After many years in my armchair, and a few years as a member of a modular group, I’m planning my first layout. But I’m a bit stuck coming up with a good plan.
I wonder if one of you could help me? Ideally, I’d like to hire Byron Henderson to design a layout for me, but at the moment the money is a bit tight.
I’ve used the questionnaire on Byron’s site to come up with the following requirements:
Vision
dense operations oriented trackage
transfer operations (staging to yard to staging, multiple railroads)
industrial switching
possibly a port area
1 or more tall structures in the foreground
Prototype
Multiple railroads: BN, Santa Fe, Soo Line, GB&W, Milwaukee Road
Era: 1978-82
grain operations and other commodities requiring covered hoppers (I have lots)
I have mostly covered hoppers, box cars and tank cars
Sounds like a lot of track on narrow shelves, leaving hardly any room for scenery. If you can live with an inch or two before and behind the tracks, that´s OK then. But if you also want to have some scenery, you need to either limit the amount of tracks or make your shelves a little wider.
Take a pencil and draw the above. Add a feet for scenery; ready!!?
You have a great plan. Are you familiar with designing by squares? Some math: min radius is 27", so the length of your square is 32". Your layout is about 5 squares wide.
For the bottom side you want a yard, but your curves, left and right do take 2 squares; so does your yard throat at the left. The throat at the right will be 1 square; so no trainlength left and engine service facilities with a turntable and roundhouse must find a place
Welcome! You’ve done a lot of homework already, which really makes it easier for us to provide intelligent and meaningful (and more importantly, useful) feedback.
From your description of what you want, I think you’re ready to put pencil to paper and sketch it out. I have to convert tu use the metric units (although Paul, Ulrich and a few others who routinely comment will be right at home), but it sounds a little like you are trying to put 5 kilos of “stuff” into a 2 kilo sack.
What I would recommend you do next is to take that little sketch of your office area, make a couple of copies of it, and actually draw in the tracks where you think they would fit. You can either freehand it, use a ruler and compass, use a template, or invest in one of the computer drawing packages. Even though the computer design tools may sound like the right answer, and they do have the advantage of keeping you honest when placing track, the additional learning curve and a false sense of security (it MUST be a good design, because I can draw it on a computer) may not help you.
Anyway, do some quick drawings and it will very quickly become apparent whether things will fit or not. No track plan ever goes on to the benchwork exactly as it was designed anyway. Do a couple of different plans, and let us comment on them.
Also, remember this – no one but you can really design a layout that suits you. We can guide and suggest, but ultimately you will have to get something that pleases you, and is within your capabilities (both physical and financial).
I thought a 90 degree curve takes 1 square, not 2?
24" minimum radius means squares of 29"?
I wanted to put the yard under the window because I can’t have a backdrop there or any structures. So it’s either staging under the window or the body tracks of the yard.
I want to angle the ladder of the yard to save space on the bottom side. A compound ladder should mean that the yard lead would be on an angle of 5:2.
My turntable is just for turning locomotives, so no roundhouse is necessary. But this is one of the lower priority items (I just have one in a box so it could be nice to use it if it fits in the space available).
I’m very familiar with the Russell Schoof plan; I do realise that he has shoehorned a lot of railroad into a small room using very tight curves and switches… I’m hoping I can manage as much railroad using broader curves and more staging (without the vertical switch) into a larger room. The amount of scenery he has allowed for is about the feel I’m going for. I don’t need any marine, I’d prefer to suggest it rather than model it
Thanks for the feedback, you’re inspiring me to start drawing.
I believe Paul was factoring in a curve at the top of room and at the bottom of room, i.e., at both ends of the large yard on the left shelf. Yes???
As to square size the formula is S=R+2C R is the minimum radius, C is the track center spacing for two curves (one outside the inner mainline).
So for 24" radius and 2" spacing, a square is 28 inches on a side (you were close or had a track to track spacing of 21/2 inches).
Hmmm - late 1970s/early 1980s - what kind of cars are you running - mostly around 60 foot cars (ie about 8 1/4 inch long - about 21 cm) ? Or longer?
What kind of train lengths are you planning? How many cars will a train contain?
A caboose track and a 130-foot turntable seems like overdoing it a bit for 1970s railroading.
I see you want to have your yard on the 16-18 inch deep shelf in front of the window (left side of drawing above, big window starting about 40" in from upper and lower wall), since you can’t put up a backboard in front of the window.
If a significant part your fun will be running transfer runs from staging to your yard, maybe you would want to have your yard so that you get a little run length instead - perhaps along the left wall in your drawing (opposite your sofa bed and staging) ? Could you e.g. install some roll-down curtains over the window and paint the inside of those curtains blue?
Here is a very rough sketch to get an impression of how much space you have available, using #6 Peco turnouts and 56-65 foot cars, and not trying any space saving tricks at all:
Anyways - not a specific proposal for you, just a couple of almost random ideas and comments to get some discussion flowing about the specifics - you have made an excellent list of givens and druthers to start working from.
Second purpose of drawing above is showing distances in feet and inches for those that think in inches and feet instead of meters and centimeters - the precise conversion of course is 2.54 centimeters = 1 inch, but for a rough approximation, just observe that 10 centimeter
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply to my request for help.
Answers to Stein’s questions:
I have just a few 60’ cars, which I don’t run very often because I don’t like the look of these on most curves & turnouts that we modellers use.
I have many covered hoppers; these are mostly around 54’-55’. And I have many 50’ boxcars. Most of my tank cars are of the 16000 gallon variety.
I also have some modernised 40’ boxcars and shorty tankcars.
Train lengths will be on the short side; most will be one locomotive, 5-7 cars and a caboose. A long grain train (probably 1 for each operating session) will be 2 locomotives (GP7s), 10 covered hoppers and a caboose.
As you can see from my answers here, I’m trying to fit more layout in by using shorter trains with shorter cars, which in turn also helps to keep minimum radius down.
Yeah, the turntable (90’) probably won’t fit in, unless I radically change the layout’s footprint. I don’t think I should attempt this for a first layout; I’d like to keep the whole thing on shelves at one level to keep the construction fast and easy.
About the caboose track: what happens to cabooses when used in transfer movements? Presumably they are set out of the way, if only for a very short period. And the transfer run returns back to its origin immediately after making the transfer?
I like your sketch Stein, I hadn’t realised just how much industry I could fit into the corners either side of the window.
I’m starting to do some sketches myself, and just gotten the idea to move the sofabed to the wall next to the door.
You might enjoy this photo tour of a switching run on Wolfgang Dudler’s Westport Terminal RR - it starts out with an engine, 9 cars and a transfer caboose from Westport yard, drops off some cars at Third Street switching district (where the local switcher will handle them), and then go on to the harbor district, where the road engine does a little switching before returning back with the outbound cars from the harbor district and the caboose.
Reading those three remarks made me think about a bigger yard then Stein has drawn.
Counting the left and right curves together, the yardthroats and trainlength your yard will become about 10 squares long. Just like Jan Schoof you have to go around the corner. Dense traffic was translated by me into more trains at the same time. IMHO the yard can easily become the bottle neck. When one operator switches cars from the big Three into cuts for the local jobs, and uses the IN-drill. A second crewmember can at the same time classify the cars from the local switchers into transfer cuts for the big Three.( and uses the OUT-drill)
A dedicated drill, free from mainline traffic, is only needed when lots of waiting for each other is at stake. If the ATSF has only one transfer cut a day a seperate drill track is not really needed.
Some good thinking has to be done. Before you know it your are drawing a layout for up to 6 operators. And before you know it, you have so many destinations that your yard is becoming hugh.
With yards of the big three that close a turntable for the “harbour” yard seems not logic; all engines can and
Thanks for taking the trouble to draw this! Now I see what you mean. Somewhere between this and what Stein has drawn is what I have in mind, so hopefully I can get there.
You call him Jan, in the book he’s Russell… was this a pen-name?
I am trying to position the yard in front of the window, make the yard ladder go around the corner, and then have the yard lead on the left side of the room. The shortest yard body track would then be 2m, just enough for 10 50’ boxcars. The longest yard track (at the front) would be long enough for 10 grain hoppers. It is very tight though… and the yard lead would be on a 24" radius curve.
[quote user=“Paulus Jas”]
A dedicated drill, free from mainline traffic, is only needed when lots of waiting for each other is at stake. If the ATSF has only one transfer cut a day a seperate drill track is not really needed.
Some good thinking has to be done. Before you know it your are drawing a layout for up to 6 operators. And before you know it, you have so many destinatios and your yard is becoming hugh.
With yards of the big three that close a turntable for the “harbour” yard seems not logic; all engines can and did run backwards. Even cabooses were no
OK, this is the good reason I was looking for not to include the turntable!
Does the same go for locomotive servicing facilities? Or would there be a small facility for the switchers used in the area? Or would said switchers go elsewhere for their fuel and servicing?
this is a tough one. I’ve seen on a lot of prototype drwawings small engine service facilities, e.g. on the end of the Milw.Beer Line. If I remember well it was once the end of an independent railroad, the facility may be came handy and remained in service. Or it depends on the ownership of the “dock” CO; if it belongs to one of the big three or if it is independent.
Being a proto freelancer gives you some freedom. On your layout you can have the feeling that you have enough switching to do, but the operator of the transfer cuts is just waiting and wating for a new trainorder. So when you still have an unbuild area you could better make the transfer job more appealing. Let him service his engine and let him turn it slowly around on a table into the right direction. Or let him build a new train in staging, if needed by fidddling.
Have fun and cheers too
Paul
BTW Schoof and 't Hart are common names in Holland. I happen to know a gentleman called Jan Schoof; but he is into lager and not into railroading; Russel Scoof designed (and built?) the Free Haven.
Chicago will be the best place for the railroads you want. It had 4 of the 5 (BN, Santa Fe, Soo Line, Milwaukee Road). If you move your date forward to 1987, the Soo took over many of the Milwaukee’s tracks so you could get 3 out of 4 railroads in Winona, MN (BN, GB&W, Soo Line/Milwaukee Road).
