This layout does in your space what mine does in 16x25. You have your saw mill in the lower right. You have your log loading area is the lower left. You can put a log camp in the spur off the logging branch.
The loop is the mainline leading to the yard. This gives you outbound shipping to the rest of the world.
The runarounds you proposed will add a lot.
The biggest missing piece is a staging yard. A staging yard will allow you to ship to and from the rest of the world. Maybe among us we can find a way to get suitable staging. It can be as small as a single track, but it should be off or not visible from your layout.
Staging is nice, and adds the the operation side of things. Having staging means that you can have a lot more traffic than what the industries on your layout could support. I’ think it should be incorporated into it somehow.
A logging railroad wouldn’t necessarily need staging. They were built to move logs from the forest to the saw mill where the finished products or semifinsihed products would be moved out by an unconnected transportation system like a rail spur or highway. When needed they were dismantled and relocated to the new area. Some even used wood rails they were so temporary. Maybe there is an untapped market for code 100 wood rails!
The way this layout is designed is that in addition to the logging, there is a mianline connection and a yard. This is not just a logging layout. Staging is appropriate.
Eliminate the continous run connection located at the top of the plan, reorient the spurs from the top of the plan to just before the small bridge, angle off and relocate on the left hand side of your plan. What was once the continous run connection can now be streightened out to serve as a stagging yard. Depress the tracks or use scenery to hide from view and yet permit easy access.
Staging is like a yard only hidden, it’s a place for trains to goto and come from.
some one else may have a better description, but thats kinda the gist of it.
I did a little research on it and found out what it is. It’s a bunch of fakery made so that your layout appears larger than it is. That does make it much more realistic. I’ll figure out somewhere to put one. But honestly, I’m probably only going to run three or four locomotives. Do yall really think I need one?
I think in the long run, once you have some more time running trains and doing some light switching, you may want to move into more operations down the road. This way with staging you can have a train appear from a distant place, and have the other train leave to points outside the layout. Many will create timetables, or create situations that require some “operations” type activities.
I run mine with a purpose in mind, trains come from the east and west to drop cars for the town I model, I also have coal trains come in to deliver coal and then take the unit train back. I think you will find the staging usefull in the future.
In response to your query, you could branch the stagging off the continous run, you would most likely have to relocate the spurs as stated previously, how wide is the layout in this area? True, you could forgo the stagging altogether, I feel at least one track will give you flexibilty to cycle equiptment. You could also use a stagging to depict additional traffic that orginates somewhere off the physical layout.
I’m using this concept to foster the illusion that those cement trains orginated from a portion of the branch that is not physically modeled. My lumber connection will operate on the same concept.
Here’s a short piece I wrote on the subject of staging. For “Brewery” you can substitute saw mill. For “Hops” substitute diesel fuel or coal or oil.
To the casual observer, staging just isn’t that important. Just a place to store trains. True, but it is the conceptual part of what staging represents that makes it important and changes a train set into a model railroad. Staging represents a link with the rest of the world.
Lets take a brewery as an example. Without a staging yard, you can pick beer up, and you can bring back empties. Just like the liquor store–it magically appears. But in the real world, the brewery needs hops, barley, preservatives, fuel, glass, aluminum, etc. etc. Without a stating yard where do these things come from? You could add a hops farm. But then where does the fertilizer come from for the hops. You just can’t make an enclosed system that works like the real world. You have to suspend a lot of reality and give up a lot of operabilty.
With a staging yard, the hops can come from somewhere else. The diesel fuel needed at the coal mine can come from somewhere else. The town’s factories can be suppled raw materials from somewhere else. And all their goods can be shipped somewhere else.
In other words, what you can do with your layout is expanded exponentially.
Even if all you can do is get a track or two under your “low hills” you are opening up a world or possibilities.
Alright, thanks to all you good folks, I now know what staging is. I have however what I think is a good question. Since staging is basically supposed to “hide” trains and pretend they are farther away than the viewable layout, what about hearing them? All of my trains will be sound equipped. So, if I have a staging area even out of sight, we will still be able to hear the DCC sounds if the train is on the track and power is on. Is there a way around that?
In general, op-based layouts have two staging yards, one on either end of the mainline run. But you can design in as many staging yards as you think you need, based on your projected traffic. My old layout had NINE staging “yards”, from between one to eight tracks long. I had two staging yards feeding each end of the layout, and five much smaller staging yards which held trains and cars for live interchanges. I’m planning a similar number of staging yards for my new basement…
My own layout will be a fictional shortline with only one connection to a prototype RR
I originally planned to have only a long interchange track but when I added up the amount of cars I would need to service my industries I decided to add at least 3 staging yard tracks.
I may even scenic the staging and use it to make transfer runs between my RR and the prototype.
