars should be less than 7" long (H0 scale: less than 60 foot, N scale: less than 90 foot cars)
5x: cars should be less than 4.4" long (H0 scale: 30 foot cars, N scale: less than 60 foot cars)
I would recommend seriously considering going to N scale if your desire is running longish modern coal trains.
N scale would also allow a smaller layout footprint if you want to have a loop of track on a rectangular table - it is doable to have a 30-32" deep loop of N scale track on a table pushed up against a wal
Thanks, I actually have about an inch of space on the 8’ sides. The design software takes it to the edges but I acutally have enough room on the sides. That is what I have been toying with, I had a little suburban scene in the middle of the layout before but didnt think I had enough operations so I changed and added the yard and engine house. I could put the neighborhood scene back and build an extension to support a yard and engine house.