I hope you can tell from the drawing of my (someday will be) yard and passenger area what I’m asking about…
I think what I have is 2 righthand and 8 lefthand turnouts in the yard area, including ALL turnouts that you see here. I have one right and one left large Peco turnout for the passenger siding. Is that what you count? Turnouts are always designated left or right by… what?
Jarrell
I see 3 rights and 8 lefts for a total of 11 in the yard. But the way it is drawn a couple of those on the far left bottom could go either way.
No, there are also wye turnouts where both legs diverge at an angle.
The other measure is a number of how sharply they diverge. The smaller the number the sharper the divergence. A #4 is sharp and diverges quickly vs. a #12 that diverges slowly.
Let me try to rephrase that.
A turnout is designated left or right when you look at it as an engineer would if he were driving a loco up to it, facing it. Correct?
Hmmm… you get 3 rights? Ok, I’ll count again.
Thanks Texas for looking in!
Jarrell
Ah, now I understand. Yes.
For whatever it is worth, I count the same as Texas. I can’t quite make out the bottom left ones, either.
Guess I’ll put my shoes back on now.
Umm, I get four right and 8 left in the area that you show in the diagram…all possible turnouts.
Ok. In that bottom left side there is the one lefthand that ‘turns into’ the yard area. I guess you’d call it the throat.
and then the one righthand for the switcher siding and then 3 lefts for the yard itself.
Thanks for the reply!
Jarrell
JARRELL,JARRELL you are over thinking this,first:paint pink foam earth color,start laying track and see where it goes,Think about that!!If you want elevation do it on one end,and run track under it[^][:D]BEFORE
I needed a way to put coal in the loco’s,I just did it,now the awful ballest thinge my rule of thumb 3" in six foot,steap but easy.
JUST DO IT
JIM
“paint pink foam earth color,start laying track and see where it goes”…
Jim, just as soon as I get good and fed up with planning and stewing over it, that’s probably what I’ll do… [:p]
Jarrell
Jarrell. I’d advise exactly the opposite. Learn from MY mistakes the way I often refused to do from others. “just start laying track” is a good recipe for “end up with a layout that you don’t enjoy” or “have a lot of derailments” and even “start ripping up a lot of track.”
I did the “lay now, think later” method for my first 2 layouts, and ended up not only ripping up the track, but tearing down the whole layout. The first one was an exercise in derailments (due to poor planning and subsequent bad track ideas (s curves, etc) trying to compensate and make it operable. The second one simply wouldn’t work - I ended up ‘backing myself into a corner’ where I either had to have a 15" radius or have a basically unusable track plan…
On #3 I planned extensively and was much, much, much happier with the results. That layout and I shared 12 happy years together, and only parted company with the advent of a new house and 4x more space for trains…
I’d strongly urge you to plan, plan, plan before you build.
[tup][tup][tup]All you guys are right,but sometimes people over think things and build more into a simple problem than is needed.I allways have an basic idea,some times have to change things a little but most of the time comes out right,Am I making any sence here???[soapbox][2c][:-,][%-)][:)]
JIM
My answer? Somewhere in the middle. For the 8x12 portion I’ve done so far, I printed the plan full-size and laid it out on the foam and builton top of that. NEVER AGAIN! I’m developing a plan, but it will be more of a guideline than a tot he tenth track locator. The important thing is what will fit in your space. The drawn plan does that. But it’s too hard with the various CAD-type programs to draw in all those nice sweeping curves that make the main line look nice (or I’m just too lazy to do it), so on my plan it looks like the main is perfectly parallel to the wall. It won’t be.
So plan away, but at some point, you gotta start laying track. If you use a non-destructive method of fastening the track, such as latex caulk, it’s easy enough to pry up the track without damage if you change your mind, as I did when I decided to eliminate a siding. I removed two turnouts and a short piece of flextrack and reused it all but the flex (had no place for an inch and a half or so length custom fit to the original situation).
–Randy
That will be my next approach, Randy. I laid out the outline of my table on the basement cement floor using masking tape, then used the tape to simulate the track plan. It all looked good on the floor, curves were all good, etc, so I started the table and went from there. I knew ahead of time that I would be cutting some flex to fit where needed, and darned if’n that’s exactly how it went.
It is important to visualize the whole as an exercise. The elevations do need to be fairly close, but at some point, you WILL it all to work, and you find a way as a result. At some point you just place one foot forward and expect that the other will follow.
Get in there, Jarrell, and make it work. If you see that things might not line up, back up one step, reorient, and move forward again. Use flex-track to match the ends.