New layout under way

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Hello Everyone,

Here is my current On30 layout design drawn with XTrkCad, go easy on me its my first attempt, haha. Opinions are more then welcome. There is basically twice around mainline with allows for continuous running in the same or opposite direction and freight & passenger service.

Please give this novice some hints and tips[:)] regarding my layout, things you would change etc…

2

Hi,

It’s hard to tell you dimensions, but I’ll assume that you do not have further than a 80 cm or 30" reach across your shelves.

That said your track work is interesting but you have a lot of it. First of all, I would say you don’t have room for any industrial buildings for your sidings. Pick a couple buildings you might like from the Walther’s Catalog or from the Walther’s web site, look up their dimensions and use the shape tool to create a footprint of the building. then set it into place. Use the line tool to make roads (draw the line then change the thickness of the line). See if everything fits the way you imagine it.

3

Thanks Spacemouse,

I kinda got excited and just put heaps of tracks in but a will be taken alot of which i don’t really need so i can make room for some nice structures & scenery!

The section where the turntable is raised up from the rest of the layout and the mainline goes underneath it. The benchwork on the left is 90cm, top/bottom 70cm and the turntable area is 140cm to the wall.

Here is the updated layout

4

Your bench work then is a little wide if walls are bordering the layout. You need to be able to reach eveything, but mostly you need to be able to rerail cars on back tracks and clean or repair the tracks.

5

Be sure that your passing sidings are long enough. I had to relay my passing sidings as the On30 equipment takes upn a lot of space. I would recommend at least six feet for any passing siding.

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[#welcome] Anyone who likes 762mm gauge is VERY welcome!

Four rather minor changes, one for access and three to improve operations, plus an observation:

  • Cut the aisleway edge a little deeper into the left hand bench near the turntable, to make the turnouts at the lower left easier to access. (If you use L-girder construction the fascia need not be straight, or parallel to anything.) 70cm is a bit of a stretch for me, but not unworkable (especially since your tracks are more than 10cm away from the walls.)
  • Bring the tunnel portals a little closer to the crossing, so a complete train can be hidden in each tunnel. That will give you a chance to run two trains reasonably, since they won’t be meeting at passing sidings every few seconds.
  • Topmost passing siding - bring the turnout for the terminal branch a little to the right, to assure that a train entering from the left will not sideswipe a train running onto the branchline from right to left. Bring the turnout at the right end of the siding as far right as possible - even to the point of double-tracking the right-end curve. You need to make this siding long enough for ordinary-length trains to pass with plenty of clearance.
  • Terminal - You need a longer runaround, and a switching lead for the yard would be nice. To get it, install a turnout in the longer turntable lead at the lower left and double track the lower curve to the points of the short turntable lead track. Remove the crossover on the right and replace it with a crossover facing the other way farther to the left - this will gain you valuable car capacity on the yard spurs. With this change, the local shunter can continue to shuffle cars without interfering with the train departing from that long spur it’s currently standing on.
  • Just an observation. The turntable is a bit long, unless you are going to use it to turn coupled ca
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Thanks for all your thoughts guys especiallyTom.

Couple things, i have tried the stretch across the bench test and i can quiet easily reach across. There isnt a crossing there is a bridge which goes over the other track so it gives a pretty good time to run trains.

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It looks to be a nice layout. I’m not sure what I can contribute, as I dont model in On30, but HOn3. But I can say that you need to add popup. A popup is an area on layout scenery that can be removed from under the benchwork allowing you to access things like tunnels and hard to reach tracks. I drew 3 triangular popups that are plenty big to fit someone at the location of tracks furthest from the layout.

Hope this helps!

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Thanks for the input Jake, i was going to install some of those like you said. It will make access a whole lot easier thats for sure.