Layout plan Mark III... Comments and opinions apreciated

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Well guys and gals I took to heart some of the fine advice I was given by Ed, Selector, TZ, ereimer, and of course SpaceMouse, who put my mind on the right track, all puns intended [:D]

Please sound back with any and all opinions, criticisms, advice… any things at all… as a greenhorn I can use any and all help that anyone cares to offer. I’m open to any level of redesign.

First here is the basic info:

  • Time frame is betweem 1954 and 1955.

  • Location is running between Flagstaff Arizona and Holbrook Arizona.

  • Ho Scale layout.

  • #6 Turnouts.

  • Minimum curve radii is 24" but in most areas is 25" for inside curves and 28" for outside curves.

  • Minimum S curve straightaway is 12".

  • Distance between rails in most places is 3" (this was arrived at by adding in a bit of extra space for conservative leeway as per John Armstrongs recomendations.)

  • The Minimum reach area has been measured as 30"

  • The Crosshatched areas are unreachable areas.

  • Minimum clearance of isles inside the layout is c 30"

  • The thick blue lines are double sided backdrops.

  • The long strench of track from A-1to A-6 leads from the layout to the built in worktable (not shown) to move trains off the layout for maintance, etc. (Sorta silly idea but read about in MR and loved it.)

  • The ‘bottleneck’ at N-21 to N-22 is a recreation of the prototype “bottleneck” bridge crossing at Canyon Diablo.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head, if I’ve missed any needed info let me know.

Here is the pic of the layout plan, it will expand if you click on it. (My apologies for how big it pops up to… wanted to make sure any and all details could be seen.)

Thanks

2

Let me be the first to say…I like it!!

Just one question. You will have walk-around cabs so that you can see what’s happening from end-to-end, behind those partitions?

Otherwise, I think you have something going…[^]

3

Selector… thanks [:)]

Yes the idea in my head right now is to have it be DCC with walk around controls either on long tethers or with multiple plug in locations… sorta shying away from infared controls.

Coyote

4

I also think it is starting to come together. I really like the idea of the track leading to the workbench. I have thought about doing that for sometime now.

Do you have any staging in mind? Or is that what V-Y is all about? I didn’t plan for staging on mine, and I regret it now, but I do work around it. If you don’t have a ton of cars or engines I guess you would be okay. We know how us model railroaders are, never enough cars and engines.

Are you going DCC? Possibly wireless cabs. You have a lot of mainline to follow.

Can you expand more on the benchwork RIP track?

5

David thanks for the input. [:)]

I was planning on using the area at B-7 to G-9 as staging area… athough the area at V-12 to Y-18 could be used instead but it might need to redesigned more functionaly, what is there now was all I could come up with.

Right now I have only one train [(-D] a Athearn-Genesis Super Chief set -http://www.walthers.com/exec/page/super_chief - although in time when money premits I’d like to add some freight. [;)]

The idea in my head right now is to have it be DCC with walk around controls either on long tethers or with multiple plug in locations.

As for the benchwork RIP line… Im not sure what to tell you [D)]??? What would you like to know?

Coyote

6

Coyote

My take on staging was always to have it more out of the way, which is why I thought what I did. Guess I need to re-look at your design.

On the benchwork, I am just curious as to how you plan to do it, but more important, would love to see the completed idea. I ask because I want to do the same thing.

7

Coyote,
I’m still very much a novice at all this so I can’t comment on yours, but if you don’t mind a question… what type industries are you thinking of and where would they be located on your layout? I know you still must be in the preliminary stage of it but I thought if you had already figured those things out it would be interesting to know.
Thanks,
JaRRell

8

I like the bottleneck. Those are the types of things that make DCC such a blast.

9

Hi,

I think it is 100% improvement. Like Jarrel I would like to know what the industries are and how the towns are located.

All of the yards and spurs need runarounds. The yards especially. The way you have them set up are head in. Once an engine heads in, how does it drop off the cars and get out. That is an easy fix.

You have double tracks for most of the main. Personally I prefer a single track with strategically located passing sidings. It ads a lot of operational complexity–and more fun when operating with your pards.

ON th subject of staging I dug this up for GearDrivenSteam. It was a soap box I got on a while back…

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.
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10

What’s the purpose of the track that ends at 10 B-C?

11

Grandpa, it looks really nice. You’re gonna have a lot of fun with something that size.

12

[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by SpaceMouse

Hi,

I think it is 100% improvement. Like Jarrel I would like to know what the industries are and how the towns are located.

All of the yards and spurs need runarounds. The yards especially. The way you have them set up are head in. Once an engine heads in, how does it drop off the cars and get out. That is an easy fix.

You have double tracks for most of the main. Personally I prefer a single track with strategically located passing sidings. It ads a lot of operational complexity–and more fun when operating with your pards.

ON th subject of staging I dug this up for GearDrivenSteam. It was a soap box I got on a while back…

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 "

13

David the idea right now is that, that single track shotting of the layout will run along a fairly thin stretch of benchwork, with no scenicing on it, across to the top level of a 9’ x 3’ built in wooden worktable that was in the garage when the OL and first got the house… once over there the train could be taken off the track directly like in a fiddle yard to be worked on/repaired/painted/what have you… and then put back on that track and allowed to run back into the yard just below it… at least that is what is my head… it might just be madness [:)]

Coyote

14

JaRRell,
The industry I’m primarily running is Passangers… But I also plan on running Ballast out of Darling (shown in the updated pic) and some already processed lumber coming into Flagstaff.

Coyote

15

RevMatt,

Yes it looks like it will be fun [:D]

But boy was it a [censored] to get to work at least for a tenderfoot like me [;)]

Coyote

16

It is one end of the Point to Point outer line… In all honesty I wasn’t sure how to fit it back into the yard there [:I]

Coyote

17

Thanks Gear… the OL and are looking forward to a enjoyable time over the next few years putting it altogether… I’ll probably wake the neighboors with hoots on the day its done for its first run [:D]

Coyote

18

This is from a post I did for GDS.

Suppose that you want to set off a car in your upper right hand siding. Right now, your engince can pull the car in, but not be able to get the engine out without backing the car out.

With a runaround you can pull the train onto the track right next to the red track I drew in on the left. You diconnect the train at the coupler directly in front of the car you want to drop off. The front part of the train pulls a head and backs int the siding and back onto the main to position itself in the back of the train. The engine then moves forward pushing the car into the side where it can disconect, thereby leaving the car.

It then pulls the train back on to the main adjacent the siding, disconnects the engine from the rear of the train. The engine (and cars) then runs around and positions itself in front of the train and reconnects.

The same type action happens near the yard. Then engine drops of the train on the main and uses the siding to get behind the train. It can then drop the cars (classifies them) in the appropriate classification track. If they are all mixed up, this will result in the train backing out and changing tracks quite a bit to get them sorted.

19

Although you can do passenger operations on a layout, I’m not familiar with passenger operations as apply to your layout. There is an article in this months MR that talks about a passenger terminal. You might want to check that out.

Last week in order to get the club members familiar how we renamed the locations on the layout, we made up a series of 8 trains or so and sent people out. Basically they moved from town to town hold a specific amount of time at each specified station. Each person who ran a route completed a circuit in 30-45 minutes. No one wanted to take out a second train. The challenge of passenger trains is composing proper cars for the route traffic and abiding by a time table.

Many people love this kind of railroading. I prefer moving freight in and out of sidings, providing materials for industries and picking up finished product. I like a passenger train running through and messing up the freight schedule, but to me a passenger train is an obstacle. At most op sessions I’ve been to, passenger trains are for newbees. If there are no newbees, we have to ask for volunteers, etc. Most everyone prefers the challenge of freights. It just seems like there is more to do, more to figure out.

Passenger trains run just fine on mainlines that have a lot of industrial switching. Freighters that don’t have industrial spurs just run around the track, but don’t stop for passengers.

You have a lot of good space for a layout, yet what I see so far is a lot of running with little to do. I’m not saying that you can’t get there from here. I just don’t see it. My gut feeling is that you are still a couple evolutions of consciousness away.

Think about it this way. You are building a layout that may take upwards of 5 years to build. Will you have evolved beyond it before it is done?

20

if you add another track or 2 to the area a tthe workbench it could become a staging area representing the world west of flagstaff . to really make things work you’d need more staging tracks over by holbrook

fantastic work so far , i really like the plan . chip’s comment about your interests evolving before the layout is ‘complete’ may be valid . while it’s certainly great fun to run a beautiful passenger train through well done scenery , how often can you do it before it becomes just another lap around the layout ? staging helps a lot with this as you can build several trains to be run through the layout during a session , heavy traffic through canyon diablo is going to be fun !