Have any of you ever built a layout for a specific locomotive ?. I have a friend that did several years ago when he bought a U.P. Bigboy that required wide curves. About the only thing I’ve ever done that compares to that is I once had to alter the curves on my layout to handle a U.P. Challenger which I didn’t keep for very long due to the fact that I prefer smaller locos as I stated in another discussion topic that I wrote earlier tonight.
Tracklayer
I always do [swg]
The layouts I plan and build (well, sometimes) are micro-layouts with one train operating on them, so the type of loco determins the size of the layout.
No,but,I built layouts for specific types of non-connected industry buildings.
That may sound easy enough but,its not if you want industries and track in a believable and prototypical environment.
Anyone who has the space to construct wider curves to accommodate a U.P. Bigboy ought to do so even if that monster steamer is never purchased. Everything just looks better and runs better on wider curves.
Rich
No, I have never BUILT a layout for a specific locomotive, but I have designed several. One specifically comes to mind, the ubiquitous 4-6-0 running into the early 1960s. Common on Petticoat Junction type short lines, I designed a version of Georgia’s Lousiville & Wadley railroad.
Another is the fabulous Colorado & Southern E5. It pulled the Texas Zephyr through Colorado, so I did a layout featuring the station in Trinidad Colorado where the TZ could get its last station stop in before heading south to Texas.
I’m building a short line based on Justifying two Harriman coaches in Pennsylvania.
I didn’t design my layout for one specific locomotive. I designed two separate parts for two very different kinds of operation.
The first thing I did (about 10 years before I acquired my current space) was build a test spiral and run every locomotive and car I owned into it, in every reasonable and unreasonable combination (short four-wheel box van between a 20 meter auto rack and a 20 meter JNR-standard container carrier…) to determine the minimum radius for the entire roster. Actually, I determined two minimum radii. One, 610mm (24 inches) will handle every piece of rolling stock I own (including a couple of 2-Co+Co-2 motors which are my least cooperative units.) The other, 350mm (14 inches minus) is embargoed to almost everything JNR except four wheel wagons, but all of my ancient teakettle tank locos and those cars designed for mountain goat duty can all go down to 12 inches or less. You can imagine my surprise and delight when I found that the old Mantua (widened Uintah) 2-6-6-2T could also wrap itself around the flagpole.
So, when the space presented itself, I had the data I needed to size Armstrong squares, and I was off to the (turtle) races…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Yes, I have. When I was a kid, I longed for a Rivarossi Big Boy and Cab Forward. I was able to afford the C.F. but not anything else aside from Tyco/Mantua, etc. When I started building my present layout, I knew that I could “finally” afford a nice Big Boy and other articulated road engines for my through trains, so I used 30" radius curves on the mainline when a friend redrew my published plan for me.
I mostly run Mikes and similarly sized steam and several F7s, but the drive to have the ability to run the larger engines was at the top of the “druthers” list for me. In an 8’X17.5’ room 30" was the best I could do. My Big Boy is Athearn Genesis and the Cab Forwards are the Rivarossi and two BLI AC-4/5s.
Jim
Sort of.
When I got back in to the hobby in a new scale (HO) I had designed all my curves to be 28" minimum. Just as I was starting construction I was learning all about brass steam and after talking to guy’s like Tom White and others on this forum learned I better have 30" minimum curves if I wanted to run brass. So I added some padding and my mainline curves are in the 32" to 34" range. I had to give up some things I wanted on the layout going with the larger radius, however I got some back when I discovered curved turnouts. Wonderful things curved turnouts.[(-D]
I think I would give some more things up for an even larger radius in my curves as I think they really do look a whole lot better. But that’s for my next layout after we move, down the road.
My dad was avid collector of brass articulateds in several scales, thus the layouts we constructed were designed for same…Now my currrect interest is modeling in S scale, with those articulateds stored away due to my interest in branchline operations using my two M class moguls and single C-4 2-8-0.
Dave
That’s what I’m doing right now, I love my SP&S E7A so much that I’m going to spend a good 50% of my layout work time on the track so she runs flawlessly.