Here is my track plan in the most extreme basic form. Kind of my fault, the plan started as a quick sketch for HO scale, I soon realized it wouldn’t work in HO because of train/car lengths, then realized the same plan would work better in N scale than my original N scale plan. That plan would have used up more room, and pretty much just filled up all that extra room with buildings, including a depot, freight house, and ice platform all modeled as defunct run down close to collapsing structures.
Just a quick run down. The staging may be increased to 4 tracks. The black lines represent Milwaukee Road track. The red lines represent Wisconin Central track. I don’t know if they ever collided, but then again this is all modeled way after MILW was shut down. I also plan on running WC No. 715, a GP30 that has been sitting at the National Rail Road Museum I think since before my models date. But I also plan on running a WC GP38 in special paint celebrating 150 years as Wisconsin being a state (sesquatennial?) which would put it sometime in 1998. I may also add on newer rolling stock painted as MILW (such as 8-40B and 8-40C models, also thought of getting a C44-9W in C&NW paint and model it bought out by MILW). Time, and being able to find these models, will tell.
Ok back to the basic run down of things. Milwaukee Road will serve three of the industries, towards the bottom of the…schematic (leave me alone I want to sound fancy [:P]). To the left in dark brown is a building supply store which will recieve lumber loads on 50-54 foot bulk head flat cars. I thought I saw 60 or 63 foot centerbeam flat in N but now I can’t find it. I could run 73 footers but they are too big in my view. The lumber supply will also get some loads (I fi
I knew I would do this. The blue lines on the schematic are back drop. The ends of the layout I don’t know what to do with, but I picutre three basic options. No back drop, a removable back drop, or a permanent back drop. The ends of the MILW and WC/GB&W mainline would also have a mirror in place to make it look like they go on. Also thought I would plop on some pics of the loco’s I want to have and would run.
GB&W RS3 #305 and #307
WC GP30 #715
WC GP38 # 3026 in Wisconsin’s sesquicentennial paint
Nice rundown. Might I suggest adding staging at all ends to give the impression of the beyond the basement and to provide a hidden “end” to your trains destinations.
Basement? Heck if I left it down there it would get stolen or smashed, most likely both. I live in an apartment, and there’s one draw back to all this. I designed it to on the back wall of the bedroom me and the girl use. I had it in the living room, but at only an 8 foot long area I would have to double deck it for a decent area, and then it would shorten the modeled area to about 6 1/2 feet to make room for the helix. I did this because generally a 12 foot long module won’t have problems finding room for. I want to keep the back room open in case the owners decide my buddy can move in hassle free, which they didn’t sound like it. Long as I set it angled (longest wall in the spare room is 11 1/2 feet) it would fit. There are a few other places, but I don’t think the already narrow hall will work, the entry way is split but with an 18 inch wide layout going into a 30 inch wide “hall”, there wouldn’t be any room left to squeeze in if I needed to reach that last 2 feet or so of layout. And I KNOW my girl wouldn’t let me put it on the front wall of living room. She has noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo interest in trains, can’t even fake listen to me talk about it. She automatically tunes out when I start talking trains and cars. At the same point the owners are doing some improvements, and adding our own dumpster and putting up fence and fixing the very lumpy driveway will all cost money. Money, that if they decide they need to up the rent $ to make up for, will be making us look for a new apartment. It would suck to have bench work all built out for that spare room then all of a sudden we have to move to a 1 bedroom so we can afford to live, which is as everyone knows is becoming hard to do. Another reason why I stuck with the size I did. In all reality I could redue
Hardly. People have had layouts with mulitple eras and have been extending “Fallen Flags” into the future for decades. Maybe you should build a layout first, then worry later about annointing yourself an innovator, sport. [;)]
I wasn’t trying to imply I was a model RR innovator, it was more of a pun. You know, play one words. Figured it would be “cute” because a few of the very great MRR’s had the same first name. Now back to my point of posting, I have an update.
I changed some things around and added some things. The biggest change is how I set up the lumber yard. I liked the flow of the new set up bettwer, plus it allows me to use 2 Walthers Walton & Son’s lumber yard kits. The other big two changes were sort of necessary. The first is by the propane dealer. I noticed this right away last night after I got home and looked I realized it would be very difficult to spot tank cars at the LP tanks. There was no passing siding for a run-around, which the loco would have needed with out getting stuck on the sidding for the LP. I have to be honest, I got a little worried when I realized I might now have room on the WC/GB&W track to add a passing siding. Then of course after about 2 minutes of pondering I realized all I would have to do is add a turn out at the end of the LP siding. Train runs through the siding, drops off a few cars, then runs out the otherside, automatic passing siding. I also changed the track configuration by the elevator. A good point was brought up about not having any real off-layout staging to represent off-layout scenes. Thinking about this made me realize that at the begining of a session, the WC/GB&W train would be sitting there waiting, on layout, to get cars for it’s spotting. The “crew” would always have to be there before the MILW way frei
Just the latest revision in plans. I think this one hits the sweet spot. I like how everything flows, it seems to be fairly easy operation, no confusing and unprototypical crap like switch backs or slip switches, and no prototypically uncommon things like wye’s. At least I heard the prototypes liked to shy away from using these. I recieved a return post saying RP.25 contour wheels will work on Micro-Engineering code 40 track, so it will now all be a mix of M-E flex track in code 70, 55, and 40. The pic isn’t too clear but I did mark off the basic plan of where the different codes would go. It will be all command control, not sure which one though. I was thinking of either Digitrax Zephyr (using my existing power pack as a throttle) or Super Empire Builder. Then I saw an add for CVP EasyDCC starter system BSS and looked into it because I think it looked purrty. Turns out it’s at least as good as the Empire Builder, and even at CVP’s MSRP of $279 bucks plus around a $13 dollar shipping charge, it will be cheaper than the Digitrax SEB at the LTS with sales tax added. The not having sales tax with the CVP is the real price breaker. It will be slightly more if I go with the CVP, I can have them substitute the single zone booster with their dual zone booster for the price difference, so I have to add another $70 bucks to their price. I ended up cutting some of the notes off, but I also planned to use variations in roadbed height using N scale road bed and Z scale road bed. I also plan on making the balast look right for the rail road. The room it’s going is has pictures below, but basically long wall is 11 1/2 feet and short leg can only be sprawl out against the other wall by 5 feet so the door can open with out hinderance. I also realized
I have no idea what you are trying to depict in the area where one line is crossing the other just above the top of your longest runaround - a crossing at grade, or one line passing above or under the other line ?
To give you an idea about how badly hand drawn “plans” which does not show things in true proportions can fool you, here is a rendering of part of your plan using real code 55 N scale turnouts:
Those little rectangles show how big a 40’ car would be in N scale (about 3"). Your biggest runaround would allow you to run around a grand total of about three 40’ cars, and you staging tracks (or whatever they are) on the right wing of the layout would hold maybe 5-7 cars plus an engine.
Suggestions:
Just get some track and turnouts and try things out on your table - some people are good at visualizing things on paper or screen, others need to test things out in a more concrete way.
Try to use fewer words and shorter paragraphs. In this thread you have posted over 4000 words in 30-some paragraphs, for an average paragraph length of 130+ words per paragraph. It makes it very hard to read on screen what you post.
Also - it wouldn’t hurt if you read the advice on this page and tried to follow it - your posts would be easier to follow if you tried to not mix half a dozen different ideas in the same paragraph.
Looking by the criticism (constructive or not) I thank you all for the help, but it no longer matters. For one, looking at Stein’s little drawing made me realize just how crappy my design plan was. IF I actually get to build a model RR, well I don’t think I will be. All this experience has tought me that I have no base to be designing my own track plan, and from what I’ve read you can’t really go to closely to a published plan. The second, due to recent circumstances, I most likely won’t have a model RR. I either won’t have the room, or if life keeps going the way it is I’m looking at homelessness. I will try to keep my future posts shorter though.
