My room is 13 X 24. The first is the upper level and the second is the lower. All the curves are 24" radius. I want to be able to run trains and then also operations, depending on my mood. This is my first layout since I was a kid. Im using Atlas code 83 and Walthers code 83 for some of the turnouts and Wyes. Any thoughts are welcome.
Hi. If I could point out what I think are some serious omissions, on top of the list would be runaround tracks in your yards. I don’t see any. Also, the right-most of the two wyes is clearly off the edge of the bench/layout. If you were to shift the lower track coming off the wye to the left, and straighten it a lot, you could put another turnout there and put a team track…if you wanted one…running back into the layout in that open area to the left of the wye, where the loop is now. As it looks, the lower curve coming out of the wye is very tighte, even without the problem of it being over the edge.
I guess that leads to ask why you have the two wyes. Could you do with just the one on the left?
You only have the one approach to your turntable. In the real world, that would be undesirable because if a locomotive broke and thereby blocked the access to the turntable, what redundancy would you have…what alternative path? You could curve and extend your 5 o’clock track to meet the bottom of your wye. It is not an ideal solution, but it does give you an alternate.
In your lower part of the diagram, just to the left of the divider, and above the main, you have a yard with ladder tracks that will be very hard to fill in one go because the lead is about 1/4 of their lengths. You might get a switcher and a single car past the top turnout, but that will be it! You need more trackage past that upper turnout. No runaround, either.
There are other issues, but I will leave it at that for now. I hope others will offer their criticism.
Not a bad start, by the way. You have done a lot of good work. The journey is about half-done.
I like it and are rooms are about the same sizes, mine is a little larger 27’ X 22’ but like the idea. I am not into the dropping off and picking stuff up yet. At this point I like a long run hauling around 40 to 50 cars.
Hoping to start a new bench soon, may steal a few ideas you posted if you don’t mind.
Cuda Ken
I am going to build a section that fits uder the loop thats off the bench work. The loop is actually a helix going to the second level.
Also, what is a runaround for a yard?
Try this link for tips / terminology on yards and yard design. It is worth the read. Be sure to look at the 10 commandments of yard design link on this page also.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mrsvc/id19.html
Have fun,
That’s a good one Tom.
Another place that’s helped me is here: http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/BFSpages/LDSIGprimer/TOC.html
Lots of good stuff there! You’d probably be real interested in this page: http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/BFSpages/LDSIGprimer/Yards.html
And this one: http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/BFSpages/LDSIGprimer/Auxyards.html
Hope this helps!
A round-about is basically a way to access the yard from BOTH ends. All of the tracks in your yard dead end’s with no way to access it from right side.
Another suggestion…the single track that you have leading into your turntable seems to take a pretty tight 90 degree bend to get to the turntable. This could be a bad thing if you want to run any medium to large sized engines.
General rule of thumb…the tighter the turns, the smaller the engine and rolloing stock (shorter wheelbase) you’ll be able to run. It’s always better to have wider turns.
I guess it all depends on what time frame you plan on modeling and what type of locomotives and rolling stock you plan to run. It just stinks to get all your track purchased and layed down, only to realize that because of the tight turns, you can’t run anything larger than a GP7 or GP9 and 50 boxcars. Been there, done that, expensive lesson to learn the hard way.
One more thing I just noticed. You made the same mistake that I made with my layout.
When I put together my first layout, I decided to use a track plan that Atlas put out a long time ago called HO-36. I added a little bit of area for a larger yard and more track. I thought I had the best plan for the space that I had available. I went out and spent several thousand dollars on wood, track, cork for roadbed, a DCC system, basically everything needed to get up and running. Myself and a few of my friends spent the better part of 2 months building this monster and got it up and running.
Once you have the layout up and working, your next step is to start doing some scenery, hills, mountains, buildings, roads, grass, ect…This is when I realized that I had really screwed up. In my attempt to lay as much track as I could fit into my layout, I left no room for any buildings, stations, industries, roads, nothing…
If you look thru a copy of Model Railroader and look at any layout that they feature, you’ll notice that the layout has a Theme. Well designed layouts start with an idea. What theme do you want to model? Think about industries that you want in your layout and work them into your track plan. The layouts featured in MR look very realistic because the modelers spent alot of time thinking thru what they wanted their layout to depict. Don’t make the same mistake I made and lay a million miles of track leaving room for anything else. Sometimes less track is better…
Do you have trainplayer, if you do i can put track on it and you can run and see what you think , or I can run it (if you don’t mind) and point out any bugs I find if that would be helpful?
Hi,
My first impression is that you have a lot of track on a layout that doesn’t really have a lot of focus–kind of a let’s see how much we can cram into the space I’ve got kind of thing.
Along with what the others have pointed out are things like a yard that can maybe, and It depends on the size of the engine, switch one car out of the yard at a time. Overall, I get the idea of a beginner with big ideas.
Not that I’m opposed to big ideas, it’s just that big ideas cost a lot and you can save a lot of time, money and aggravation by focussing your plan on what you are interested in. Until you have that focus, you just have a lot of track.
Might I suggest reading SpaceMouse’s Beginner’s Guide to Layout Design–you can get to it by clicking on the picture below.
I’ll agree with Chip on this one. There seems to be an effort to fill every square inch with track on the lower level, to the point that in many cases there isn’t room for buildings, industries, scenery, or, in some cases, trains. There are two ladder yards that are completely useless, as there isn’t enough lead track to fit both a locomotive and a single 40’ car on the yard lead on them, therefore it is impossible to actually take cars into or out of these yards. Eliminate them entirely from your plan, they don’t do anything.
This gives you enough room to add a proper ladder track and an escape track to the single-ended yard opposite the turntable/roundhouse–right now, the tracks are so close together that your cars will interfere with each other and knock them off the neighboring tracks. Track planning software is deceptive, since your cars are twice as wide as the track and need extra clearance especially on curves.
What is your purpose for having three different yards, physically disconnected from each other, in such close proximity? Generally a yard will have a couple of tracks off to the side for various purposes–RIP tracks, caboose tracks, piggyback or team tracks, etcetera–but generally there’s one big central yard that works as a unit. Typically a yard with a smaller number of long tracks, properly designed, is a lot easier to work and maintian than a more complex yard with shorter tracks and more switches. Read the article cited above about ten rules for designing yards, and go look at some track plans, to harvest some ideas and make your yard look (and work!) more like the real thing.
Give some thought to your sidings, too. At least one (the one to the south of the mainline on the part opposite the turntable) is as useless as those two yards: enough room for a car or a locomotive, but not both, and therefore unworkable. What are your sidings for? Do you plan on putting industries there? What industries? How much space will they