Hello all,
I hope everyone is pulling through this difficult year.
I tried doing a search, but had no luck. How many miles of track goes your layout represent? I’ve always liked the idea of modeling a small geographical distance, even though I have ample space available.
Ed
I model (HO) my old home town and the Chicago & North Western line that ran through it north and south. That’s four miles approximately. So the amount of compression is quite modest by most standards since I have well over sixty linear feet of pure main line, with staging yards at either end. Of course it took only a few minutes for a mainline train - particularly the passenger trains – to leave and enter the city limits so in that sense mainline trains are kind of a token gesture on the layout, basically there to give the local switcher, the real star of the show, something to worry about.
What is funny however is that because of the inevitable curves, and the fact that the industries along the tracks at those places were not themselves curved (as some warehouses are by the way), that means that in some areas I have had to practice selective expansion rather than selective compression, and some distances between industries are actually longer on the layout than in reality as a result. The consequence is that other layout design elements are pushed closer together than I would have liked given the 1:4 compression ratio of scale miles to prototype miles that I have. The purist in me is bothered but those are the givens I have to deal with.
Dave Nelson
I gave up on trying to represent reallistic distances after my Dream House layout. That layout was in N scale and had a mainline run of more than 100 feet. It still did not feel like it had a real sense of traveling a distance.
There were three cities on the layout with about 40 feet of trackage between each one.
Since then, I have just had scenic blocks at least the length of a train between cities. The train disappears and comes back in another city. This approach has been satisfactory for my desires.
My next layout will only have two cities with a loop in another room where the train leaves and returns to simulate distance.
-Kevin
I have a small layout with twice-around design,10’x14’. I had never given it a thought of total distance. The mainline has 120’ of track which is mostly mountains. The community is small so maybe 30 to 50 miles to the next city. I can go into a tunnel and stop on a siding or seriously slow down a train before it emerges from the other tunnel to simulate distance.
My norm is to park a freight on the hidden siding then park a passenger next to it and go with the freight. Every other train emerging from the hidden track is freight. A passenger enters the tunnel and a freight comes out.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wi
My layout represents nearly 400 miles of real railroad. It’s a little bit compressed here and there.
While my STRATTON AND GILLETTE is supposed to be a successful Class A line with thousands of miles of track, my layout represents a very small portion (less than 0.05%) of the railroad.
I don’t know why so many freelancers feel like they need to model the whole system, while BNSF modellers are happy modeling one intermodal yard and an interchange track.
-Kevin
Roseville Station, Leeds Sovereign Street, Crown Point Yard and Clarence Dock is around 12 miles of actual railroad, compressed into a room 11ft by 8ft. The Stations, Dock and Yard are all in the centre of Leeds. Hence a built up scenery.
The open scenery section is of favorite places of ours that are in Cumbria and Northumberland areas of Northern England.
David
My 18’ by 19’ double deck layout models a “still independent” version of the Santa Ana & Newport Railroad in Orange County, California. The original track plan was roughly “U” shaped running between Newport Beach and Santa Ana along the east side of the “U” and between Newport Beach and Wesminster along the west side of the “U.” The SA&N was purchased by the Southern Pacific and the ends of the “U” were extended northward to connect with the SP main line resulting in a prototypical loop of track around much of north and central Orange County. I estimate the length of this loop to have been roughly 40 miles. My layout has only around 6 scale miles of track so I only model a few locations along the loop and compress those scenes as well.
Assuming 3rd Plan It calculates the track length correctly, the mainline on my lower level (I haven’d designed the upper deck yet) has close to 1000 feet of track (it shows double that, but it’s a double track main). That’s without staging, branches, or the main yard. That seems WAY more than it could possibly be, since it just follows around my walls. Using the wall lengths, it’s more like 110 feet of track. About 1.8 miles of prototype. The lower level represents and area that, following the track and not the roads, is about 20 miles. The upper deck will have about the same amount of track, but will probably cover a larger overall area on the map because I’m not modeling any towns exactly, so anyone one could be any of 3 or 4 similar ones in the real world. Mostly coal traffic - a breaker, multiple loadouts, from single car truck dumps to multiple car mechanized ones. Maybe a few other things if I can fit them in, but the real area pretty much lived and died by the demand for anthracite coal.
The club modular layout has around 400 feet of mainline (x2, also double tracked) when the entire system, is assembled at a larger venue, over 6.5 miles. The various modules reflect areas all over the Reading system (not always in map order). 40 car trains don’t seem to dwarf the layout, multiples of that size can circulate based on signal aspects and not tie one another up. The 100+ car coal train that gets trotted out oince in a while though, requires careful handling. It will block the engine facility entrance to the East main at one and end block the low grade line exit to the East main (on the opposite side of the layout) at the same time. The tail end occupies the main at the entrance to the low grade line while the head end is already pushing on to the main at the exit - so overtaking this train with a faster one going the same direction takes a lot of dispatcher skill (and no one messing up reading their signals).
Well, since my layout basically simulates the distance between the dowtown passenger station and the engine servicing facility which is 8 miles away, I guess that my layout reflects a very small area of real estate.
But, since a double mainline runs around the entire perimeter of the layout, I treat it as if trains are running coast to coast, just like the prototype that my layout represents.
Rich
My layout is freelanced, but with connections to several real railroads. However, all of the towns on the layout are named after real locations, so…based on that, my layout covers about 180 miles from the shores of Lake Erie to those of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay
In actuality, not counting the double track through all towns, nor the industrial sidings or staging yards, there only about 4 HO scale miles of mainline.
Wayne
My new layout plan, which hopefully gets underway soon, will have a double track mainline continuous run of about 450 feet. Close to 300 feet of that will be visable, the rest hidden and providing access to lots of thru staging.
So the visable portion will be about 5 scale miles, but will have some scenic blocks to make it feel like about three times that.
The layout is freelanced but represents only one small city and a few miles of trackage on either side.
The layout will fill a 1500 sq ft space and stage about 30 trains for operating sessions.
Typical freight train lengths will be 35-50 cars. The main freight yard will be about 25 feet (2200 scale feet) long.
Sheldon
I have twinned 96 foot folded loops, which works out to 1.4 scale miles for each of the main tracks.
According to 3rd PlanIt I will have 2.3 miles of track on my 5’4" x 12’ layout. However, I think that is actually quite deceiving because it includes all of the sidings and the service yard. The actual double mainline run is considerably shorter.
I would love to have long mainlines and large sweeping curves. I’ll have to win the lottery first![swg][(-D][(-D]
Dave
My fantasy lottery layout would still only model 3 or 4 cities, but there would be residential areas, shopping areas, main streets, city hall, libraries, churches, and schools as well as the railroad served industries.
There would also be at least 2 scale miles of track between each city.
-Kevin
Thanks for all the interesting responses guys.
Well, the Maryland and Pennsylvania was some 77 miles. My layout (currently under construction) includes both ends, greatly compressed and 4 towns in between in S scale. All in a space of 10.5 x 34 feet (additional room available if needed). I had planned a somewhat larger layout, but recent heart surgury convinced me to scale back and simplify the layout at least for the initial build.
My goal is to capture the flavor of a shortline with short trains that don’t run very fast.
Paul
Ok, small layout with dimentions of 13’ x 14’ x 7’ x 8’. On it is a modest city, Anderson, and a small town, Westport. In actually, 80 miles apart. The layout winds and goes under the city and winds some more to make it seem like 80 miles. Yeah, right!
In any event, that was what I planned in the early 80s and I keep it running.
I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘miles’ and what you mean by ‘represent’.
I have a paper mill in Tennessee right next door to a chemical plant in South Carolina and a limestone slurry facility in Alabama. Down the road is a steel mill in Kentucky adjacent to a dairy farm in upstate New York and an intermodal yard in Atlanta.
Around the bend is a small town in Florida with a few buildings from Wyoming tossed in for fun and a magical mystery mine from who-knows-where. Crossing the high-level long-span bridge over the San Juan River inlet (Florida) takes you through the Wind River Canyon and into the agricultural Big Horn Basin of Wyoming.
The whole shebang sits atop a deep-water harbor based on the Port of Miami and the Port of Los Angeles.
Round trip miles: about 10,000 I suppose. Compressed a little, of course. N-scale.
Robert
About 32 miles from Spooner ,Wi to Cameron, Wi. in the 70’s, in a 42x30 basement. The old Omaha line(C&NW Subsidiary), but the BN bought the line so I can run GN,BN,NP ans CB&Q eqipment.
Terry