Layout comments requested - now or never...

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Hey all,

Last chance to comment on the layout. Benchwork is under way and it will very shortly be too late to change…

A few notations:

  1. room is approx. 20x30 (irregular)
  2. era is late 1940’s, steam-to-early-diesel transition
  3. focus is on passenger operations at a notable size union station, but freight operations are also to be supported (just not the primary focus). This includes logging/mining on a branch line
  4. Living in a small town with limited other MRR’ers, I operate alone frequently. continuous-running is a given, as my normal operation is to set several trains in continuous motion on the mainline, then do my switching and other operations around them.
  5. All tracks are on the same deck. The logging/mining branch is shown separately for clarity.

Track Plan is color-coded:

Blue = mainline
red = yards
brown = sidings
pink = hidden by scenery/staging
green (shown on separate image) = logging/mining

green lines are the edges of the benchwork, red lines are full-height walls. Any time you see track crossing a red line it is going through a wall into a hidden area.

Thanks so much!

Main tracks: http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c158/kristianj/LAYOUT12.jpg

Logging/Mining: http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c158/kristianj/LAYOUT12a.jpg

PS - If anyone is interested (and please say so), I’ll post pics of construction periodically.

2

Well, I for one always love to see pictures of other’s layout in progress, so please post pics as often as you can.

Question - what is your minumun mainline radius? I only ask b/c with passenger ops, larger radii are better for those long passenger cars…

3

30" minimum, but most larger in the 32-36 range.

4

I like the way you revised the area with the turntable and staging tracks. It looks like you took someone suggestion about starting with thw wye interchange and designing the layout from there. That area should be much more accessable now. The previous design was sure to have a problem sooner or later. Good work.

ST

5

Thanks, Steve. You’re spot-on: that came from suggestions I got here, and it’s where I started the design.

It actually originated with a specific suggestion to put the turntable in the top-left corner and feed into both passenger and freight yards from there… I musta tried 19 different ways, and that didn’t work. It creatd more problems than it solved. But then it occurred to me I could “bubble” out into that rather wide aisleway and go from there.