I have been looking at ideas for a track plan for a friend who is an avid (and good) landscape builder, but I am drawing a blank here - the subject is kinda out of the area I normally work in - i.e urban switching, and I am not used to thinking in H0n3. Anyone got any ideas or links to share on this subject?
Available space: a basement room 9’6" x 9’6", configured as in the image below:
The wish list of features include:
Theme: western US steam narrow gauge logging road - canyon, forest, big wooden trestle
Scale: H0n3
Minimum radius: 19.5" (50 cm)
Minimum turnouts: #6
Continuous run, possibly a junction-to-point branch/spur
One site with a steam era engine service area
(she already has a 56 foot Laws A frame turntable from Sequoia, water tower, coal bin, cinder pit)
One larger industry (e.g a sawmill), but room for plenty of scenery - which is her main interest
Preferably staging for two trains, each an engine and six cars - about 40" long each
I have been looking at our own Ulrich (Sir Maddog)'s 6.5 foot x 20" scene “End of the Line at Cimarron”, which contains a city scene I really like, and which I think has the look and feel I envision for this layout.
But I am somewhat stumped when it comes to the main part of the layout. I have e.g. looked at Byron Henderson’s water wings style logger for a little bigger room (but also somewhat bigger radius - 22" vs 19.5") here. It has many of the desired elements.
So has Iain Rice’s “Linked Up Logger”, from “Small, Smart and Practical Track Plans”. Doing something as sections around the room instead of using
Logging railroads usually connect a logging camp somewhere up in the mountains with a saw mill operation down hill, so that´d be a theme for a classic point -to-point layout.
How about having a regular narrow gauge line connecting to a logging railroad at “Cimarron”? the “main” line could follow a folded loop design, with a branch leading to the saw mill and logging camp?
There are many videos on You-Tube about logging railroads that could possibly be used as inspiration. One series of five videos in particular is about the Schafer Brothers logging operations in Washington state.
For the subject in question you can’t do much better than Last of the Three Foot Loggers. The West Side Lumber Company ran from the rather humongous mill at Tuolumne, CA into National Forest land in the Sierra Nevada - Shays, tall trestles, scenery that stood on edge. The longest run was 70 miles - and actually covered a horizontally-measured 13! To get an idea of the topography, crumple up some paper and drop it on the floor.
My own logger is a little narrower (762mm - 2 foot 6 inch) and a bit too far west (Nagano-ken, Japan.) However, the topography is similar. Most of your track should be sidehill on fairly steep hillsides, with short tangents and lots of curves. You could simulate grades by putting telegraph poles and the few trees near the tracks on a very slight angle to the vertical, while keeping the rails essentially level. To close the loop on the point-to-point, have a track disappear behind a hill, pass through a viewbreak at a corner and come out from behind the mill buildings along another wall. If you double track that, you could have an empty train running into the woods and a loaded train coming out. Both could lay over out of sight behind the mill and the modeled logging show in front of them.
The West Side used a wye to turn locos, but nothing says that a turntable couldn’t be used. Finished product left Tuolumne in standard gauge cars on the Sierra RR.
EDIT: That double-track connector might make a good `across the door’ drawbridge or lift-out - something like what Nevin worked up for his Nevada-theme layout. He painted his black, and it all but disappeared.
You are pretty darned good at pulling rabbits out of your hat (i.e. magic)
That plan looks very appealing. Benchwork would be a little harder than with a doughnut with a liftout (which according to my friend Miss Vigdis very much is an option, btw), but not too horribly difficult, and this plan have room for lots and lots of scenery - which is what she loves the most (and does extremely well).
About the minimum turnout size and curve radius - I just don’t have the feel for H0n3 (i.e. H0 scale on 10.5 mm gauge track) - but as I understand my friend, she wants to run steam engines with tenders and both old time freight and maybe also some old time passenger cars. So around 19.5" - 20" radius and #6 turnouts doesn’t sound totally excessive to me?
I’ll forward your suggestion to my friend, and have her take a look.
I’ll also look at the videos suggested by cacole and what I can find on the West Side Lumber Co suggested by Chuck. Also, thank you to Ulrich for posting the Cimmaron plan again.
Got a chance to talk with Vigdis’s boyfriend (Svein) - she was a bit under the weather today, so it may take a day or two to get some more feedback from here, but Svein liked what he saw in Paul’s plan.
We discussed a couple of trivial mods - like branching out the line to staging clockwise instead of counter-clockwise from the lower left hand turnback loop - so it would be possible to run from staging to the end terminal at Cimmaron without a reversing move on the way, and both the sawmill and the mine would be from trailing switches for an inbound train, and seeing if it would be possible to squeeze in a turnback loop under Cimmaron (at the cost of eating a little of the doorway), making it easier to turn trains in staging (but making it very hard to reach the inner end of the staging turnback loop).
Anyways - Paul’s suggestion fired us all up again. I’ll be back with more feedback in a couple of days.
My last layout had a logging theme, so I will take a stab at an over all scheme that can be refined into a detailed track plan as you go.
I think that I would start with a mainline that goes around the room at least twice on bench work that is on all outside walls of the room. Start at a central location that could be the Mill, loco facilities, and a small yard area, at the low point of the layout. Maybe include a small interchange with a standard gauge line, just one or two tracks, one of which can be dual gauge for interest. You could have either a town here or a company store with company houses along with the mill and mill operations.
The RR would then climb up from there in both directions to the logging areas. When they meet at the top, you could have two logging camps, separated visually by a mountain. This would give the appearance of a point to point run for operations, but the line would tunnel through the mountain for a continuous run.
Staging could be under the mountain, accessible from below the layout if necessary, and also be a run-through type, making another loop for continuous running if desired.
On the way up the mountain, you could branch off with a spur or two for other small logging camps.
So lets say that the mill and service area were on the east wall. I would put the high point and camps on the west wall. Staging would also be on the west side of the room. Most of the dramatic scenery would be on the north and south walls, with maybe a small station / town with a single spur on one side, and another spur with logging camp on the opposite wall, maybe descending slightly into a canyon.
To cross the door, I would use a couple of lift bridges, modeled as steel deck bridges even though their lengths wou
LOL - didn’t see this post until after I had posted. No prob - we also spotted that one, but that was trivial to fix.
If you were to think about doing a doughnut style layout for this one - how would you approach that? I am thinking perhaps X-factor staging from the upper left hand corner would work for staging, but I have to think some more about a twice around type of layout. Have to re-read what Elmer posted.
They’re not indicated to be HOn3, but I think it’s a matter of just swapping out the trucks to make them HOn3. Does anyone know for sure? IIRC, they used to offer them in HOn3, but don’t any more?
I have been looking at ideas for a track plan for a friend who is an avid (and good) landscape builder, but I am drawing a blank here - the subject is kinda out of the area I normally work in - i.e urban switching, and I am not used to thinking in H0n3. Anyone got any ideas or links to share on this subject?
The wish list of features include:
Theme: western US steam narrow gauge logging road - canyon, forest, big wooden trestle
Scale: H0n3
Minimum radius: 19.5" (50 cm)
Minimum turnouts: #6
Continuous run, possibly a junction-to-point branch/spur
One site with a steam era engine service area
(she already has a 56 foot Laws A frame turntable from Sequoia, water tower, coal bin, cinder pit)
One larger industry (e.g a sawmill), but room for plenty of scenery - which is her main interest
Preferably staging for two trains, each an engine and six cars - about 40" long each
I have been looking at our own Ulrich (Sir Maddog)'s 6.5 foot x 20" scene “End of the Line at Cimarron”, which contains a city scene I really like, and which I think has the look and feel I envision for this layout.
But I am somewhat stumped when it comes to the main part of the layout. I have e.g. looked at Byron Henderson’s water wings style logger for a little bigger room (but also somewhat bigger radius - 22" vs 19.5") here. It has many of the desired elements.
So has Iain Rice’s “Linked Up Logger”, from “Small, Smart and Practical Track Plans”. Doing something as sections around the room instead of using deeper turn-back curves on a water wings plan would make it easier to use shelves under the layout for storage.
But for some reason, I have trouble pulling this together. Any suggestions for how to
FWIW, Blackstone is bringing in a line of HOn3 sectional track, complete with 19" radius curves. The track is based on Kato’s Unitrack design for joining sections, with built-in roadbed. Supposed to arrive in time for Christmas. The ties, rail, and built-in roadbed appear to be reasonably realistic for narrow gauge. Spendy, but an easy way to get track built if your modeling preferences are in other areas. Many guys are looking at this for test loops for working on locomotives.
Very useful stuff, guys. I will have to come back to you in a day or two, since my friend - who is the one planning this layout, unfortunately is down with the flu today, and I don’t yet know much about her plans for rolling stock etc - I have heard Blackstone mentioned, but that’s about it.
She feels a little shy about posting in English, but I am sure she will appreciate any and all information you can offer.
I also got a tio that one possible footprint is a Q - shape - or more precisely - a doughnut shaped layout, with a peninsula e.g. for a logging camp or a mill, going out at a 45 degree angle from the lower left hand corner.
I’ll try to doodle a little more on both ideas (folded water wings and O-shape with peninsula) tomorrow, if I get a chance.
Thank you very much to all who have responded so far !
I agree it is a little crowded, but if we removed the peninsula with Camp 11, and using the camp 13 area purely as a switchback, leaving only camp 12 as a logging camp - then that would significantly increase the scenery to visible track ratio along the right side of the room.
It would turn the lower half of the right wall and the lower right hand corner into a lumber camp scene.
The right half of the upper wall and the top of the right wall being a scenic part of the run - with the mainline ducking into a tunnel and coming out of one of two tunnels, the switchback climb through the mountain/forest scenery at the right and the trestle/canyon scene at the left.
The part along the left wall closest to aisle would be a town with a sawmill and engine service, while the track climbing along the left wall could also be a scenic run through the forest.
Mmm - the only potential challenge I see is access to staging - when you write “staging underneath”, you are thinking alongside the +0 level track under the mountain along the wall (where the track above is at level +5.5"), right?
Guess large parts of the roof over that tunnel area could be removable - from about where it says “6% up” to almost at the above the upper tunnel mouth, combined with there being r
You were the one who started to talk about one of Byron Henderson’s waterwing plans. I only added Cimarron (chapeau Ulrich) along the empty east wall.
The twice around donut was drawn to visualise Elmer’s contribution, though due to your remark about a Q-shaped plan, the idea of a small peninsula was born.
I might choose for a once around donut, indeed with a branch to a log camp. With a logpond / sawmill combination along the other wall as well. It is all about taste, no one’s is the very same.
Absolutely - sorry if I gave the impression of being ungrateful - on the contrary - seeing these plans very much helped me visualize some of the options that exist - and I agree that Elmer’s concept idea (in your line) does work rather well while leaving ample floor space, storage space beneath most of the layout and easy reaches for most things.
But we will have to wait and see what Vigdis likes. Her main interest is creating breathtaking scenery and detailed buildings, more than operations - so I suspect that either a twice around with a branch or the folded water wings with the end terminal would work great for her wishes.
Enjoy your hockey - looks like I am headed for painting window frames and water boards on our home today - I and my neighbors have been repainting all the homes in our little housing
i might have given the wrong impression, you were very grateful indeed, i only wanted to let you and Elmer know your input was of great importance.
Wish you the very best, yeah, that MR-plan is awesome, though i might keep a logging branch above a staging area. With a once-around you do have the space to really work the scenes out; and still feel the remoteness of the area.
I am not sure about the running possibilities of HOn3 engines, probably the combination of #5 turnouts and a 20" radius will do fine
