Hello. This is kind of an introduction, with a bit of question tossed in for good measure.
My father was a lifelong devotee of HO model railroading. Though I never caught his bug for running trains, I’ve always had high interest in scenery and structures. Following several years’ layoff, I’ve recently purchased IHC’s five Painted Ladies (house) kits, and I’m looking forward to working some magic on them in terms of detailing and weathering. I’ve also got my eyes on some other pieces for kitbashing. And, I’m keen to scratchbuild a model of our county’s 1890s-era courthouse.
Having said all this, I’m catching a bit of the layout bug. As it happens, I’m reasonably adept with Microsoft Visio and I’ve started making various track stencils for use in layout planning. Has anyone else done this and, if so, to what success? I’ve done some quick internet searches (here too), and I’m coming up empty. Track stencils are easy to create and use, and Visio seems like an excellent tool for this application. Any thoughts?
I sure do love this forum. It definitely beats the days of checking the mailbox each day for the latest editions of MR and RMC as the only sources of model railroad news and chitchat.
On the surface, Visio would seem useful for this, but I think as you dig into it you will find it less so. For sectional track I think you could make it work. As soon as you throw in flex track I think you run into a heap of trouble. At least in my opinion. I was wrong once, though!
There are alternatives, even free ones. Atlas has a free program (RTS, I think). I have never used it, but some people do with success. I use XTrkCAD, the website is http://www.sillub.com You can get the actual download through the Yahoo! Group or at Winsite (there is a link on the Sillub page), search the site for STrkCad. The instructions to register it (for free) are on the Sillub site. It is a bit unintuiteve at first, but if you do the tutorial you’ll figure it out. It only produces 2-D drawings, but it does allow you to put elevations on the tracks, and calculates grades, etc. There are several others not for free, I am not familiar enough with any of them to express an opinion.
Oh, and welcome! Good luck with the scratchbuilding. Once you start planning a layout post your ideas. There are some here you like to think about such things.
Perhaps you could share some of how to do this. I use Visio at work for all sorts of things but every time I’ve tried to do model railroad work with it seems to come up short. I used it for a dispatching board. Right now I need a rough track plan to use for power block schematic, but my first efforts have come up lacking.
Well, I’m a newbie here; so I ain’t gonna be a knowitall. I setup a blank page at a 1” = 1’ scale (but the scale isn’t critical). What I wanted to do was create 18- and 24-inch radii track sections for stencils, in addition to straight track sections. Once I was satisfied everything was married up, I imported the new icons into a blank stencil.
I’ve access to a 48” plotter at work and may convert the layout to full size when I’m ready to do some serious work. My basement is about 1200 sq feet, with about 3/4 available for layout. This is something I’ve been kicking around for, oh (cough) a few years. I’ve just finally reached a point in my life where I might be able to do something about it.
To be perfectly honest, I’m mostly interested in a mainline layout, but will probably add a switchyard and sidings to the mix. I grew up in the , and want to run GN stock with a freelance loosely based on the old SP&S.
I’ve got a lot of old time railroaders in my background. One of my grandfathers was a car builder in , along with two of his brothers. His uncle was an engineer with UP between 1880-1914 (one of his sons was Clarence Beard, one of UPs noted civil engineers during the 1920s-1940s). A great grandfather on another side was a telegrapher and station agent for MoPac from 1875-1910. I guess it runs in my blood.
[#welcome] Lynda … I would recomend the Atlas RTS software… it took me 15 mins to learn(although I am computer literate already, if that makes any difference) and it was very easy to use, it includes sectional as well as flex track options for the major manufacturers and allows you to place manufacturers structures to scale, you can also upload many extra’s… and all for free, it has a shallow learning curve and I found it very adequate. Give it a try, if its not what you need then you have lost nothing but a little time. www.atlasrr.com
Like you I enjoy the scenic and structural element, although I do need to have rails running through it to fit in with this bunch of great guys.
Thank you for the link. I downloaded and piddled for a few minutes. Kind of clunky, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for a few days. However, I’ve got to say that after using Visio for the past 12 years, it’ll take some convincing to get me away from my original approach.
Welcome Lynda. My opinion is use what you are comfortable with. I can’t say I’ve ever run across Visio, but I’m old fashioned anyway. I’m much better off with pencil and graph paper. [:D] As you’ll see from my signature, I am a rabid GN fan. Anyhow. welcome again. There are many good people here willing to offer assistance.
Since I have visio for business related prints, I decided to try it for designing layouts.
I’ve designed two medium/large ones (29 foot x 16 foot room) using visio and homemade stencils. It worked fine for me but there was some time involved in getting turnouts to the right sizes and angles. As for curves, I just made two full circles of inner and outer rail diameter, added a few ties, then combined and cut out half quarter and eighth circles. There is no automatic adjustment of flex track, but who needs that with a well designed layout. You can see where things need to go and which radius to use in most cases. Straight track is easy. Make a short piece, save a stencil then place two of them and combine. Then save that as another stencil. Repeat the process. I used 1", 2" and multiples of 3" for the most part. You can also stretch a shorter one but the ties will stretch too.
I also could have made single line stencils but the double line versions looked better to me and showed actual track width.
Remember to use layers - ie: I used benchwork, main line, mtn line, main yard, industry sidings, water, contour lines, etc. each on its own stencil. this allows you to turn off which ones you see and print to avoid too much clutter. Layers can also have color. The only caveat is to know which layer a new piece will snap to. Sometimes it’s not the expected one when you are in a hurry.
Visio is a great tool generally with a moderate learning curve.
If you like it, keep using it and you will love it. Well, at least I did.
There is no automatic adjustment of flex track, but who needs that with a well designed layout.
There are uses that will be a pain (not saying impossible). You will almost certainly end up stretching pieces. You won’t be able to draw easements. And you probably will want to, especially if you are going to use a nice full sized plot to work on. I haven’t used RTS, but I learned enough XTrkCad to use it in just a few hours. And the elevation tool saves lots of math and measurement. But, use what you are comfortable with.
The challenge with using any general drawing program or CAD program is that the location of points, frogs, diverging angles, etc. on turnouts must be very carefully drawn into the templates if the design is to fit into a critical area. Small errors in templates accumulate when many copies of the template are used. If there are no tight spots on the design (yeah, right!) then it’s less critical.
A year or so ago, someone posted a drawing on a forum which had a huge yard drawn with a general-purpose program. It clearly would not have worked as drawn because his templates only consider the diverging angle and not the space required for frog, points, etc. When I pointed this out he was quite offended and haughtily told me that he was an expert with the program and I was an idiot. Months later, he posted a revised drawing with the number of turnouts vastly reduced – turns out they hadn’t fit in on the benchwork since his templates were wrong to begin with.
The railroad-specific CAD programs have their own limitations, but most of them have fairly accurate templates.
Lynda, I have to agree with what Karl stated. You will have problems when it comes to putting down turnouts and flex track alignments.
While it is great that you have 12 years of Visio experience and are comfortable with that in creating drawings, I had used Visio off and on for the past 7 years. It is a great tool for floor plans, network diagrams, and work flows, but for accurate model railroad track plans it might be lacking.
My personal choice is 3RD PlanIT software. http://www.eldoradosoft.com/ And while it has not been updated in a few years, it does create accurate drawings of commercially available turnouts, sectional track, and flex track. It has an hugh learning curve up front, but once you get the hang of it, the drawings are extremely accurate.
Check out my Piedmont link below my signature, there is a link to my web site with two images of my layout drawings.
I’m not sure why anyone would get upset over advice not to use Visio for this. Several very good reasons have been pointed out for not using it, and given the overwhelming amount of experience present on this forum, a person would have to be a complete dufus not to listen.
Having said that, I’m still in the preliminary planning and brainstorming phase. I’ll continue to use Visio to “sketch” potential track plans, but in the interim, I’ll investigate different applications intended for the purpose.
Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to respond to my question.
What’s this all about! Stop being reasonable! How can we get a good flame war going if you listen to what people say???
I think Visio can certainly be used for the kind of brainstorming you are talking about, and for that purpose it might even work better than a “real” track planning program, since you might be able to keep things more abstract. Do you have John Armstrong’s book Track Planning for Realistic Operation? I’m thinking you might be able to make up templates for what fits in his “squares” to make up a good abstraction of what you are looking to do, without using too many brain cells to do it. Also, I don’t remember who to credit for this, but there is a concept of Layout Design Elements that might fit into this line of thinking.
I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with…
It’s more of a challenge for me than you might imagine. I work about 120 miles away from the house I own. Having gotten really tired of dodging deer on dark country roads for four hours every day, I decided to rent an apartment. Consequently, my solution is to design and construct a modular layout that I can build in one location and assemble in another. Happily, I’m pretty good with a variety of stationary and portable power tools.
Generally, my approach has been to create a scale grid map (similar to a standard military map with 1000-meter gridlines), complete with elevation lines. In effect, each elevation line will equal one inch of foam for vertical dimension.
I’ve been playing with terrain models as a starting point. Once I’m generally pleased with this,
That’s what is so great about this forum. The exchange of ideas and learning from others is just amazing!
I am sure that Visio is a great tool for getting started and putting down your model railroading ideas, track plans, etc… Getting your creative juices flowing out on any CAD type of program is a big help in visualizing the expected end result of getting those plans out of your head, then off of the paper print out and then into a reality of building a working model railroad.
BTW, welcome to the forum and keep us posted on your progress. [#welcome]