Howdy, howdy, howdy. The new room is finally ready (with the addition of a new gas heater, yesterday) to start the addition to the Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western RR. The good news is that I can now start building. The bad news is that the heater takes up twice as much space as I thought it would. The good news is that it will easily bring the temp up to a comfortable level and is much cheaper to operate than an electric type. The bad news is that it was a bit more expensive than I originally hoped. Anyway, I decided to do it right the first time and spent the money to have it installed. A sample trackplan is shown below. The Main Room is already in place with the exception of the yard by the Enamelware Factory. That and the yard at the bottom of Room2 are modeled on the small complex at Canadaigua, NY in 1925 (with a lot of compression - the roundhouses have been left out and several miles of track have been eliminated). These can be modified, but will most likely be left “as is”. I wanted to add staging to the layout and it has been placed in the island under the layout.
Dotted lines indicate trackage that is “hidden” in tunnels, or behind the backdrop. Yes, there is easy access for all tunnels.
In Room2, the blue track is the lower trackage leading to and including the “hidden” staging, and the green trackage is the upper track leading to a small staion, yard and service factility over the staging. The staging will be “open” in back of the backdrop on the upper level. Hope this makes sense!
Anything you see that might be problematic or if you have any suggestions, let me know.
I should have told everyone that the two rooms connect where the three tracks just go off the end of the respective page. Room2 has to be turned 90° clockwise to see how they connect. Canadaigua had an inherant bottleneck where Rt. #4 crosses the tracks. At that point it had only two tracks. The leads for yard actually go into the old room (bottom of drawing). The main yard (Hopewell Juntion has a dedicated drill track as the mainline is at the back of the yard. (You’re not supposed to know that the mainline goes into a return loop and comes back out onto the drill track… [;)].) Don’t forget the top page with the exception of the part right at the bottom has been in place for over 20 years. That was back when I “knew everything”. Someday it will be done over (yeh! right!). That is great article, BTW. I have read it before and probably need to read it a couple of dozen times more to absorb…
I will try to come up with a jpg that shows the entire layout tonight.
In your top diagram, extreme left, halfway down from the top, you appear to have an “S” curve at that crossover. Perhaps, in actual inches, laid out, it will not be that way, but the diagram makes it appear so.
Otherwise, I like it a lot…wish I could do it meself!!
I figured it connected up like that. Somehow my mind didn’t connect the dots, even though my eyes did.
It’s a fine looking plan.
If I might make a comment,…At the “end of the line” on the new section you’ve got a TT and a few tracks. It wouldn’t take much at all to turn that into an interchange with an off-layout RR.
Yep, but since they are #6 turnouts, they don’t cause a problem except that my 2-6-6-2 doesn’t like it going one way, but goes through without problem the other way. It just has to run the loop clockwise. All my other locos and rolling stock navigate it without a hitch. You got a good eye, sir! I have relaid most other places where I created the dreaded s-curve. It took joining the forum for me to figure it out… duh!
Well, you’ve got a run-around track already. Now just add one along side it that connects to it and runs to the edge of the layout in one direction and behind some trees or a building and into the backdrop on the other end. No train has to ever actually use it, it’s just there to suggest that cars get picked up and dropped off there. It’s a great way to generate lots of traffic of ALL different kinds, and do it in a very limited space. Here’s my idea on this, but you can improve or change as you see fit. This is a VERY rough idea of what I’m talking about. Actually, if you have the book “Track Planning For Realistic Operation” this is very similar to one of the interchanges in that book.
Click to enlarge.
The two tracks sticking out on either end on the bottom are the other RR’s tracks and they run off the edge of the layout and into the backdrop. The 0-5-0 switcher can swap out cars when nobody is looking. This is just about as simple as you can make an interchange. Cars to be switched from one RR to the other get set in the middle. All other tracks are sole property of the RR that controls that side of the line.
pcarrell, actually there is a couple ways that I probably could add an interchange at that location. Good idea! I will play with the idea for a while and see what developes. There is an interchange similar to what you describe at the Enamelware factory. In Canandaigua 1925, the NYC and Hudson River RR and the Northern Central Branch of the Pennsylvania had an interchange. I believe it was at the end of the line for the Pennsylvania.
