Yup, been messing around with track plans again. Still using Andrew Martin’s site for inspiration. This one is based on his ‘Supernook’ plan, but I added some new track at the bottom (front) of the layout using a switchback to access 2 spots plus a 2 stall enginehouse. The car spots are simple trailing point moves (with maybe a runaround off the main), only locos heading to the engine hous ehave to reverse on the switchback.
Andrew doesn’t always mention what turnouts he uses - this plan was drawn with #5’s (assumign Fast Tracks fixtures). #5 seems like a reasonable compromise that would also be usable in a future larger layout, since the radius equivalent is 26", plenty for 4 wheel diesels and 40 foot cars. In fact this plan fits a bit with my original cement plant idea - the three sidings on the upper left which make up the Inglenook configuration could be the cement plant, with low relief structures along the backdrop at that point. What’s left is the main with a runaround and tail to switch the 3 tracks.
Heck whats wrong with that plan, darned if I know looks like some interesting switching possabilities, Gee it might even just work in an area in front of my engine servicing area’
So I hope you don’t mind if I steal I mean borrow it.
i’m just guessing , but wouldn’t the railroad prefer to have the industries on the switchback rather than the enginhouse ? in other words instead of an upper-left to lower-right , a upper-right to lower-left switchback .
Quite possibly. It also doesn’t have to be an engine house (diesels, BTW), but then I’d have one of those ‘dreaded’ switchback industry spots. It could even be two seperate branches off the main. That’s what I posted it for, to get ideas that would make it better, or as best as I can get in the limited space I have.
Wrong RP. The one for turnouts is this one: http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/rp12_3.html Look at line 11 for a #5: 26" radius for the closure rail, which is the tightest point of the turnout. The substitution radius is much larger, see line 6: for a #5 it’s 43" Given those numbers for radius equivalents, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that is the turnout size to use when your curves are 16.5" radius. A #5 feeding a 24" radus curve even provides a bit of easement effect. Having 30" radius curves feed #5 turnouts, now that would be backwards, but for 24" a #5 is more than sufficient.
Given that everything I own or owned, including a 4-8-4 Northern, ran derailment free through Atlas #4’s (which actually measure as a 4.5) even at warp speed, I should be more the safe with #5’s and proper speeds. It’s all a compromise, I would love to build a layout with nothing smaller than a #8 even in the yards, but I don;t have a gymnasium to build in.
Like some others of the plans from that site, I think the leads and switchbacks are a little more restrictive than necessary, but if you like it, fine.
In terms of turnouts, it’s not the closure radius that is the limiting factor, I think often it’s actually the straight bit through the frog. In any case, well constructed #5s should work fine with 24" radius. The FastTracks templates use the NMRA turnout dimensions, which have a relatively short lead to make the turnouts more compact. Because of that, you’re probably better off with a #5 than a #4 for 24" curves, if you hope to use this section as part of a larger layout someday.
Your observation is interesting, Byron. I had not considered that the path through a given frog might be the bottle-neck for a wheelbase trying to negotiate the curve offered by the closure rails, but you may be on to something…or in some cases, it could be the case exactly. I wouldn’t doubt that the influence changes with the curvature of the closure rails: if they are highly curved, the frog could very well be the problem. But wouldn’t it depend on the approach to the turnout? If via points and closure rails, they would be the limit. Then, as the frog is encountered, it may want to force the engine to align with its axis and place too much strain rearward, thus forcing a derailment.
Crandell, based on my observations of trains pulled and pushed slowly through various turnouts in good light, I think a variety of factors come into play: lead length, closure radius, frog #, etc. In my opinion, most commercial turnouts (and the commercial templates) don’t have all these factors in balance, but I haven’t had time to do the research to make this more than a slightly-informed hunch.
By the way, the really interesting observations I find are for a string of cars pushed or pulled through the turnout by an engine, not a 1:1 hand sliding a single car or two cars through. The coupler lurch and thrust offsets caused by varying car and engine lengths can also have an impact on the forces that lead to derailments through turnouts.
Well, if you want my opinion, switchbacks should be banned in Boston, and just about everywhere else. The business about trying to move a car from point A to point B and having to disturb a bunch of other stuff used to have its proponents. Mainly, in my opinion, by those who tried to make a small model railroad big by increasing the complexity and time required to perform a task. Hence, the switching puzzle. The track plan at the club I belong to was designed and built by a bunch of old-timers who subscribed to the switchback idea. Every switching area had one, and one area had a double switchback. Problem became that once folks got to the point where they actually wanted to run trains around in some semblence of operation, the switchback locations never got switched after the first time, mainly because they were a pain in the backside.
I understand the small railroad issue, because the space I’m dealing with is also restricted. But I still wouldn’t have one of the darn things. In your particular case, I’d get rid of the switchback that goes to the enginhouse/possible industry. Have the turnout to the enginehouse connect to the middle track (eastbound main?), and have the lead to the house cross the lead to the industry at the lower right with a crossing. I think crossings always work well in restricted areas.
The other thing I might consider is changing the direction the leads to the upper and lower industries connect to the eastbound main and the westbound passing siding. That way, if your railroad ever grows in either direction, the leads to all the industies will be trailing point with the exception of the one to the enginehouse. And you’ll still have everything you have now.
Believe it or not, when I drew it like I did with #5 turnouts, the lengths of the various connecting pieces of track became LONGER than what was shown on the original plan - probably because of the short lead you mentioned.
Future use is up in the air, although if I spend the money for FastTracks tooling, I hope to at least use that, even if I clear the top of this section and start over in the future. I guess future use as-is depends on what my next space ends up being. If only slightly more than i have no, I’ll probably just add a secotion to one side or the other, but if I get enough space to actually duplicate the actual track arrangment on some part of my modeled prototype, I’ll rebuild and just reuse the benchwork and save the turnouts I’ll be building plus whatever else can be salvaged.
As for adjusting the siding/lead ratios, do you think I should shorten up the sidings on the top left so that more space can be allocated to the lead on the right? Andrew used to have another plan on his old site, a variation of this one that added more track in the mostly empty upper right area. That one though I think jams a bit too much into the space in the interest of adding wh
My recent attempts to help folks with design questions on this forum have been pretty futile, but I’m a slow learner, so here goes …
The future is always unknown, but I personally think you would be better off making the choice now to prioritize for one or the other: a section that has maximum re-use potential in the future, or the most interesting thing you can build now in the available space. Trying to do a “fair” job of both satisfies neither, it seems to me. For future re-use, for example, the straight tracks across the middle of the section might be OK. But for maximizing the visual interest in the current space, those straight tracks are kind of humdrum compared to alternatives.
If you wanted to do a cement plant in the available space, three closely-spaced parallel tracks doesn’t really look like a cement plant and it will be hard to model even relatively convincingly. An alternative would be to move the tracks around so you had a place along the backdrop to dump coal and additives (like bauxite or iron) and another location where you could load covered hoppers below silos and/or boxcars at a baghouse. Yes, these would all be short tracks with only a few cars, but I think that would be more realistic in terms of portraying the essence of a cement plant than the original layout’s Inglenook. And the plant could spread along one full
The Atlas Track Planning book I have for their Custom Line track shows a 25 degree crossing used off #4 turnouts. I believe that the Atlas #4s are close to #4-1/2. This crossing is available in code 83, if that’s what you are planning to use. The crossing was just a suggestion, and I’m not trying to push it one way or the other. BUT, if you are capable of building turnouts from the Fast Tracks fixtures, and also capable of handlaying track, I’m pretty sure that you would also be able to tweak whatever you needed to tweak to get the commercial item to work with the handlaid.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but the crossing doesn’t have to match exactly the turnout angles unless you need the two turnouts maximally close to each other. A very short 24" radius (or any radius) curve at the end of each diverging leg of the NMRA/FastTracks #5s allows a stock Atlas Code 83 25-degree crossing to be used.
And of course, this is true for a variety of turnout/crossing combinations. Depending on the specific components used, if you trim the legs of the crossing a wee bit, you can sometimes bring the turnouts closer together.
Lots of good ideas. I’ll post a more detailed reply when I have time, that silly thing called ‘work’ is greatly interfering in my fun this week. I’ll eave one thought - I wasn’t even thinking ‘cement’ with this plan until it was mentioned about changing the direction of the sidings.and I looked again and realized they go off in the same direction as the cement plan on the actual branch. No need for it to actually BE cement at this time. I’m probably 90/10 on the “rebuild/reuse” issue at this point. 90% side being, if I ever have larger space again, wipe the slate clean and just use the benchwork section. My feeling is that trying to make something fun in a small space AND totally reusable is too much of a conflict. And I have yet to find something along the real C&F that could be reasonably modeled as an LDE in only 2x8 and still be workable - outside of simple siding scenes. Again, the conflict between fun to operate today in 2x8 vs plopping it in the middle of a future larger layout.Which is why I’m all but fully convinced to design a fun to operate 2x8 that doesn’t need to duplicate or even resemble any actual bit of the C&F.
As for actual space - yes, I probably COULD build something bigger in the space I have, but it would hugely compromise the room and possibly become a point of conflict even though at the moment I have full support to fully utilize the area. So I am stickign with this single 2x8 section for now. If I want some continuous run and the ability t build long trains I can do that at the RCT&HS modular shows since I am now a member there and working with the modular group. And no, I don;t really want to build a module for it as my home layout. That doesn’t mean I won’t build a module at some point, but it won’t be my only home layout if I do.
Byron - thanks for the insights. I really want to learn as much as I can and come up with the best thing I can for what I want to do. I don’t post my ideas here
No more switchback, it’s a crossing. Very little is actually parallel to the table edge. Both the main and the runaround in the middle have shallow curves to them (> 50" radius). There’s also a large radius curve after the crossing leading to the two spots in the lower right. Even the tracks that look dead on parallel to the edges are not, however it’s very subtle and doen’t really show in the plan so perhaps it would still appear to be parallel when built.
The one thing here I really don’t like is the engine house. However, I have no requirement for there to be an enginehouse. I’m thinking that to balance things out a bit, sinc ethe left side is all filled in with various tracks and the right side is somewhat bare, it might be better to change the enginehouse to a single siding (one less turnout).
Well, my opinion is, of course, that it’s a lot better. My only concern would be the length of the lead on that track right above the engine house that gives access to the industry at the lower right. But you can get around this by rigging up some sort of temporary single track drop leaf that extends this lead when required. I also think that the distance between the frog ends of the two turnouts that lead to the crossing is more than required. If you had the same arrangement using Atlas Customline switches, the track planning book I have shows this as 2-1/2 inches using #4s, and 2 inches using #6s. For reference, the overall length from point end of turnout to point end of turnout is 20-1/2 inches using the 4s, and 26 inches using the 6s. Your diagram shows this to be almost 36 inches, so some compression of the plant will probably occur when you get the actual track pieces.
Concerning the engine house, I don’t remember if your branch is steam or diesel. If diesel, maybe you can give up the house and replace it with a nicely detailed fueling pad and downsized sanding tower.
One thing that I might suggest is trying to obtain some turnout pieces that you can move around the table. Maybe the guy at Iron Horse would allow you to make copies of a couple turnouts on his copy machine. What I did was make a bunch of copies and glue them to some minila folder material to give them some strength. When the glue dried, I cut out the pieces and had almost instant paper turnouts. Since these are full sized, they really are an aid in seeing how various track arrangements will fit.
