I believe you are fine. You need a little more information from your friend to minimize some of the analysis. You need a specific rail line or a specific part of the country to determine the terrain and how the rail line made it’s money. Some of this will be obvious and will jog your memory on things you already know. Mountains can mean mining or logging. Prairies usually mean agriculture. From here you can determine a railroad that operated in one of those locations. A city will have manufacturing facilities that will need switched. OR if your acquaintance has a few engines from the same road that may be a place to start.
I believe another given or two and you will be fine.
This is going to sound like a cop-out, but I have been looking at a shelf layout plan in 101 Track plans for quite a while. It is plan number 8 on page 6. It is 16 foot long and 1 foot wide. It looks like there is a lot of action on it, and it could be expanded in depth and length, and wrapped around the room that your fried has.
It has a yard at one end and a pier at the other, which could be switched out for a car float operation as staging or an interchange. There are three levels of scenery and tracks with industries of course.
I will probably never build it myself because I have an around the walls layout in a single car garage. But I think it is a neat looking track plan. There is also an artists rendition of what the scenery could look like.
I did some fiddling around with some ideas this morning and came up with this so far:
In still have no idea how to proceed where the big question mark is. I´d like to avoid any S-curve, but need to keep the shelf as narrow as possible. Should I just go straight down and add, say, a 3-track fiddle yard? Minimum radius should not be less than 18", although only locos with a short wheelbase will be run.
By all means, considere the 3-track fiddle yard. Anything to keep your friend’s interest level high. On a small layout, he will need a variety of things to do to keep from growing bored.
The question mark in your diagram reinforces my concern for what to do in that particular area. Since I remain fixated with the idea of turntables at each end of the layout, why not place a turntable in the corner to the right of the question mark and then run the 3-track fiddle yard down the remainder of the right side of the room. That way, your friend can turn engines, avoid an S-curve, and have the fiddle yard for added interest and storage. Just a thought.
Ulrich, I am very interested in this thread, as my layout space is pretty close to the area your friend has, minus the “bump out” on the right side. I have been stocking up on C83 Atlas track for a few months now. I don’t have a specific prototype RR I want to model. I may just do smething fictional, along a branchline type operation. I am leaning towards modeling a meat packing plant in the upper left corner (Champion Packing Plant). There is a plan for modeling it in a corner space, in a recent MR issue. Not to suggest that this would appeal to your friends modeling interests, but, I plan to use that track arrangement to get started, and then expand from there. I would also like to incorporate a small yard on the bottom left. I like the yard plan the Paul Dolkos had on his B&M layout. That also had an industrial spur behind it that had some background flats. On the short leg of the “L”, I envision a single line crossing either in front of some backgound buildings, like the backside of the large apartment building, or in behind a city scene (merchants row) for example. On the right side, I haven’t come up with anything solid yet, but was thinking a scrap yard, engine service terminal, and a turntable to turn engines.
I would like to see what your Alaska track plan that some one else mentioned looks like.
Good luck, and I will be keeping an eye on this thread to hear from the experts here. I have already gathered countless ideas and tips from all of you here.
Stein - I very much like your idea, because it could mean a “slow start” for him, building a diorama/module (the right part) and expand it later on - will talk to him about that. Is it Peco code 75 track?
Paul - I am (up to now ) pretty in choosing region and area. My friend wants to have an “American-style” layout and has not yet made up his mind, what that is in his eyes. Given the space limitations, any “big” railroading will have to be excluded, leaving branchline or shortline operation as viable options. I am sure he wants to run a small steam loco, but also likes Diesels. I will talk to him about this bit (and maybe help him a little to find the “right” direction.
One issue will be certainly the cost of building the layout. My friend has also only little cash available to be spend on a layout. This means as few turnouts as possible, without giving up an interesting operation. Turnouts and turntables will eventually manually controlled, buildings and structured scratch-built. Modeling on a shoestring budget - certainly a challenge, if you have to acquire all materials.
Colesdad - the Alaska RR plan is a layout idea I developed last year, before we lost our house and moved to the little flat we are now living in. It is a shelf-switcher, loosely based on the ARR. Here is the plan:
Hmm… I think Stein is on to something here as an idea for the space. The left hand side of the drawing could feature an interchange with a mainline crossing near the bottom left hand side and turnouts connecting the branch and the main so cars can be interchanged - including a storage track. The main line could continue more or less parallel to the wall leading to a small staging yard along the top - there could be a single siding served from the main too - making for a great excuse for two railroads being modeled. Add a passing siding and few spurs in the general area as the interchange to complete the branchline railroad. The area at the top could be some nice bucolic scenery to make a visual transition between the left and right.
From an operations standpoint having the center of the action separated this way would help give the impression that there is miles between town A and town B - all in a very compact space and easy to build.
After a lengthy conversation with my friend, I was able to pin down some more druthers about his planned layout.
He definitively wants to have a certain “Western” flavor to his layout (as much as people in the US think of “Lederhosen and Beer” when Germany is mentioned, Germans think of gunslingers, desperadoes and Western movies, when the think of the US [swg]).
This pretty much determines the setting and the era of the layout.
Setting: Southwestern US, somewhere in the dry region
Era: I could persuade him to settle for a period of 1910/1920, instead of the 1880´s he initially wanted to have. There is just not enough choice of locos and rolling stock for the earlier period.
Type of operation: Branchline
This is what I have come up with this morning:
Still needs a lot of tweaking, so comments are highly welcomed!
If the cassette is to represent interchange/staging, I would have more switches in the left side town in order to require most of the cars to travel the length of the layout to reach the busier town. Maybe just add one larger industry there at the expense of some of the general town structures.
Also, the track that the cassette feeds into could merge with the runaround a lot earlier than it does. As it stands, it looks like you’ll have to run the train almost around the curve at the top in order to clear the switch to access the runaround, what you’ll need to do to swich the elevator if the locomotive is pulling the train out of staging. (Or you could just shift the cassette one or two tracks to the right, which will give you a longer switch lead too if the cassette is included.)
There’s a chance the building at the top section may clutter the scene. Someone suggested keeping that section scenery-only in order to separate the towns better. I agree. With a building there, the layout might start to look like one big town and you may lose the sense of distance, if that’s what you’re going for. To keep operations interesting, maybe you could leave the switch and model an industry that goes beyond the layout. There’s plenty of room there for a hillside to hide the end of the spur.
I think a geographic barrier, like valley and dry river bed crossing, in the left corner would separate the towns a bit better than a road overpass. Or, maybe you could make the entire top side of the layout a large deep valley with a high trestle, which would give your friend (or even you) a scratchbuilding project.
VERY good ideas! I am not happy with the road overpass myself, I will change it to a dry creek with a wooden trestle over it. I also agree with removing the building on the top right of the layout. I need to make that section a little narrower, as this parts needs to be removable. There are windows behind this part, which may require an occasional cleaning [:-^]
The cassette staging is meant to be put on any of those three tracks at the lower right end, so that should not be a big issue.
More specifically for the left side: I would put a large industry in the far SW corner of the benchwork. Shift the cattle pens and spur towards the edge and maybe angle the siding so the turntable is in the SE corner. Having the industry that generates the most traffic in the SW corner would maximize the run for those cars.
Since your friend thinks of the SW as the wild, wild, west; how about a distillery as that industry?
… there ain´t nothin´ sweeter than a good taste of moonshine [(-D]
I am still working on the plan to incorporate some changes, but I have already added a place called “Saguaro Liquors” .
Btw, the plan is drawn in WinRail/RTS, and I have “abused” the draw function to add the buildings and structures, as well as to enhance the layout a little. The only “drawback” is, that it takes some time to draw the individual elements.
as usual, your ideas are really smashing! I like the idea of the added board very much, but I don´t think he could go for it. The future train room also sees other uses and that board would block any access.
I haven’t done any sketching, but perhapsOlson’s Jerome & Southwestern could be unfolded to fit the space. The “port” could be made the fit in the little 24x75 alcove on the lower right, and then perhaps both the main and mining branch could be unfolded to fit along the other two walls.
