I am moving to a new house, and the old layout is coming down. While I am doing that my mind wonders to the next layout. I have always had double main lines, my thoughts being more track equals more lines. With my layouts getting bigger and DCC, I am thinking I can still run as many trains as one or two people can handle with a single main line.
So I am thinking about single main with a couple of long passing sidings, or two single main lines that interchange. What are somethings I should consider for a single main? Does anyone have suggestions for two main lines (different railroads)? I have a 12’ x 17’ area to build the layout in. I am thinking about an over-under dog bone style layout, but we will see.
Well, I’m grappling with a similar situation with a slightly smaller space than you 10 x 18.3 feet. I’m planning a twice around the wall plan which hasn’t been fleshed out other than I’m putting in a 11 track staging yard on a the lower level against the back wall. I such little space it’s going to e simply a railfanning layout which can hold 10 or 11 full trains, have a modest yard, a few industries and single track running in between. D&RGW was a single track mainline on most of it’s lines so that is consistant with the look of the RR. I’ll be running some SP trains as well, mostly lumber traffic out of the Pacific Northwest.
Canadian Pacific and Crash Nightly Whoops! I mean Canadian National share the Thompson and Fraser Rivers for over 400Kms. They do cooperate with each other and usually you will see West bound trains on one side of the river and East bound trains on the other. This makes for smoother operation for both railroads as passing sidings become less important.
Just to make things interesting for the railfaning public they even switch sides. I think its just because they wanted a couple of bridges on the layout.[swg]
To the OP. My only observation is that a train needs to headed for an empty track. An east bound and a west bound on a single line must either meet at a passing track or one must back up. If you have two east bound and one west bound with one passing track the west bound is going sit a long time.
NILE, stick with the double mainline. A single track mainline with a passing siding is just that, one mainline track and a siding.
On my current layout, I have a double mainline. On my Dream Layout, I will include the 4-track C&WI leading into Dearborn Station. The more mainlines, the more moving trains.
One thing that should be considered when planning a layout is what type of operations are you going to have. You can have ‘Rail Fanning’ ops which are mainly running trains in circles, or you can have some type of prototype operations where trains run a route and switch cars at industries.
My space is 9X24 and I run prototype operations with four operators total. I run a single main line with passing sidings. I also have three railroads represented. One is the main RR, another is a small line on a branch, and the last is a Port facility operated by the third RR. The following link is a page about my RR if you are interested in reading more about it.
You can have two mainlines, each with owened by a different railroad. Thats what I do. Outside main is UP, and inside main is BNSF. Each with trackage rights on both when changing tracks.
