Hi Guys,
I am looking for comments on this design for a shelf layout. I have tried to incoporate all the info gathered from the forums and Mr LM himself, read all the books and come up with this layout.
I am interested in opinions from an opperational perspective. Will only be doing switching with a pair of GP40-2 PII’s with DCC and Sound and the relavite rolling stock.
Any advise is welcome as this is my first railroad.
The plan is certainly ambitious for a 1st layout - but it’s not out of range with a little stretch. A few concerns that you may have already thought about or planned around:
I will agree with Fred and it is a great start. But a few general questions:
What is the scale? And what is a square? (6"?, 1’?, 3"?) What is the min radius and what switch #? Are you planning to run passenger service as well as freight?
But you should think about a few things for you operations:
Staging: Where do your trains come from? How does this railroad connect to the rest of the world? This can be done as simple an interchange with another railroad that will provide you with that connection to the rest of the world, or a track or two of hidden staging that hides a train or two to make drop off to your railroad
Yard: If you are looking to use the yard to make up or break up trains it is pretty small. I would read the 10 commandments of model railroad yard design (http://www.housatonicrr.com/yard_des.html) to get some ideas on what elements you are missing.
Redesign the area around the REW Materials, I think that a run-around onto the team track stub would get old fast. Plus your plan does not currently have a siding; I would redesign the switches here so that pair of tracks running from REW and Concrete products becomes a full siding off of the main track.
I would think about moving some of the switches so there are a few less diamonds, it is just complicating your track work.
Think about adding some movement on the main, your basic loop is pretty bland. Try moving your mainline so it is not 2 squares from the front of the bench work and 2 squares from the back, move it around a little bit.
I would try out that grade to salvage area to make sure it is not too steep. Not knowing the size of the squares it is hard to guestimate that grade.
V/R
Chris
Warner Robins, GA
hi Sswup,
to much information is lacking…e.g. era, scale, radii, switch-numbers, and about what you want to achieve.
Lets assume during the night new cars are parked in the yard on track 1, and the switching fun can start.
I see three (or 4) different industrial area’s so it could be sensible to have 3 (or 4) tracks in the yard each dedicated to one of the switching districts.
Add a track for outbound cars and one holding overflow traffic and you’ll have a 6 or 7 track yard.
And each track needs to have sufficient length…
Both passing sidings along the main are not easily accessible…
i agree with the previous comments…a good first plan, still a lot to rethink.
Paul
I agree with the others comments. All point to some weaknesses with the plan, but its a great start.
Adding a thought…You’ll want to avoid coupling cars together on curves as much as possible. It looks like some of your runarounds (passing sidings?) terminate on curves. You’ll prefer to have them terminate with a bit of straight track towards the end, at least 14" depending on car length, in order to have the locomotive and first car be as straight as possible when coupling.
And to restate some others’ comments… the yard is too small to be useful and the area around REW materials/team track looks too tight as well. Maybe trying to do too much up there for the given space, IMO.
Thanks Fred,
I agree with your comments and thank you for the advise… I am relooking at the REw section as I agree I need to get way from relying on the bridge for opperations… This is why I posed this. I have the skills to build this and would start with only the N,E and Southern sections, building the penisula later or not at all.
Thank you too for your comments Chris and Paul… I gues a bit more info would be better for everyone…
Ok… I was inspired by Lance Mindheims minamilist approach and am only looking at this being a switching layout and possibly should not even have it as a loop.
I am wanting to model a modern Indusrtial area (1990-2000). I have 2 GP40-2 SSW units that I would like to serve a grain/feeds location, a cement plant, a building materials site, a buscuit factory and perhaps a plastics or paint plant as well as a few others.
The scale is HO and each block is 100mm (3.93inches). Min Radius is 24inches and all turnouts are #6.
Until I decide to build the whole layout I will have to use a casset type mothod for the arriving train. I only want to model freight and no passenger rail.
Trying to achieve an very detailed layout that will in time provide me with opperational value as I am still learning about opperations. My main concern is to not build anything that in time will cause an issue. I don’t want to design any deliberate opperating issues and tricks. Very happy to keep it simple and think I need to reduce the complexity somewhat.
Please feel free to comment further, busy working on a revision as we speak and would like comments on that too!!
Anyone know what area I can model that would suit 2 SSW GP40-2PII’s doing the switching for UP? I have indstrial areas in St Louis, Kansas City, Phoenix AZ and Fersno CA all detailed and printed out from Google Earth and Bing. These will provide the industries along the layout… Trying to have industries that use more than one type of freight car…
Will post
http://s871.photobucket.com/albums/ab275/caltrigger/?action=view¤t=AnyCityRail.jpg
Not sure why it won"t upload the new design…?
Simplified it and tried to make the changes suggested… Very helpful people…THANK YOU…
I’m not sure I would be so hasty to give up the continuous run of your 1st design. From personal observations and listening to others, switching operations are usually - but not always - an acquired taste. And it’s not acqu
Fred makes some great points about continuous running. And your current plan could accomodate it very easily. Little cost for a lot of potential benefit, IMO.
Just something for you to consider…A design item that modelers tend to make, that I don’t think they don’t really have to, is to put a run around track at each town/switching area. In the prototype, sometimes there is some distance between the industry switch and the runaround the train uses, which requires the locomotive to push a car(s) along the main line a bit to reach the industry switch. Something that might make operations on a MRR more interesting.
Since I still think the curved runaround on the northeast side of your layout may be difficult to operate, because of coupling/uncoupling issues…
Just to tinker with the plan, maybe just have one runaround on the entire layout, a straight one located along the east side, that would serves all three switching areas. The distances between the ends of that potential runaround and the REW and the Intermodel yard switching areas wouldn’t require the train to “foul the main” for a very long time. (since you apparently don’t plan to have another train running along the layout at the same time you’re switching the industires, fouling the main seems to not be an issue anyway.)
As it stands now, the length of the runarounds will require the locomotive to travel a good distance just to get to the back of the parked cars anyway.
Again… its a good plan as it stands now… just a thought to tinker with.
Thanks guys… Excellent feed back.
Fred I agree, a running loop does have its place and i should accomodate it if i can. I am dead scared of the “whells on the train go round and round” senario and my big interest lies in realistic scale scenery and opperations as they would be in real life…slow speed, correct use of bells and horns, pauses for crossing to be set and points to be turned by staff. I have already spend time weathering my loco’s in preparation but don’t want to rush into a track.
How do you aviod opperations becomming boring? Not that I agree with puzzles but if the are doomed to be tiresome how can I ensure my straight forward switching won’t be tiresome? I have tried to make some areas where cars will have to be moved out in order to spot new ones beyond them on the line etc as well as have many spots for different frieght on one line…
Thanks Doug, one runaround should be fine as the layout is not that long as you say… I was looking at my Kansas City Prototype last night and they only have one runarround for a whole industrial area sometimes.
I would like to opperate 2 switchs though, maybe only when a friend visits…or if i am feeling like I can multitask…
Have a look at the area in Denver…(39.781404,-104.932593) on google or bing…only one main line in then just industrail switching, it forms a big loop, this was my insiration…The section on this prototype to the South is where I got my design for my Eastern section.
I will do some edits and post soon…
Thanks again guys…
Well I have tried to follow as many of the tips I can…Think it’s some progress… Let me know what you guys think… The penisula may be a future project… As many industries as possible have been moved back and the sturctures in the front are all low profile single story wharehouse types…
Probably your best effort yet!
One thing to think about is train length, how long are the trains you are planning to run? I see a bit of an inconsistency between the length of the spurs (about 5 cars max) and the length of the runaround (about 25). Adding to what Fred said before about something being challenging but then evolving into a PITA; for example, if you are only trying to run around two cars to push into one of the short spurs, the locomotives will have to run about half way around your layout just to get behind the cars. You may get tired of just running the locos light for that distance when you really just want to spot the cars.
And, if the straight track to the north, along the wall in the orange space, is staging, that track doesn’t allow for a long enough train to support that long of a runaround. See what I mean?
I would also try to avoid having so many parallel tracks. Real railroads try not to have duplicate tracks when they don’t need them. The peninsula spur could simply start from the south end of the “orange” space, rather than off of the run around on the south end, for example.
But its all your choice of course.
I agree with Doughless about the parallel tracks.
Another thing that bothers me is all the buildings built out of square. It is just something that doesn’t occur much in the prototype. It is both impractical and expensive to build.
Some people can pull it off in models, but it is usually when the section of the building facing the track is square and the part that hits the backdrop or edge of the layout is angled.
The way it looks here is the buildings are afterthoughts and you’ll worry about how to make them look right later.
Thanks Doug… I was loooking today at this long runaround and thinking exactly that!.. As far as train length goes I would gues that in the prototype they would not be switchingout all the sites each time…each opporation session would/could be made up of 2 or three trains switching some and not all of the cars…Ideally you need to have some cars being spotted where you need another car to pass,so having to move a car out and then place it back once your new car is in it’splace… So I would guess that a train of 5 or 6 cars would be max…In some prototypes trains are cut just outside the area so as not to disrupt traffic at crossings for too long…This is why the orange section against the wall is not just a cassette, if fact it will be a fixture, but merely a representation of a main as well as a place to build the train, even if it was longer than the end to the turnout…(make sense?)
I will try get the double track to the island down to one, the island may never get built and I need to look closely at that…
As for the “scew” buildings I agree that this is not prptotypical and they are for the most part represetations or the area the buildings would go…the sizes and final shape would depend on what industry I decided to serve in that local. Buildings are generall all in the same orriantation so I need to look into that…
I will be working on these points tonight and post a few changes soon as I have something…
Please keep the comments comming…It’s a great help.
Sorry about the spelling guys… need to proof read!
hi,
i think your last 2 plans are quite doable…but
you were talking about a second engineer, so it might be wise to have two passing-sidings.
Above all you’ve got 4 switching areas, all four are industrial…why not have 3 industrial areas and a small yard. Short trains can be made up in the yard…so the length of the passing sidings can be limited. Lance Mindheim has drawn such a small yard on most of his plans.
IMHO staging and interchange are missing; on a small layout like yours a dedicated staging yard might be a waste of space; one or more tracks, easily reachable, could do the trick. Cars can be replaced by hand (fiddled) from a cupboard nearby.
Paul
Busy with a simpler variation on the design… Something I do need to know is…
If I need to have a turnout on a curve (24inch) what would the best turnout be to keep the curve fairly constant? I am thinking of using ME or Peco code 83 and all other turnouts will be #6’s… Would building my own be a better option? I only need one!
Looking good, something to think about is taking out those industries in the middle. The reason why is that if you want to have two engineers it will be difficult to get around each other with only 2’ walkways around the layout.
V/R
Chris
Warner Robins, GA
Hey guys… Having time on my hands I have re-looked at the last design and tried to refine it… I like the last one but thought this looked a bit more prototypical…will wait to hear what you think…
One option is to connect the track to Holcim Cement to the main making a second runaround…???
