Just starting off in model railroading and have been reading a lot here as well as a few books from the local hobby store.
Givens: room area for the layout is pretty set, 12x8’10" with one side being open because of access to storage room. N gauge. Era is 90’s to present and it is a freelanced layout based on a storyline me and my kids came up with
What I’d like… Operational running, with a “shortcut” for continuous run. At first I only wanted to pass thru each area once but couldn’t get the height I wanted for the mountain pass so now the main line does a double loop before getting to the end of the line. Industries that interest me include, coal, steel, paper, fruit packaging (like Dole) and maybe lumber. Typical train length for operation is around 3 feet.
I’ve attached an image of what I have so far as you can see I’m having a little trouble with city A, I think I need at least 3 foot of track so that I can do operations on this side as well as problems getting stock off the exchange track. Can anyone give me some advice on what to do in this area? Also I am sure there are other problems with the layout that if you wouldn’t mind pointing I’d appreciate it.
First of all don’t settle. If something bugs you, like running through a scene more than once, then keep working until you solve it. It won’t stop bugging you as you progress through the building of it. You can cheat on your mountain pass. Go up a little, but bring your scenery down more. You can go up an inch, and have a canyon that drops 10 inches below the track.
You are pretty astute for a newbie. If you have not done so, check out my beginner’s guide clickable from my signature. While you are there also check out “What is Staging and Why do I need it?”
There are several problems not the least of which is reach. Figure at maximum you can reach 30 inched. A lot of people will argue this, but not people who have built layouts with longer reaches required.
I think you layout will evolve quite a bit if you let it, so I won’t go into depth here. (and I have to get to work.) Think in terms of scenes, which I think you are. Move your train from scene to scene, but do so with purpose.
I see lots of industries for switching, but I don’t see a yard. There’s a long run between A & B, so I’m not sure it feels like there’s some cars dropped at the interchange, and then the local switches them all. I would think about having a bit more of a yard at B, with an interchange track (that’s where some staging could come in handy). You could sort the cars and then have possibly two different trains do the work, one to just run to a, and another to go back and forth doing everything in between. I agree with Chip, I would work a little harder on separating scenes. By hiding one or the other here and there you might be able to make them look separated even though they occupy almost the same space.
I think there is a lot of potential in that space, and you have a good start.
I agree. No yard or staging and long reaches when something goes wrong at the “back” of the layout. An interesting start though with lots of potential. Could you put some movable staging in from that track that runs down the right side of the drawing? Could be a good place for cassettes.
As far as reach I just went over and did a quick check the layout table is going to be 48 inches tall at this height I see 3 spots as being hard to reach. I’m a pretty tall person so maybe I’ll make sure not to put anything in those areas. Originally it was 3 foot depth all around and I had read about reach problems so I made it 2 feet and also added the access slot in the top right. If even using a small step stool is going to be problematic with reach just let me know so I can rethink my re-thought
For the past 4 weeks I have been reading many books and websites (yours included). I have tried to take it all in but when I got to the point of putting my 2 end points I just got overwhelmed with trying to make sure trains could make it to each industry. I will re-read your site to see if it can help me over this hump.
As far as the scene goes, I think I would rather have a little longer run between City A and B then to worry about it. I’ve thought it thru that this would be 2 cities connected by a mountain pass. The reason for the train to pass between the same area twice would be to show the train climbing back and forth the face of the mountain. With 2 stops along the way to give me something to “do” while on the mainline. (at least that is how I justify it ) I will think on it somemore maybe take someones advice to remove the sidings that are the closest to the cities to give me a little more scene space.
One other thing that I left out was that I do have a lower level built into the benchwork that was going to be connected via helix. After much debating I felt it was too much for a newbie to tackle so I am going to leave the benchwork and have an exchange track exit that someday could be hooked to the lower level via a helix. The track is the exchange track in the lower left.
Again, thanks for the advice… I am very open to change that this point as nothing has been laid out. Just some benchwork but that is easily mo
Maybe I should do something with some tunnels… The top track is at 6inches where as the 2 middle ones are between 3-5. I know it’s not much distance but I don’t want to go over 2% grade from other things I have read. Is that what you mean by the hidden tracks?
You’ve put a lot of work into this plan, and it looks very nice. Since you are just starting out, however, I’d caution you to start small. The learning curve is steep early on, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
I suggest that you pick a likely piece of your plan and start with that. Build the Town A and steel mill section in the upper right. Omit the mountain tracks for now; connect the top left section of the loop for an oval, and you will have a nice, flat, easy to build layout with a terminal. Once you get that working, you can build the next part of your plan, and since you can reuse the first stage there’s no wasted effort.
Besides this suggestion, I have some others, which apply to the large plan, and also to sections you may build. These are just general suggestions, with no detailed plans; you have done such a good job on this plan that I’m sure you could implement any of these in no time.
If you bring the stub track in the upper-right “unknown” loop area back to the main and join it,
you will have an interesting feature known as a “lap siding” - two passing sidings that overlap at the end. A fast train can pass a slower train going in the same direction at the same time as it passes a train going in the opposite direction, using such a siding, if you schedule things carefully.
-I really like the imaginative way you arranged the loops to give a long, long run across a mountain pass. However, the two cities are grouped toward the center of the plan, which I think will cause some problems. They don’t have to be 200 or even 2 scale miles apart; they just have to be spaced out enough so that the unreliable brain says “This is this, and that is that”. I suggest switching the locations of the steel mill and City A, and swapping the lower-left loops for City B.
This will also give better locations for the cities (which tend to be compact and “fat”) and mill (which would tend to be long and “skinny”).
Hidden can be in a tunnel, but it could also e behind a hill, or buildings, or even trees. You can go behind something, and then into a ‘tunnel’, but not actually have a tunnel on the layout. the train just disappears from view, then comes back into view in a different scene.
This is my first stab at doing the layout… but it is revision 4 or 5 and that’s not counting all the paper ones.
As far as starting small I did setup a small layout (no scenes) and we ran it for the last 4 weeks testing out how dcc worked, making spurs, branch lines, and sidings. Even did some woodland scenic foam risers for our test mountain which was scened. I have learned a lot but know there is a lot more to come. This past week I worked on grades, 2% seems to be the max for me if I want consists of 3 feet on a single 6 axel loco.
I really like your lap siding idea! Going to see how that would work as well as giving the coal area some more track. If I use a curved turnout I could gain a little more space up there. Wife bought me a coal mine building that does use 3 tracks…
As for water, good point, that is one the must have’s as all my son talks about it were is the stream going to run down the mountain.
Thanks for the advice, I’ll mess around some more tonight and see what happens
OK, I have made some changes. Removed the turnouts in the hard to reach spots.
Top area changes: Tired to add some staging, added a lap siding because it looks cool There is now a place for the local switcher engine. I think with the space in this area my exchange train length is going to be limited to 2 feet because of where the double crossover is.
Left side changes: This is still in progress. I did lengthen the coal mine branch line, removed the first siding to free up some scenic area,
There are now 2 exchange areas to points north and south. Lengthened the tunnel. Hopefully by removing the top left hand corner siding I’ll be able to use more trees to “hide” the trains as they pass each other.
I found it very interesting that you went with a very large, convoluted, folded dogbone rather than a twice around. I like it, I think. It does make for a lot of trackwork and business of scenery.
On that note, you could simplify and make your scenery easier if you make the upper level a double track main with an auto-reversing loop in the upper right. You get the same travel, bring the tracks together in a way that makes sense and can build in passing siding operation. For example you can eliminate the need for the runaround and passing siding in the top center by providing crossovers on the doubled main. Again simplifying and making the trackwork more “reasonable.” There are place it could even be a single main.
Many people planning a layout want their trains to go a lot of different places. That wears off. It takes maybe 10% longer to get bored. Having your layout look good and make sense doesn’t.
Think about what a railroad would do. They would not build any more tracks than necessary and your train will look just as good running through that scenery with one less track.
That won’t be so easy though your towns, but I’ll take what I can get. I’d like to see that return “main” track to the left of city B go. Not much of a reason for it. But we can talk about that later.
Your “yard” has no lead and you must tie up the main to switch it and your exchange track The exchange tracks are a good idea in lieu of staging, but the one in the tunnel will be a little hard to “fiddle.”
Just so you know, the crossover at 4 down two over creates a reverse loop. IF you run long trains that might be an issue if any of your cars are powered.
I’m trying to work my head around what you have going in the area of the A-B-C area. I’m thinking you are planning that an engine comes in from the exchange, drops its car
Would just like to say as someone who ‘started’ a year ago other than buying some track, and some benchwork, and a few other items (solder iron, etc) I still have an empty 12’x12’ spare room and wood in the garage.
Not being that good at carpentry has slowed me down a lot. Plus, I really don’t know how I want to fill the room and haven’t found a good idea yet. The kids are mad at me that we still haven’t gotten something going.
I think this is the key to the problem. I have run into it myself.
It’s not a new problem, either. The classic book HO RAILROAD THAT GROWS was the inspiration I needed to get over it. The GNP RR layout in the book isn’t my favorite, but I love the philosophy - get something running and slap down some plastic buildings, and planning the next step becomes fun, not stress. I’ve got enough “projects”. I’m in this as a “hobby”.
I got into this hobby way back when I slapped my Tyco train set on to a 4 x 4 of plywood and
threw down some Plasticville structures. There was no support frame. The floppy plywood was just laid across 2 old dressers. It wasn’t great - but I had a blast, and soon I was on to bigger and better things. A lot of us started that way, I think, but we keep telling the beginners to start out where we’re at now. That’s all right in moderation (I should have used a frame on that 4 x 4) but we don’t want to make this look too hard. It’s not.
Nail up a table of 1x3 and a plywood 4x8, put it up on some legs or cabinets, slap down an oval of snaptrack with a couple of spurs, and get to running trains. Don’t worry about planning until then.
It’s fun to plan when you’re already enjoying the hobby, and the kids will have a blast. Maybe you’ll even find you don’t need to go farther. Most of the home layouts I have seen are quite simple.
That is exactly what I have done… bought an extra 4x8 sheet of foam and threw it on the pool table to get the ideas going and to teach me and the boys how to drive work switches, and such… it’s been a blast. I’m really glad I did it this way as I have been able to figure out what I don’t like and also do some testing. The kids love it because I give them “puzzles” like move cars a,b,c to industry 1 then d,e to 2… Sometimes they have to do runarounds sometimes it’s just easy stuff but it really keeps them into it while I do the other stuff.
Here is one we did and figured out we don’t like lead-in industry tracks
Here is the elevations for the mainline, as you can see the tracks that seem next to each other are actually at different height levels (you knew that I’m sure). Hopefully this helps you see my vision of the mainline. It would be like prototype going up slowly around a mountain and not just a beeline over the top, as they prolly wish they could! Everything else is at ground level.
Doesn’t matter. Eventually you’ll come to the point when you will wish it doesn’t look like a Disneyland ride and looks more like the real thing. But most people have to learn this one the hard way. At $75=100 a sq ft, thats an expensive lesson.
Dave, if you designed in a lower level could you use it for staging only? Instead of connecting cities A and B have them at slightly different levels and they would simply go down to continueous staging. This would open up many options for having different trains at the ready at all times. Also you may consider giving your operators more room. If there are two people running the city areas the road engeneers may not be able to get in there to enjoy the trains they are running.
If you go to my WWW in my sig you will see my trackplan with running through the scene more than once and a three track staging yard under it all. I wish I had at least three more tracks for staging.
I do like your space and be carefull not to bite off more than you can chew. More layout equals more maintainance, but more fun. Sometimes simple is better. I say this because the switchers running the yard duties will have difficulty keeping up with the mainline.
spidge, look thru your images, wow! That and your comments along with everyone elses has got me thinking. I do like the 2 towns at different levels, it I hope gives it longivity. It also frees up the whole zero level for staging, yard, and industry.
I’m posting a non-complete version of the layout to get some ideas on direction… Thanks for bareing with me. I figure I could save myself a lot of time if I’m still going the wrong direction or that staging could be hidden.
Spacemouse, I hope I am getting what you are saying… Here is an attempt at it. I kept the tracks climbing thru the same scene more then once but I raised the location of the one city A put in a few industries off a siding so not to foul the mainline. Is this closer to what you are talking about?
All, as you can see I have 2 staging areas with ?'s on them. My question is in the hidden staging area I have a 4.25 inch ceiling to work with the turn starts at 1.2 height and ends at .1. I can leave the underside of that accessable for maint but wouldn’t really be able to fiddle with the trains while in there… My question does that make staging here a bad idea and then I should put the staging at the other location? I was thinking I could build the trains for staging on the open track then move them under.
Other changes, I gave the coal area more room. I tried to fit a loop in there but just could get it to work, at least not loop and have at least 2 coal lines. I also put the thru track in a tunnel so that I could have the “mountain” that they are coaling from. To start off it will be strip mining pink foam! [:D]
Thanks again to everyone… This has been a learning experiance, Dave
Not to hijack this thread, but consider doing an around-the-walls shelf layout. You can use foam or plywood handy panels on shelf brackets. Very minimal carpentry involved. Lots on here about shelves and foam. Discussion should go to a new thread.
