Hello!
First time post here, been lurking for a while and have learned a few things and seen some cool stuff.
I am in the planning stages for an N scale layout to be built in my yet to be converted attic. It will be based on the area around Tower 55 in downtown Fort Worth, Tx. I live just a couple of miles from it and take my kids there and in places near it often to watch trains. My plan as of now only includes a few miles north and west of the tower. Included in that would be the tower, some local industries and some smallish yards with the exception of UP’s Centennial Yard, which in real life is miles long. I only plan to model parts of it and use part of it as staging. Motive power is greatly varied, including UP, BNSF and all theier mergers’ power as well as foreign power from CSX, NS, CN and leased power. There is a lot of East-West Intermodal and North-South coal and grain. I believe it would make an interesting layout and research is easy, It’s only a 10 minute drive! I do have some concerns though.
My questions mainly involve operation. I’ve never run anything on a large layout ( I had a hollow-core door layout when I was about 12 and never finished it) so I don’t really have any expierence in running trains, so my concerns are:
There will be no stops in towns and cities, because it is all in one city. Most trains will either be built in yards and run off into staging without much action in between. Some locals do some switching in town, and there are transfers between yards that in real life are only a few miles or less apart… Will not having long hauls make ops boring? There are limited industries in town but enough to do some switching. Most switching will be in yards.
Will having 4 or 5 yards so close be trouble? I know they take up a lot of space, but other than Centennial, they will only be a few tracks wide.
I’m sure I have more ?'s but can’t think of any. I would like any and all comments and critiques of
Looks interesting. But I don’t know much about how the railroad scene around tower 55 is arranged. But It could be built into an interesting arrangement.
Sounds like an interesting concept. One thing that might be nice, if you can find a way to do it, would be a way to have a way for trains to turn at both the east and west ends of the line.
One possible way of doing this would be to have a big loop as your main with a double ended yard hidden as east west staging. This would allow you a continuous run possibility. What you have drawn, is very cool and a good representation of reality, but it has no “flow” and seems choppy. On the other hand, that may be what you want.
Remember, no matter what anyone says, it’s your railroad, and you are the one who needs to be happy.[;)]
Welcome to the two way conversations. The plan looks interesting for switching opperations, but like Big Boy, I like to see trains run and a loop does that.
I don’t have problems with the yards being clost together and if breaking up and buidling trains is your thing and you enjoy it then hey. If you are not sure, you have virtually no variety built into your plan.
Even so, I find a couple problems. Even though you have named your yards, you have no space to create scenes to make these areas come alive. In other words you are not building a model railroad so much as you are setting up areas to play with trains. Your yards blend together instead of representing separate places.
Perhaps you could solve this by putting up dividers, but that only solves the division of space not the lack of space for structures.
Ultiimately, I think the the lack of variety and lack of structure space will box you into a corner and what you end up with is track on plywood without form.
i realize now that I should have explained the picture a little better, its pretty rough still. The top staging area will be mostly hidden, actually I’m going to try to hide all the staging, but still kepp it accesible. just have to fini***he drawing Also the thick green line between groups of tracks is the scene divider. I’d like to keep the depth of each scene around a foot deep and use double sided backdrops. also the room size is about 12’x30’, with most of the layout in about 20-22’ of the 30’
as far as the loops at the ends of staging, that was a serious consideration, just haven’t drawn it in yet. It was either that or turn engines around by hand, which I did not want to do.
As far as scnenery space, I want to use flats mostly and take good pictures of the scenes i want to do and edit them into a seamless flow. I can do a wide format print of that at work (I’m a signmaker) for the back drop.
what would you do as far as the choppiness? in my head it’s smoother, as I feel I can work out the kinks once the benchwok is built. should i ditch the whole “one city” thing and stretch the mainline runs? there’s just so much stuff to model in such a short distance on the real thing. everything on my drawing is probably around 7 miles in real life, by doing this, i could model accurately and not have to compress much
The issue I see is what are the yards’ functions? Are some speciality yards or do you plan to do the same thing with each? I ask this because otherwise this will become very repetitive. My personal suggestion is to choose one or 2 of these yards, model them to closer to their actual size, and give good mainline space in between.
one called peach yard is small and holds mostly covered grain hoppers for the purina mills “dog food” plant. ney yard at the south end runs locals and centennial yard is a huge classification yard. most trains run through the smaller yards so it would’t be like i was moving the train 5 feet and switching it all up again. what i thought wold be using the smaller yards at the north and south ends as staging made to look like yards and then would not have to be hidden. also trains can be held at the tower while others pass, so that could be sort of staging. most trains there run under 20mph as they clear the tower, so the short distances would seem longer.
My concern with your track plan/layout design is that it looks too ambitious for a first adult try. Some layouts can be hard to maintain. I would suggest you first try something more managable. You would be far better off to complete something smaller and get some experience before going for the attic empire. Yours looks like it would be easy to become overwhelmed with and just to quit. I’m building my third layout and have a much better idea what I like and what mistakes not to make. Once you have been in the hobby a while, what you want from a layout may change with experience. In fact, if you learn anything, it will change what you would do. You just don’t know until you get your hands on and get the feel of things. I prefer ground throw switches but when I first started I wanted all electric switches. I thought that a fellow I knew who was converting his electrical switches to ground throws was making a stupid mistake. By the way, he had more experience than I had at the time. Well now, years later, I’ve come around to his way of thinking and much prefer ground throw switches. No one could have convinced me any different, I had to learn for myself. I think you are biting off too much with too little experience.
mac you seem to be missing 2 railroads in your sceanrio amtrak and TRE perhaps i can come down some weekend and see what you actually have to work with and what you can do with your available space.
if i was doing something like this i would take numerous pics of purina jct tower ss maybe saginaw and for my local/transfe runs 4 axle emd units. also selectively compress the prototype into what you have to work with
I quite like the design, but one thing that springs to mind is that there’s no place for the trains to ‘go to’. Even having a hidden loop would be an improvement on the design. The space between yards seems relatively small, and would probably mean the trains, entering the next yard before completely exiting the last.