Lets take a ride: You depart the lower level stagging yard and encounter a junction with one siding and a branch line. This branch is mutil-concept use, accessing stagging yard two, interchange, moving blocks of dedicated cars to depict industries not modeled, we will return to this branch shortly. Your 2-6-0 will pick up a helper here for the 3% grade.
We proceed until we cross the aforementioned branch on the level which until now has veered on its own alignment to impart the illusion of distance. The grade moderates as we proceed to the upper level, there are over 20 industries that require attention. The lead to stagging yard Three is hidden by the massive cannery found at this location in additon to a wye that serves as an industrial lead. All switching and breakup/makeup is done on four sidings that are also industrial leads .
Ok gang, what’s missing? What’s so radical?
Notice there are no visible yards or massive engine terminals, none whatsoever.
I have a friend who’s layout design covers the SP Cascade line. One end is staging representing the Eugene yard the other end is staging representing the Kalmath Falls yard. But there are no massive yards or engine terminals on the layout, although Oakridge is represented as it looked circa 1970, and much of the yard and engine termina had been pared down by then.
The layout starts at Springfield Junction and ends just past Cascade Summit and runs for 800 feet of mainline in HO, modeling the Cascade Summit grade in great detail. In some cases, there is only single track main between signal blocks on the layout!
My friend designed his layout this way because he loves helper operation and mainline running. Large yards and engine terminals eat up valuable space in the layout room, so he has optimized his layout design based on what he likes.
Why have one of everything just because everyone else does? A focused layout design such as this lets you put in more of what you like into your space!
Point-to-Point design
single track based upon an actual SP branch
All towns reflect their respective protoype as does trackage/industrial arraignment in those towns
Elimination of the space and resource consuming yard and associated sundries
Use of stagging yards in a duel capacity mode
No scene passed more then once
Ample room for scenery even at the expense of addition trackage
Walk around DCC, designed for one to three person operation
Use of detectors/mirrors and CCT to monitor all hidden trackage, all hidding trackage will have a means of easy accessibility for maintanance.
Crossing a door opening is unavoidable. This is used to enter and exit the room and will not interfere with operations. provision will neverless be made to address this compromise.
Sounds like a good concept. I’ve designed a couple of layouts very similar to this idea for clients.
There are also a number of fine examples in the magazines and on the web. One of the more-recent examples is Balir Kooistra’s fabulous Walla Walla Valley. Blair replaced his visible classification yard with staging and used a run-around to do the sorting and classification afterwards. Blair has moved and is building yet another version of the railroad, but he describes the changes to replace the visible yard with staging on his website at: http://www.wwvrailway.com/ModelWWV.htm
His layout was also featured in Model Railroader’s “Great Model Railroads 2005”.
(I should point out that neither of those are layouts I designed – I just think they are good examples. Hopefully my clients will also develop theirs to a publishable point at some point.)
And there are quite a few more examples. It’s true that in the 50s and 60s engine terminals and visible yards were “must haves” even on the smallest layouts. That led to the plethora of published 4X8 plans that had little else besides the turntable, roundhouse, and a couple of “yard” tracks inside the roundy-roundy. But in the last couple of decades or so, many different layout configurations are being used, including allowing staging to represent unmodeled yards, engine ternminals, large industries, etc.
The only challenges are the typical ones of secluded staging: if it’s not loop- or through-staging, there’s some work needed to pull trains out and turn them between sessions. On one of these layouts I added a hidden turntable
No secluded stagging with but one exception. This was another design challenge, not to bury the stagging yards, but incorporate them into the benchwork where they are accessible from the operating aisle and yet, not interfere with normal operations on the remainder of the layout.
Shuffling won’t be an issue as a transfer table/turntable will be employed at main stagging, the other two will not be shuffled, but provide a preblocked capability for trains that require no wayside switching. ( reefers assigned to indvidule packing houses in blocks vrs. indvidule cars for example, this location has nine seperate packing houses, requiring complete cuts in the correct order).
The industrial district is divided among two areas connected by a common main line with substantial ( 9 foot ) mutiple (4 Total) switch leads that can act as yard trackage, additionaly, cars can be blocked on the wye if necessary.
I like the layout concept. Nice to see some ideas besides the spaghetti bowl designs that are still with us from the 50’s + 60’s. I agree with shedding the tyranny of the engine house and yard area, particularly on smaller layouts.
Having said that, I chose to have a small yard and engine facilities on my new layout because they fit in my plan of operation. The scene takes up the biggest single space on the bottom deck. The yard will be the focal point for sorting out trains and through cuts of cars as well as the origination point for the branchline going to the top deck.
I have hidden staging along the aisle of my layout with all of the switches right along the aisle with manual throws and acessibility for maintence. Since things are barely into the tracklaying stage on the first level not sure how well it will work, but initial tests went quite well. I also have some staging in the helix on a second track that parallels the mainline for serial staging.
I completed the basic design foundation for this layout 22 years ago to be modeled in HO, events such as marriage and life in general caused me to abandon Model Railroading completely for 20 years.
A couple of years ago, having nothing better to do that weekend I attended a local multi-scale show, that did it, and in the process became introduced to S scale, HO would no longer satisfy me! So, you see i’ve been waiting 20 years to get the construction phase started.
I’ll steal the bosses scanner and nuke the plan for the group.
I also skipped the yard/engine facility on my current layout. While 11x18 isn’t small, I kept the layout simple since I knew that time and money were limited. The plan is a double track mainline oval with layover sidings on one side around the outer walls and a center peninsula with a single town and short line that meets the main at a small junction on the other side. The design was heavily influenced by an article I read, “Come-and-go layout design” in Model Railroader, March 1991 , by Jeff Madden; it was also published in "48 Top Notch Track Plans from Model Railroader ". It’s not far enough along for pictures, but I have fun with it.
you sound like something I will do, I won’t have room for turntables, I plan heavy coal trains with N&W locos, when they make their run, I will just run light backing to the terminal. Not exactly prototypical, but it’ll be fun enough.
Its shelf design multi-level. Point to point but with cheat coninous operation possible across several railroads if I so wish.
Interchanges, and industries, its operation crammed design.
I don’t have room for long runs except for carefully placed lines non-hidden non scenicked area.
Which might be right under a shelf bottom, but visible enough for watching and re-railing.
Do whats fun, theres all kinds of possibilities.
A plan like that is a personal choice–personally, I have a yard, industries and an engine service facility on my 16 square foot HO switching layout–but almost no mainline, and that gets pressed into service as a yard lead! But then, I am fascinated by yards and engine facilities more than by mainline running. For a mainline enthusiast, it certainly doesn’t seem too difficult to visualize.
