The biggest loco i have is a 6 axle diesel, but it’s a tyco and runs well around 18" curves (when it runs, it’s super dirty)
The right side curve, along with the section off to the interxhange are 22s, the rest are 18s, or the sections of flex track which are at least 18 if not more. All the turn outs are #4.
I am thinking about dropping 1 of the spurs after the cross there, amd going with the oil dealer, the freight terminal (id move that to the grain silo spur) and then a brewery
For my layout I let the prototype do my track planning and industry-choosing for me. But it is also the case that my era of the late 1960s was in a sense sort of a last gasp for fairly small industries being commonly rail served. Things changed a lot by the time I got out of school and revisited the area in the 1970s. Sometimes the industries were long gone; other times trucks had captured the business. And even then most of the industries received but did not ship. Too small to ship.
Type of industry and how busy it is as a shipper or receiver plays a role in track planning by the way. For example two relatively small industries, one a manufacturer of tables (but garden and farm implements before that) and the other a lumber dealer, were served by sidings that in turn had additional sidings at the end of the track so the switcher could swap out the empty that was being replaced by a load. Eventually they stopped being so busy, so an empty would be removed well before the next load would arrive, so that extra little siding was less necessary. That sort of thing.
There was also one siding that was not long but was surprisingly intense as a rail customer (in the 1960s): first came a bulk petroleum dealer (but trucks got that business by the mid 1960s), then a tannery that got raw hides in smelly old boxcars, then an area near a road that served as a team track for lumber loads for a lumber yard a few blocks away, then a plastic bag plant that got (and still gets today) covered hoppers of plastic pellets, then yet another tannery that got hides, and finally at the end of the spur, a gray iron foundry, but it was closed by 1970 and ceased to be rail served well before then. At one time there had been a coal dealer between the tannery and the gray iron foundry but that was gone by the 1960s, and probably by the mid 1950s.
As the 1970s developed, there was still lumber delivered, plastic pellets, and one of the two
There is nothing wrong with using 18" radius curves as long as you are willing to accept the trade-offs for the space saving.
As long as you use smaller locomotives and freight cars it should all be fine.
-Kevin
Ok, came up with a couple designs. I’m not sure on having a crossing, so I changed that area up on the scond one. I went for 3 industries.
The Access Road will come over the double curves, so it should be able to reach every building.
Also on the one without the crossing, I mixed 18" and 22" sectional track to make the curve, and the flex track (according to the software) is a 31" radius. All the other flex tracks are more than that too (again according to the software) I’m leaning towards that one.
I’ve got a small brewery on my layout, but it’s really just a place to deliver and pick up ice bunker beer reefers, whick would have been no longer used by your era, either ice bunkers or the colorful billboard signs. In the present day, all the breweries around here are purely truck served. I suppose a valid case could be made for supplying a brewery with barley and hoppers of hops, and maybe tank cars of water.
For future reference, the old ice bunker refrigerator cars had a wealth of operational possibilities. The cars had to be pre-iced before loading, and sometimes top-iced before they went out. Through freights might have a midway layover to re-ice their reefers on a hot day. My layout had a small packing plant and the brewery, plus a few Railway Express reefers that would also need icing and would likely be loaded at the Railway Express depot. With icing platforms, I could spend a lot of time just taking care of reefers.
I cpuld change the era, I would prefer 40s, so I could run steam amd diesel together. Im a little stuck in the 70s since I have 2 Burlington Northern Locos that are my best. They were my grandma’s locos so they arent getting any changes made to them besides figuring out how to upgrade the couplers. They have damage so that makes them a bit hard to work with, maybe I should just keep them as show peices. They were the 2 locos my grandma ran on her double oval, she let us kids (my siblings and I) race them around the track, which the RS kind of has taken a few too many falls from.
I’m stuck for now with the 4x8, as I have a table ready to go. Was what my grandma had. I’m also stuck in my garage so I’m putting it on castors and adding walls so I can run the track to the edges if needed. I am going to see if I cant add 6" at least to both sides, so it gives me more room.
I would like to do that layout, but I’m not sure how to go about it with sectional track. Im stuck.with that too because of cost, I have a ton of sectional track, some brand new in the package, sonce I waa given a ton, amd bought a huge lot of stuff really cheap. Also the local hobby shop owner retired and sold the store, and all the railroad stuff went cheap, which I bought a lot of there.
I’m planning on now the interchange of my layout to run cassettes off each side, and then once I do get to bring it inside, I will run off of them to other layouts.
I mocked up that plan when I was going to build another 4x8. I used sectional and snap track. I wouldn’t shy away from getting a few peices of flex Track for the odd ball areas where snap track won’t work. I had used all snap track curves and only 2 pieces of flex track
That plan (Cuyama’s) is great for operations by the way, with its double loop. The tunnel might look a bit toy-like, but it’s hard to avoid on a 4x8…
Simon
This might be for some time down the line, but you can also dual-era your layout, replacing engines, some rolling stock and the road vehicles with those from days gone by. I’ve done that, and it let’s me have either a steam-era layout or a diesel-era layout.