looking for help with a track plan

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I have room to build a shelf layout, and am looking for help coming up with a track plan. I am doing HO scale, and would like to use DCC, and Atlas code 83 track. The layout will be in my house on the second floor, in a family room we don’t really use as a family room. So, it is climate controled.

I’m looking to do a 2 foot wide shelf around three walls. From my drawing, the blue line represents the longest wall which is 12 feet long, the red line is in front of an opening that looks down onto the dining area, and is 10 feet long. The green line is a small knee wall that encloses the room from the stairs leading up, and is 3 feet long. It can’t be attached to the walls, as it will be higher than the two shorter walls, so I can pretty much figure out the benchwork.

I want to do the early to mid fifties, because I really want a meat packing industry with stock yards, and all that. I would like this to be in a corner, like in this months MR article on meat packing. I also want to incorporate a New England style creamery, probably a scrap yard, and a distributor of industrial underground piping. (For water and sewer contractors). I also have toyed with the idea of maybe a car float scene on one end of the layout (either end). I know I will need a small yard for staging, maybe three or four tracks.

I’m not looking to run any big diesels, only 4 axle RS’s, Geeps’, and a yard switcher or two. I would like to have the trains come from staging, to a holding track outside the packing plant, drop inbound cars, pick up outbound cars, and then have the switcher spot cars where needed.

Should i just try and replicate the track plan from the article, and kind of expand out from there, knowing what else i want to incorporate? Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on something better?

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Hi Bob,

Just a couple of remarks and some questions.

You seem to know pretty well all the stuff you want to have on your layout. So you want a switching layout in the early fifties. But where is it located? To me it seems you are going for an urban branch.

You named New England (Providence or Boston?) and you mentioned a carfloat (NYCH or New Jersey?)

It is great you made a drawing of your room, but do you have possibilities to play a bit with the footprint of your layout? Can you also use part of the centre of your space or lengthen the short leg along the stairs? You did not draw a line along the south side of your space, can part of this side be used for your railroad?

I am not so sure about that one. Staging can also be done by a cassette or by a carfloat. On a smaller layout it is not bad to explore alternatives and decide later which way of staging is the best for you.

Lance Mindheim has done a quite a lot of urban designs for shelf layouts, e.g, one based on NYCH for a 12 x 11 sized room. Staging was done by a carfloat, a small yard (not for staging) is incorporated to make switching of the industrial area more managable.

If something is better only you can tell; taking some time to look at more designs, can be time well spend. If you want help finding some alternatives, just ask. Not all can be found in the MR-trackplan database; the National Dock Ry in New Jersey is in it.

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There are a number of books and articles on small layouts – check out the Trains.com site for track plans too. As far as staging goes, that is an easy one. Make your layout 6-8 inches wider; put a backdrop 6-8 inches from the wall and now you have behind the scenes staging that you can weave your mainline in and out of. You could even do the loads in/empties out paired industries with this as well.There are a number of plans out there that utilize this type of staging. Make the backdrop low enough, and you can reach over it if there are any problems, make it removable, or make the backdrop a line of tall buildings that are removable so you can access the hidden staging. Good luck with your layout!

Chuck

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Lance Mindheim is certainly one of the gurus of shelf layouts. He has written some books on this issue, which I can highly recommend.

Take a look at this !

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Welcome.

Good explanation of your situation. Sounds like you have a “loft” area. One thing to consider, and you may not think much about it now, but it sounds like the backside of any benchwork along that red line will be open to public space in your house. You might find you or your family would grow tired of looking at the back side of a 48 inch high bench with a 24 inch high backdrop. That’s a whole lot of ugliness staring everybody in the face every day.

Just off the top of my head here, but why not reserve that wall for benchwork that can hold staging tracks along the back, and a narrow street running scene along the front. No backdrop. Total shelf depth maybe a bit more than 24 inches. How about having your urban industries along the west wall, complete with backdrop, then have your suburban-like industry, your piping contractor, along the east wall. In between, have the racks run down the center of a suburban street, with small houses along the street, connecting the two switching areas.

That entire street running scene could only be 12-16 inches wide, and have your open and accessible staging area behind that subburban street running scene occupying the portion of the benchwork closest to the red line.

Trains could travel west out of staging, arrive at the urban yard, deliver cars to the industries surrounding it, then run a couple of cars through the 'burbs to the contractor. Having enough room for a run around engine escape might be a bit of an issue over there on the east side, however.

Just a suggestion. I’m sure there will be more.

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That was the first thing I started thinking about. Especially if one can look up and see the underside of the layout. Might need some rear curtains for the bottom and do double sided backdrops with room appropirate decorations on the back.

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Colesdad, how high are those red and green walls? If the red is a railing or knee wall, you will need a backdrop of some kind.

You are on the right track by starting with an around the wall shelf-type layout, best use of space, with 2ft aisles you could do an “M” (rotated “E”) layout, or use the center space to widen the “shelf” to allow for the hidden staging suggested by Chuck (just keep it under 30 or so inches total depth).

8

thank you to all for the responses so far. To answer a few questions you have now asked me:

Paul: I want to do northeast, i like B&M, Rutland, and D&H. It doesn’t bother me if they actually interchanged or not, they would in my “world”. The south wall has a door to a closet in the corner. The longest wall is actually 16 feet, I just shortened it to not block that door. I think I know where your going, "have an around the room layout, with perhaps a duckunder? That is a possibility! As far as the car float idea. I just kinda think they are neat, and that could also be a place from where the trains come from.

Doughless: Good point about the view, but the overlook is about 15 feet off the floor. The dining room ceiling is 18 feet. The “shelf” you overlook to the floor is 30 inches wide. when you look from below, you only see the ceiling of the room. But, I really like your suggestion of the street running through the “burbs”, with the hidden staging behind a view block. Great idea, thanks.

Ulrich, Doc, Barrok and Texas, thanks for your insight as well.

Thank you again.

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Hi Bob,

You are very open minded to idea’s. The best way to go is starting with making a drawing of your space, with all obstacles drawn in. And of course indicate clearly the part of the room that is off limits.

I don’t know about the reading stuff you allready possess. 102 Realistic Track Plans by our publisher (Kalmbach) is a great choice; beside the trackplans MR-staff added pages about trackplanning, mostly done by former MR-editor Andy Sperandeo. These pages are a preview of the famous landmark book about trackplanning by John Armstrong: Trackplanning For Realistic Operation. Both are imho “must haves”; in the 102 TP’s Andy gives a nice exemple how a plan of your space could look.

Ulrich mentioned the books by Lance Mindheim, these and Ian Rice’s Shelf Layouts For Model Railroads (also published by Kalmbach) are worth every penny. Beside some “theory” about building and designing shelf layouts they all contain 8 or 9 case stories: from prototype to modelrailroad. Both are outstanding modelrailroaders. (this is an under statement)

I didn’t cross my mind, you were so clear about a switching layout. Right you are, having the possibility to do some laprunning is not bad at all. So New England it will be; what remains is zooming in on the locale. Big city (Boston, Providence?), more suburban or do you want a smaller town or even a more rural feeling. In 102 TP’s you will find the Waterbury and New Haven (#80, page 62). One of the worst designs ever (my opinion only), but beautifully made (an understatement again); it is giving the right feeling and it is probably the right locale. With some major surgery it could be redisigned into a gem.

BTW I am not fond of staging betwee

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Bob,

I agree with Paul about backdrops and staging. I suppose the theory is that the operator removes the backdrop to set the stage, then replaces the backdrop to operate the railroad. In reality, I bet a fair number of operators end up just leaving the backdrop off, and not replacing it.

My idea of the street running scene with staging behind it was that there would NOT be a backdrop separating the two, perhaps a row of trees or a very low hill. Yes, you would see the staging tracks behind the trees, but if you left them unscenicked or painted the staging area black, your eyes would probably tend to ignore those tracks after a while.

That suggestion was over concern about the red line backing up to public space. Since that concern is not really present as you described, there may be better options for that side of the layout.

Doug