new layout drawing

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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so the girlfriend and i are looking at new places and we have several options that all allow an around-the room construction for the layout in the living room… the benchwork will be built atop 36 inch bookshelves that i will be constructing… and they will all piece together in four foot wide units, allowing the train and bookshelves to all be dismantled, moved and reconstructed…

as of now we have the benchwork and track laid down for the right corner (everything to the right of naomi mine) so that isnt really negotiable, but everything else is… we are trying to stay protypical, but we want to make it operational at the model rr level… so suggestions about the yard layout are our main concern and we don’t need to be protoypical in this respect…

we are modeling the p&le in the late 70’s early 80’s… on the monongahela branch (lots of coal runs, some steel, some small industries)… we are going for point to point operations… but would like to eventually expand beyond the belle vernon yard to monessen and then to pittsburgh… and beyond fayette city to the brownsville interchange… so ideally we want to keep this open at both ends but want operational capabilities in the mean time…

we are aware that the single main line by the naomi mine and the fayette city mine cause blocking of the main while switching… and this is ok… as it is one of the prototypical accuracies of the layout… this set up limits the size of the coal drags to about 8 cars pulling out of the belle vernon yard to service the two mines on one run and this is perfectly ok with us…

example of an operation: 8 cars out the yard, use pass lane to cut four empties from the train and back them into long naomi mine shoot, 4 empties will be gravity rolled by mine staff into the empty loading track., loco will pull the remaining four empties down to fayette city mine and switch out four full hoppers for the four empties and switch direction, pick up the four now full hoppers and return to th

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Hi “P&LE,” That should be an interesting layout to operate. You didn’t mention the modeling scale or what you’d use for motive power, but make sure that the runaround stubs past the last turnout at each end are long enough for the power you want to run. It looks like you have sufficient room for a single HO diesel switcher or four-axle road switcher, which is probably enough. Good luck with your layout, Andy

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Andy,

Thanks for the comments. Hopefully it will provide a lot of interesting operations (servicing both mines simultaneously, a single mine, moving coal to the glass factory, moving a box car or two to and from the furniture factory etc)…

The scale is HO… and right now we have two Gp38-2’s as the motive power, so the ends should be long enough.

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Anyone have any comments/suggestions about the small belle vernon yard? Operationally, do you think it will work?? The layout will eventually be expanded beyond it and will terminate in a full out interchange yard… so this one isn’t meant to serve as a huge storage site for freight and locos

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It’s small, but operationally it’s all there. Just one question; is the stub end in the top left of the plan long enough to hold a loco? If not, it needs to be. Other then that, it looks like it’ll work, though it’s tight to be sure. The future expantion will be most welcome I’m sure.

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phillip… good point about that stub track’s length… i totally missed that when i designed it… it shouldnt be as problem lengthenining it enough…

thanks