Evening all,
I have space for a 8 x10 layout. The problem I am having is how to set the layout up. I was thinking of a U shape layout… Any and all ideas welcome… Thank you in advance for all your help.
Based on what you hopefully may have seen in illustrations and photographs, what interests you? The shape of your layout’s surface will be reflected in the type of scale railroading you have in mind.
Some of us like to watch trains run, but we also like some realism, especially in the scenery. So, we make a circuit, a loop, a folded loop, a figure-8 with a level crossing, or one with an overhead crossing (means elevation changes, something the railroads tolerate and assiduously avoid).
Some of us like switching operations, say in a large classification yard, or in industrial sites with sidings and spurs. So, they don’t need a loop and often just use a shelf with brackets, something narrow and easily reached into.
Those of us who like to watch trains run more often than any other type of operations will want something that runs around the walls and may include a liftout bridge at the entrance to the room, or a gate on hinges. Part of the rails runs atop the gate. Or, as happens to many beginners, they opt for a slab of plywood. Trouble is, that slab isn’t the best use of the space available in a medium-sized or smaller room.
Do you want to be able to walk around a table layout? Could you stand having it run around you attached to the walls? Do you only have two walls to use practically, maybe three, or could you use the entire room?
Some have a U-shaped layout with a central operating pit and the open end close to the door. If they still want a loop, they must provide two flares near the door where the benchwork ends. That flare provides a wider surface for curves to turn the trains.
Now we come to even more concerns. Do you fancy old time steam? Then your curves can be tiny, say in the 16-20" range (I’m talking HO scale), but it will be settled by one thing only, and that’s the locomotive and cars and their couplers. They,
Darren, I little more information from you would be helpful. Like is this an 8 X 10 room your going to build in; or, just a space that is 8 X 10 that you have available?
Remember that anything deeper than 2 feet is hard to reach, hard to lay and wire and clean track, and hard to rerail trains. It is easy to forget what a wall means when doodling track plans on paper! Also remember when looking at a track plan in a book or magazine, or looking at your own efforts on a sheet of paper, that real model track is not a line but has actual width, and needs clearances on the side. i see some track plans that cram in a suspicously large amount of track and I suspect are pure vaporware – you could not lay tracks as close to each other as you can draw lines close to each other!
You might want to consider the domino approach of David Barrow. Barrow assumes that the entire layout is made up primarily of identical sized 'domino" building block pieces, such as 2 x 4 feet, or 18" by 4 feet. This has some advantages both for planning the layout and actually building it. Sievers modules and similar makes follow a similar approach. I will briefly explain but Barrow’s articles do a better job.
The layout is built up of building blocks - in my case 2’x4’ dominos - that can be constructed before the first pencil hits paper (or the first CadRail keystroke) because the dominos are independent pieces that can be moved around the room like chess pieces, seeing what fits the room and its obstacles — what works in other words. I chose 2’x4’ because the local big box hardware store sells “handi panels” of good plywood to that size and they fit nicely in my rather small car. And they are fairly easy to pick up and move around.
The benchwork influences, but does not control, the ultimate plan although of course the domino system tends to favor linear style layouts. But larger pieces can be fitted together with dominos if that suits what
Thank you all for the replays. Here is the info I should have posted during my first post.
Era: Current
Scale: Ho
Industrial layout
The actual layout is 8 x 10. I would like to have at least 1 continuous loop and a yard to work with as well. Types of buildings are Auto yard, lumber yard, gravel pit, junk yard, and a coal plant.