Getting back into the hobby after a long break (was a young boy in the mid 80’s) - never had a layout of my own then. Now that I’m grown and have the room for a small layout - I’m gearing up for layout design. Actually I’ve been designing in my head and on paper for YEARS. At one point I was planning on using one of my garage stalls, but I killed off the idea due to having to enclose the area to keep out dust, bugs and other critters. I have a spare room that my wife and I share and in the interest of being fair, only requested a portion of the room. My max size available is a 9x10 corner of the room (no worries of doors/windows).
I’ve settled on HO standard gauge - early/mid era steam - all small locos (nothing bigger than a connie), small freight to give a hint of narrow gauge, short passenger cars etc.
Interested in running first (have two rug-rats to entertain), with some switching opportunities (but no serious operations - more into switching games vs realism). No prototype in mind - more of a fr
For short cars and small engines, 18" should work very well. Most HO equipment is engineered to get around 18".
N scale is about half of HO in one dimension, but for two dimensions the ratio is about 4 to one. So a 50 sq ft layout in N is closer to 200 sq ft in HO.
I would get a copy of Track Planning for Realistic Operation by John Armstrong. To get some ideas.
One idea with the kids might be a double track oval possibly twisted around a little bit for scenic interest where the trains can just run. Each kid could control one. Add in a junction and branch line for a little switching. Since this is your first layout in over 20 years, I recommend keeping it fairly simple to start with.
I actually have his book, along with some of his track plan idea book published in the 80’s. His book is great in the education on how RR’s work and how to design better yards and sidings, yet it touches less on the actual overall track planning process. His doodling in squares is better suited to the general layout design concepts. Iain Rice and his books have been a great source of inspiration (impossible trackwork aside).
Also I’m not a fan of circular layouts with sidings like the Heart of Georgia. Layouts with single sidings are great with operations, but I enjoy switching puzzles like inglenooks and timesavers (even though it is not prototypical). While most all around the wall layouts are circles, the HOG just screams CIRCLE. A peninsula would have broken up the circular nature and added operation without adding complexity.
The 4 plans who inspired you are very peculiar. If they have one thing in common it is impossible track work, I tried to redo the Bellevue & Cascade; it did not surprise me at all, i needed 11 x 10,5 feet. The plan is a fraud. (Using 18" radii and #4 switches as stated in the description)
The Hog was build as an alternative to the ever present 8 x 4 tabletop, with the same amount of wood; a very convincing exercise.
In the space you have only a circle is possible, aaawwwwwwww so sad. Unless, …your space is part of a bigger room; a drawing of the room, with all obstacles might be a good start.
Mmmm - one place where there has been a bit of discussion about the overall process of track planning is the LDSIG (Layout Design Special Interest Group) journal.
Byron Henderson (who has become editor of the LDJ again this year) did a Layout Design Boot camp at the last NMRA convention - a PDF of the handout, which describes his overview of the design process can be found here: http://www.layoutvision.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ld_bc.pdf
The handout also has links to quite a few good resources on the Net for the layout design process.
My four layouts mentioned are ones that have always caught my eye and fit in my particular space. I know I’ll end up with a variation of the oval. I’ve seen the HOG and it always looked plain to me. Most likely because most people are making their versions based on the flattest part of the planet. Modern era and lack of passenger service (even shorty cars) also gives ovals less charm to me - they are more sterile and business-like. No knock against modern modelers - they look at diesels the same way we look at steam engines - with love.
Another idea I’ve tossed around is perhaps making 4 five foot straight modules and then linking them up with tight radius hidden/un-sceniced corners. Using un-scenic-ed (spelling?) corners will let me use tight radius turns (18") to give more room for the main modules. Make the main modules shadow boxes featuring separate scenes. Similar to the Linked up Logger layout. These would be domino style modules - maybe conforming to Fremo in order to join in a show some day.
I think using the domino method will let me get started on an easier scale. I’ll try to whip up some designs of modules.
Stein - had a look at the design boot camp - all good food for thought. It made me realize that I need to only plan something I can handle. I think that is what everyone in the forum had been hinting at.
In the next few days I’ll be posting some design ideas for dominos here - hopefully I can get some more good advice from everyone.
It sounds to me like you are hug up not wanting to use 18R curves in your small space.
My space is 9 feet wide and I decided to use them. I also have one yard track that has a 15R in it. I am modeling the early diesel era, 1962. My longest freight car is 50 foot, (most are 40 foot) and my passenger cars are 60 foot.
If I had a wider space, I would have used larger curves. Sometimes model railroading is made up of compromises. My track plan goes around the room twice, also something that you said you don’t want to do. With the tracks close to each other at some places, I made one track look like a nice mainline, and the other like a smaller branchline. This helps with the visual separation. I chose the twice around run so I could get a longer run before coming back to the same place.
If you would like to look at what I have, the URL is in my signature block at the bottom of this reply. If you look on the site page and go down to ‘Layout Progress’, there is a link to a bunch of photos. My layout is still under construction, so of course some areas are not finished.
Mmmm - 6.5 foot wide room, minimum mainline curve radius 22" (there is also 20" curve radius on the ramp down to the barge terminal in the lower left hand corner) - biggest cars a few 50-foot cars, most cars are 40-foot, engines are mostly small 4 axle diesels:
Here is another illustration from another discussion:
It certainly is possible to keep curve radius above 18" on a shelf layout around a 9 foot wide room.
Whether you would want to do so in a specific case is another question - that depends on your modeling goals and what compromises you will have to make during design. All design consists of trade-off. Weight vs strength, cost vs complexity, mainline length vs once-through-the-scene and so on and so forth.
The HOG layout is one I mentioned earlier - it’s a good beginner layout with good switching opportunities - but not much visual appeal. It’s hard to get much going visually on a 1 foot wide module with three tracks going through it…
I had mentioned earlier that I had an interest in switching puzzles. I thought they were intriguing (I love all kinds of puzzles) but had not actually used one. Well I headed over to http://www.precisionlabels.com/shunt/jpage300.html to play around with the switching puzzles. Boy are they some difficult puzzles! That has me rethinking adding a timesaver AND and inglenook to my design. I think I’ll keep the inglenook idea but I’ve softened on the timesaver.
I think you guys should check out the link I posted - it’s a pretty fun web based program that lets you shunt cars…it counts the number of moves you take.
