The idea is to build a 3 level layout, green on one level, blue on another level and red on one level. And a staging yard so I can model the California Zephyr and the swithing of power at Denver and Salt Lake City. I will also model freight trains but I don’t know how yet. I have two routes from Denver to Dotsero. The Moffat tunnel route and the Royal Gorge route. I need help to take this idea futher to a finished trackplan. Any suggestions?
The staging idea works like this:
(Chicago to San Francisco)
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy handle the Zephyr from Chicago (Staging)
to Denver, where it is handed over to the Denver & Rio Grande Western.
The Denver & Rio Grande Western handle it until reaching Salt Lake City.
The Western Pacific handle it from Salt Lake City to San Francisco (Staging).
(San Francisco to Chicago)
The Western Pacific handle the Zephyr from San Francisco (Staging) to Salt Lake City, where it is handed over to the Denver & Rio Grande Western.
The Denver & Rio Grande Western handle it until reaching Denver.
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy handle it from Denver to Chicago (Staging).
Nice idea but a huge layout. It would probably require a basement of at least 40’ x 60’ to do it justice. So my suggestion is to pare it down a little maybe even a lot. One trick would be to take the point at which the lines split and make that a focal point and a return loop. Trains entering one leg from the west could reaapear as trains from the east coming from the other leg if you had staging there. You could still do the Zephyr with it own return loop. Space, time and money will be the restrictive elements on this plan.
I only have around 23’ x 12’ at the moment so that’s the reason I want 3 levels. I will also compress everything as much as I can. I don’t even know if it’s possible.
You are very ambitious, Electro. If I had anywhere near that ambition, I would only do a two-layer road. Three sounds like it will tax your staying power over the next many months. However, I guess with three layers, you can begin to run on one while you work on another.
3 levels??? Have you thought how they will be viewed. For example if the lowest level is 3 feet off the floor (very low), and each succeeding level is 18 inches above the next (the minimum I would think) your highest level will be 6 feet off the floor. John Allen’s famous Gorre and Daphetid ran from similar highs and lows but he did not do it in levels. He had floor to ceiling scenery and his line gradually made the climb from bottom to top, sometimes passing through the same scenery more than once. With multiple levels, each level acts as a view block to the one above or below it. Maybe it’s been done but I’ve never seen a layout with three scenicked levels. I’ve scene two levels with a hidden staging yard below but not a lower level that needed to be viewed.
I’d give this some real thought. You might be getting too ambitious about what you are trying to cram into a limited space. I’m sure just about everyone who has planned a large layout has experienced the frustration of resolving what you would like to to have and what you actually have room for. At some point, you have to make some compromises. I think it would be far better to model one piece of the Zephyr’s run and do it very well than to try to model such a large section of it. You have the right idea using staging to represent the two ends of the route, but you might be biting off more than you can chew as far as what you are actually going to model. I think if you modeled from Denver to the Moffat Tunnel with the tunnel being the entrance to the western staging and points east of Denver also represented by staging, you could have a very fine layout and still do the switching in Denver that you want.
Why are you including the Royal Gorge? The California Zephyr never took that route. Also if you are doing the Royal Gorge you will have to do Denver as a double ended station instead of just a single. The CZ arrived and depared via the east end, The RG arrives and departs to the west.
23x12 huh? My new layout room is going to be 60x90, two stories, and I am not attempting anything nearly this ambitious.
there was an article in a recent magazine (i’ll post here if i can find the article) about a layout that was divided into 3 seperate scenes . 1 was set in california , 2 was in colorado , and 3 was chicago (or something similar). the builder really wanted to build a layout showing the entire length of the railroad but lime most of us didn’t have the room to do so , so he chose 3 areas that he really liked and modelled them . just goes to show that you can do whatever you want to do , even if nobody else would do it that way . keep working on the plan and if you think it will work … build it !
“The Hanging Bridge, an outstanding railroad engineering achievement, is suspended between sheer canyon walls, just 30 feet apart at this point. For more than 50 years this bridge has attested the skill and daring of engineers who conceived the remarkable structure when the roaring waters of the Arkansas river threatened to make the narrow canyon forever impassable.”
30 feet is 10.5 cm in HO scale. I think it will be a very exciting place to model.
Right now I’m trying to find more LDE’s to model. So basically, my layout will be based on those LDE’s with swithing in between. So even if my plan looks big I will only model the places that are interesting to look at, an run trains trough.
I believe that was “Best of the Santa Fe” the cover story of the October 2005 Model Railroader. I actually thought it was a dumb idea when I first read it. Reminded me of all the jokes through the years about a 4x8 layout with NY on one side and LA on the other. After reflection it does have some merit, but requires a totally different “frame of imagination” than normal model railroading. Perhaps it is the next trendy style for layouts after this “staging” trend we are in today.
That is a mighty big LDE! It might be only 30 feet wide, but it is deep. To get that effect is going to require a bit more than 2 feet of vertical clearance. This is in my “back yard”. As a child we lived over the mountain just to the south, I now live in Denver, and we own property about 50 miles north of the bridge. I only wish I would have had my camera when they took the UP 844 steam train through there right before they closed the line.
Well you have Winter Park at the west portal of the Moffat Tunnel.
The dual gauge yards in Salida.
I can probably come up with a bunch more after I think about it for a while.
Yeah, I saw that after I had posted my original note. Then I went back to edit it and you must have been posting this at that exact same time! [:)]
Yes it’s deep, and I can’t model that correctly (11’ deep in HO scale). This is my plan for modelling it. Basically I’m just modelling the bottom of the Royal Gorge. But modelled in such a way that everyone understands that there are more then that. That way I don’t need so much space.
Ok, you have four critical “urban” areas, Denver, Pueblo, Delores, and Salt Lake.
There are two routes from Denver to Delores, one direct (via the Moffat Tunnel) the other via Pueblo. From there, you have a single route to Salt Lake City.
You don’t tell us the layout of doors in your train room, so I’ll proceed as if there aren’t any except one at one end of the long room. It’s 12 feet wide, so one method of division and access would be two shelves each 2.5 feet wide, a center peninsula 3 feet wide, and access aisles each two feet wide. Two feet is a little narrow for some people, so you could trim some shelf width to make wider access, but you get the idea.
One point immediately comes to mind.
The two routes from Denver to Delores form a circle. Only three options for pulling this off.
Your benchwork contains a loop, I.E. shelf to shelf access (for trains) at both ends of the long room. This means that getting to the control aisle between these two shelves involves a hinged access section or a duck under.
Both Denver/Delores legs inhabit the same shelf section. Logic dictates that the widest shelf should handle these routes allowing for maximum scenery differentiation between the different routes. Wall shelves should be narrower than a center [peninsula shelf because you can only get at them from one side, leading to reach issues.
The two Denver/Delores routes occupy different levels of the layout. To pull this off you need a helix, close to Denver and another at Delores.
Also, your staging area in essence forms a circle. The more staging you have, the more trains you can run without stopping to set up. Soooooo…
Two levels is all you need. Here’s one way to make it work:
Good Morning: The layout mentioned earlyer is Gary Hovers. He did various sections of the ATSF from Chicago to the west. His Dearborn Station is featured in Modelig Railroads of the 50s. That is deffenately a way to cover alot of ground in a smaller space and may be just what you need. His entire layout was in MR this year but I don’t remember off hand when. Best of luck.
bold added by me , and thanks for finding the article !
that’s my point exactlly , it isn’t the way everybody else does it , but that doesn’t make it wrong . i also think it’s a little odd , but i’m old enough to be stuck in my opinions about some things [:)] . if you think about it , it’s the same concept as the layouts that use the shadowbox technique to highlight certain scenes . the only problem i see with a layout like that is having the engine in coloroado and the caboose in california , it’s a bit harder to swallow than having the engine in one town and the caboose in another town , but it’s really just another level of selective compression.
Looking at your layout you are not really allowing your helixes (or helixi?) enough room. Have you determined your minium radius? Even at 18" radius the helix would take up at least 3 feet across. 24" radius would take up 4 feet across. 24" radius is still really sharp if you want to run realistic looking passenger trains on the rest of you layout.
Whats the radius of the 180 degree turn on the lower level? Lets just say it is 24"… that’s going to take 5 feet (add an extra 6 inches for scenery). Lets say the layout against the walls in this same area come 2 feet off the walls. That now has the layout occuping 9 feet of the 12 feet leaving 3 feet to make two isleways… in other words the isle ways will only be 18". That’s tight, unless you are 6 years old.
That’s only with curve being 24" radius which means, you will have to have your passenger cars fairly far apart so they can get around the curve. Also, the two tracks in your curve would have to be pretty unrealisticly far apart to allow for the overhang from the passenger cars and any other long cars you will be running.
Look in December’s Model Railroader. There is an excellent article with 10 great tips on layout planning and building. There is also a great checklist of things for your layout.
one thing to be careful about is the size of a helix , in HO if you use 24" radius as your minimum for reliable running of large locos and cars a helix will take up most of a 4’ x 4’ area . hiding 3 of them in a 23’x12’ room is going to be pretty hard .
