I have a 12x10 feet space.
I am looking for a layout plan for passengers operations with railway stations and urban areas…
I have looked in the “48 top notch plans” book but most of the plans are for freight operations.
Any ideas ?
do you also want frieght?
if you want commuter, you might want to build a terminus, and show a commuter line just near the terminus, going around the wall
along with that you could also model subway lines
in that space if you want intercity, you might have to go double deck
try to make it nolix
With passenger you might be stuck with around the room only with a duck-under. You might be able to get a second level with a Nolix but if you climbed around the room at 2% you would gain only 5"
The best use of space–although this is a tad bigger than you have can be seen here.
http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/4x8/
But the turnaround on the pennisula might be tight for passenger cars.
But I am assuming HO if you are doing N, you have a lot more options.
I am working with HO scale.
And freigth is optional. I am considering with and without.
I am also thinking of a second level.
Freight will increase your operational options tenfold. If running passengers you can stop, go, and add cars from the passenger yard. Not much variation.
To get a second level you will need to climb 12-14" That means three laps all the way around the room at 2% grade and that means your track will cross your door 5 times.
Passenger trains in HO in your space will be limited. Not to harp, but switching to N before you make too much investment will give you 3-4 times the running space.
Try downloading the Right Track Software and playing around a bit.
I would have a stub end terminal on one wall and a car and engine yard on a second. I would take trains out to a staging loop with as many tarcks as possible. That way you can make up trains, bring them into the stub end terminal, and send them on their way to staging. After five or six have come back in the train you sent out comes back as a different train engine first that needs to be taken to the yard and remade in the correct direction.
Why not try using Kalmbach’s track plan search engine. Go to “index”, then “for trackplan”, then “advanced trackplan search.” The advanced search has criteria you can select such as “passenger train operations.” For the size of your room, I’d stick mainly with around the wall layouts which provide larger track radius.
Passenger operations as in:
- Multiple passenger trains meeting and passing each other?
- Single or a couple passenger trains keeping an exact schedule stopping at stations with stops and starts such that the soup in the diner doesn’t spill?
- Multiple trains meeting at a Union terminal, swaping through cars, and breaking the rest of the train up into the coach yard?
- Setting out the diner at the commisary, picking up/setting out express or baggage cars, washing the domes, working private varnish, etc.?
- Showcase for prototypical trains?
How long are you thinking the trains will be?
What is the Kalmbach’s track plan search engine ?
On the very top of this page, almost the center, click where it says “Index of Magazines”.
Then along the left hand side you select “For Trackplan”.
On the trackplan page select “advanced trackplan search”.
I ran across a layout that might give you some ideas.
It is in the July 1955 “Model Railroader”. The article title is “Poor Man’s Throat” and the layout name is “Chatahachie Union Terminal”. It is basically a point to loop out and back type layout. Starts on page 36, layout on page 37.
if you have the September MR you can see there is actually A LOT to passenger trains
i suggest reading the article on page 62
ndbprr has an interesting idea that would be a lot of fun and very interesting to operate!
If I were doing this I would model have a medium to large passenger terminal on one 12 ft wall and a large staging yard on the other 12 ft wall. Above the staging yard I would put a short commuter line or some industrial switching. On the 10 ft ends and along the terminal, I would put a coach yard, commissary, post office, and engine terminal.
Operation would be from the standpoint of the stationmaster, running trains out of staging into the station, changing out express and postal cars and changing diners.
Dave H.
I will have to disagree. You should read the article in the September issue of MR about what challenges passenger services posed to railways. Most passenger trains run on much tighter schedules than freights thereby increasing the challenges of assembling/disassembling trains.
I’m planning a (primarily) passenger-only N-scale layout in an area a bit larger than half the size that fleduc is using. I’ll have 2 decks linked by a no-lix that makes 3 full turns around the room. Yes, the tracks pass the door more than once; but I’m planning on a multi-level swing-away section (like a door with the tracks on ledges) to allow me to walk into the centre of the layout. So, having to circle the room more than once is possible with careful planning.
Here, I agree with you. HO scale, while wonderful in its own right, really limits layout options for those of us restricted to using smaller spaces.
PS: I have finalised (if one can use that word in this hobby [swg] ) plans for my layout. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post pictures of it in the next week or so. The no-lix is single-track; but there is a passing track about 1/3 the way up (which may serve as a small-town or commuter station as well).
This is way cool! I didn’t realize this existed. I see they have separate railroad and reporting mark databases, too.
I thought the index was only for magazines. This is excellent.
quote, “do you also want frieght?”
You might consider making operation of a passenger terminal the main focus of a layout, with station, platform tracks, coach yard, mail, express, baggage and commissary facilities.
In other words, model in detail how passenger trains are handled.
But the same line that carries passenger trains might also have freight traffic that passes through. Your layout might suggest that the freight yards are “somewhere else”, and the mainline freight trains are not switched or yarded on the visible layout. There might however be a freight house near the passenger station where a transfer run or local peddler brings cuts of cars supposedly coming from the outlying freight yard to the downtown freight station. And there may be some “downtown” type industries that would be switched by a local crew… perhaps scheduled at times when there is a lull in passenger traffic…( or in urban street traffic !)
I would envision a round the walls layout, perhaps double track, with junctions where the lines went into staging behind or under the urban scenery to accomodate
- streamline passenger train
- heavyweight “accomodation”, some passenger service but mostly mail and express
- one generic merchandise through freight train
- one through freight of some specialty type to fit yoiur locale such as coal train, reefer block, grain train, etc.
- local freight train that switches minimal modeled freight facilities.
I realize this is not a plan but a rationale for a layout.
I am trying to come up with a passenger operation track plan, basing it on Houston Union Station in the years from the end of World War 2 to the advent of Amtrak.
Click on image to display full size.
The Minute Maid- Houston Astros baseball stadium was built on the site of Union Station, covering the trackage area but incorporating much of the station building, and replicating the design of the station concourse as entrances to the ballpark.
Houston Union had a stub station on a wye off a “Passenger Subdivision” that was double track from a few blocks north of the station, to T&NO Jct. some 4 miles south. Wyes may seem complicated, and a wye on double track may seem even more complicated, but there is an interesting leeson here for designing a passenger terminal.
Note that the two legs of the wye do not connect to the same track. A train heading out of the station and taking the wye to the left crosses the left-hand line of the paired mainlines on a diamond crossing and switches onto the right-hand track going north. A train heading out of the station taking the wye to the right is switched onto the right-hand track going south. The tracks are arranged to have right-hand running as normal direction.
Now we can see on the track chart that the two lines of the Passenger Sub. merge into one line a few blocks north of the station. On a model though, the double track mainline could have a loop at each end to form a dogbone. As long as we do not place any crossovers between the paired tracks, we could use the terminal on the wye without concern about reversing track polarity.
Incidently, when I rode the Texas Chief in and out of Houston in the early years of Amtrak, the train coming in from the south always went past the wye on the right-hand northbound track, then backed into the wye. Coming out, the train took the leg to the right, again going onto the wh
I slaped a quick layout with sectional track and Atlas RTS software. Check it out on my website at http://www.freewebs.com/ghonzish/ the orange layout is a sample of a commuter line with a small amount of switching. It’s open so you can update it yourself. I have never read 48 top notch track plans and don’t quite know your room specifications (ie: door window closet etc.) so i tried to make it flexable.
In designing a layout for passenger operation, I put together a rundown of passenger operations at Houston Union Station circa 1950s. This is a composite of information from a 1958 Official Guide, Missouri Pacific, Burlington and Rock Island timetables from 1955-1961, a 1950 GH&H table, and several books, especially A Quarter Century of Santa Fe Consists.
You may not want to model this particular location or this schedule, but it provides an example of how passenger schedules interlock and connect with each other and some ideas what is involved in modeling the operation.
At Houston Union Station
3:15AM MoPac “all-stops night train accommodation” arrives from St. Louis
7:30AM MoPac “Houstonian” night-train arrives from New Orleans
EDIT: accidently omitted the below movement when originally posting at 11:02AM
7:30AM MoPac “Pioneer” overnight train arrive from Brownsville/South Texas
7:55 AM Santa Fe #16 TEXAS CHIEF (streamlined) arr from Galveston
Switching #16: One baggage-express removed,
One baggage-express and one RPO added.
8:00 AM Santa Fe #5 Express/all-stops passenger (heavywt) arr from Kansas City
Switching #5: Two baggage-express cars removed.
8:10 AM #16 Santa Fe TEXAS CHIEF (streamlined) dep for Chicago
** TEXAS CHIEF and CALIFORNIA SPECIAL pass
in double-track territory south of station
8:15 AM Santa Fe #76 CALIFORNIA SPECIAL arr from California. Terminates.
Scheduling allows passengers from California on #76
to make cross-platform transfer to #5 to continue to Galveston
SWITCHING: through sleeper from ATSF “Cal Special” to MoPac New Orleans train
8:20 AM Santa Fe #5 Express/all-stops passenger (heavywt) dep to Galveston
8:30AM Burlington “Sam Houston Zephyr” departs for Dallas (Denver connection)