layout design advice

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

i am in the process of designing a new sectional style layout that i will be building following an up coming move interstate. I model the chessie system in the mid to late 80s in HO scale. As i favour a railfans sort of layout I enjoy just running trains. another of my main goals was to have continuous running on a double track main line. this mainline is to be level as i do not want to have to monitor mainline trains if i desire to do some switching.

the main aspects i wanted to achieve was to have unattended main line running as well as a coal branch that climbs along the ridge to reach the mine. i do enjoy some switching action but not all the time so i have tried to include enough work to keep me busy when the mood arises.

i have tried to fit as large a yard as i could as well as having a decent sized engine service facility to store my locos. i have included 1 hidden staging track to stage another mainline train for variety. on most occasions i will run the layout on my own.

The back drop will be a continuous ridge of mountains all the way around the layout and i tried to twist and curve the line to appear to follow a water course.

i am trying to represent a double track line in the state of west virginia.

as i am not fantastic at designing layouts i think i would like to draw on others who have experience in this area so as to not have any fundamental flaws in the design that i will later come to regret. i am asking for as much constructive critisizm as i can get as i want this to be a long term layout. please note i am only toying with road an structure placements at this time but if anyone has any ideas please share with me in regards to creating a convincing feeling of the area.

i feel that the design may be lacking in hidden staging but i do not want to have alot of hidden track. i have also tried to break up the run to divide it into different “events” to increase the percieved size of the layout.

Please make as many suggestions

2

Dan,

My primary comment would be to give a lot of consideration to where you put your module joints. Do whatever you can to make sure the joint is not in the middle of a curve. Unless you are using sectional track, when you get ready to cut your track at the curve it will tend to snap outward slightly as it tries to go back to a straight. Left uncorrected this will be a source of derailments. This outward bowing can be time consuming to correct.

On your 180 degree curves consider having one larger module instead of two smaller ones.

Lance

Layout construction, design, and track plan books

http://www.lancemindheim.com/bookstore.htm

3

Presumably this is not your first layout. It looks to me like you have a pretty good handle on what you want to do with your layout. There is no requirement for hidden staging if you don’t need it to manage operations or temporarily hide equipment.

I only have two comments: 1) the turntable in the upper left looks very cramped against your yard track. I would consider increasing the size of this module to allow for some separation there; 2) You seem to have stub tracks leading no where. Is this just because you haven’t put any structures on yet? Otherwise, why have them?

4

You need a yard lead that has access to each of the classification tracks without fouling the main. Preferably the lead should also have a runaround on it too. Ideally you want a lead on both ends of the yard since it is a double ended yard.

The 1980’s time frame means you will have some long rolling stock. Coupling and uncoupling on a curved yard may be problematic unless the class track radii is very large. Some tangent track on the left end of the yard beyond the curves may help this issue.