I’m finally moving out, which means I have actual space for a layout. It’s hardly any space, but it’s more than I had living at home. I’m trying to make a set of two 4’ x 18" modules to use as a layout. After reading last month’s MRR article on transload facilities, I thought one might be interesting. This plan is for the fictional M&M Industries (a Milo Minderbinder Company).
Important Info:
HO Scale
18" radius
No. 4 switches
Modern era
4 50’ car max train length (excluding engine)
My Questions:
Is this something that could be incorporated into a future, larger layout? I’m not going to be living in apartments forever and hopefully, this could be fit in to an extended layout.
Operations. It’s my hope that I can use this for the occasional switching session, but I wonder how effective that will be on this layout. I can see some problems with having an industry on the passing siding, which would make it more of a puzzle and possibly a pain in the rear. Are there any other obvious pitfalls to operating on this layout?
Byron Henderson did a small N scale shelf switcher which used some creative twists (like using two curved turnouts to make the right end of the runaround) making the shelf layout unusually visually interesting for such a small layout.
Here is a 1 x 9 foot version in H0 scale, drawn by me:
Note that one thing Byron did here was to put “industries” (team spot and interchange) on the ends of the main, rather than on the runaround. Might be some ideas in that approach.
Turnouts used in drawing is Peco code 75 - 2 medium right hand, 2 medium left hand, one curved left and one curved right.
A double-ended siding does not (necessarily) a passing siding make. Industrial sidings are frequently double-ended, and that’s what you have here. Industries would not be located on a passing siding, nor does your siding have turnouts facing each other on the main as a passing siding should. If the double-siding industry is to handle multiple cars, you should place it near the siding’s center.
Regardless, having an industry on the only track available as a run-around adds complications, which can be a good or bad thing depending on one’s point of view. The prototype would like to avoid such a situation.
The Stein-modified-Henderson plan could easily fit into a later, larger layout by making the team track the main track, or just connecting the interchange track with the rest of the railroad.
Milo Minderbender is a character in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. Sgt. Major Major Major, another character, was promoted by clerical error to Major and became Major Major Major Major. The rest is just a pun.
Thank you all for the replies, and thank you, SpaceMouse, for the pun. [:)] I started trying to revise things and wound up with a complicated, expensive looking spaghetti bowl of track. As soon as XTrackCAD wants to start exporting pictures again, I’ll post what (better) revisions I’ve come up with. I’ve switched the direction of the top set of switches on the industrial siding to make it more of a usable siding. I’m also adding an industry siding to the right of the main for a grain elevator.
Would adding staging behind M&M Industries on the left be beneficial for this layout? The only downside I can see to that is, when I tried it on one set of revisions, it created a lot of extra track work.
I currently live in an apartment myself. I have a bedroom just for the trains. My wife knew good and well that she could keep the trains in their own dedicated room or have them all over the place! I am building a small O scale switching layout but it isn’t tinplate. I am also not using up the entire room but rather am building an L shaped layout on 2 walls that will end up being roughly 9’ X 8’ and less than 2’ deep. It will be in 3 pieces to keep everything portable. Realism is my goal and in a space this small I had to make many concessions as there is no way to have a railroad yard with a big roundhouse. I also can’t run large articulated steam engines. If I wanted to watch trains just run it would end up as nothing more than a loop of track that I stood inside. This also didn’t appeal to me. Switching was where it was at.
I have kept revising the layout and each time it gets simpler and simpler from a track plan perspective but stays interesting enough that I will stay busy. I have no runaround track and all 3 of my industries have their sidings facing the same direction. I have a total of 4 car spots at those 3 industries. That may not sound like much but there is plenty to do as 2 of those industries share the same siding. Actually it is one industry on that track but there are 2 loading doors and a loading dock which could also double as a team track spot. This isn’t unprototypical. The last industry only has 1 car spot but it’s a small industry.
I have a “mainline” and 3 sidings total. 2 sidings serve the industries with the last one being a storage with 4 car capacity. All switching is done on the “main” which is really just a small industrial track in it’s own right. For realism I have gotten away from the #4 switches but larger switches take up space. I am using a straight #6 and 2 curved #8’s. This is all being handlaid. The curves are between 36’ and 48" radius which is tight for realism but doable in O scale for ind
fredswain, thanks for that advice. I do have a tendency to over engineer things. I tried to keep the track plan simple here.
I think this will make switching easier, but still keep things interesting. The grain elevator will need cars to be moved around, which will add operations. I also decided to keep a team track.
I am very much in favor of simple designs, as real railroads did not waste any money on unnecessary track. Looking at your current plan, I do notice the absence of a run-around. Now, that´s no issue if you want to just spot cars at your industries, but if you want to spot cars and pick up cars at the same time, this will prove to be difficult.
Try to come up with a list of train movements you´d like to make, i.e.
local freight arrives
car a to industry 1
car b to industry 3
car c to industry 2
pick up car at industry 4 etc.
This will help you to evaluate, how “interesting” it will be to operate the layout.
Given the space restrictions you have, it will be difficult to include a run-around, without “cramming” the layout with too much track. It would help, if you could include a traverser table with two or three tracks in your staging “yard” .
That’s getting a bit better but now you don’t have much of a switching lead or a storage track. All of your sidings are industries. Your track plan from a functionality standpoint is much like mine except I would use the grain elevator as a storage track instead where a few cars are parked waiting to be spotted. I also don’t have “staging” which is something that I am normally a big proponent of but in my case just lack the space for currently. I wanted the longer switching lead so decided to leave out the off scene staging for the time being.
A good site to study is the one I am linking. It is an O scale switching layout that is being designed and built by a person who works on a real railroad. His track plan is simple yet when he describes how operations are performed you can see that it may take an hour or more to complete. It’s not a puzzle though. After you read about how operations are performed, you’ll see that there are nearly an endless number of combinations to switch with it. You don’t only have to swap every car on the layout with another. Certain ones may move. Certain ones may stay yet are in front of ones that move. Others may get moved over a spot. Some cars may need to be spotted at certain loading doors. One nice thing about your team track is that you can have almost any type of car spotted at it as there is no one car that always gets used there. You have box cars and hoppers on the same track and there is nothing wrong with that. I can even show you a real example of that here in Houston that I see all the time. If you have more than 1 loading door on your industry, you may decide that an incoming car should be spotted at door 1 and not door 2 which would mean a certain order is necessary when loading. Perhaps nothing moves but the hoppers need to come out. Maybe a box car needs to move from one door to the other or perhaps to the team track. You get the idea. There is far more to switching than just having industries. It’s
I think that really depends on your definition of “cramming”. I think the OP has plenty of room for a runaround, if he wants a runaround. As shown e.g by the Henderson plan I posted a modified version of.
Anyways - you certainly can do both facing and trailing spurs without a runaround.
A couple of the more obvious ways of doing this:
putting the engine in the middle of the string of cars,
having a string of cars with an engine on both ends,
running your train onto cassette so you can turn your train around (simulating a turning wye a little up or down the line),
fiddling your train to head left to right for one operating session, and right to left for the next operating session.
And so on and so forth. Lots of options. Main thing is not the mechanics of how to fit (or not fit) a runaround. It is to decide what you want to model - what you want to be able to do on the layout.
I have found www.carendt.com to be a most valuable resource for small layout design. The website is updated usually twice monthly and is choke full of great ideas from real railroads. Check it out
Also, I think a runaround track would be better(more interesting), even if you can only run around one or two cars.
I was considering a traverser table, but I had some doubts about keeping it in a small enough space. The staging will likely run above my computer and desk, so it can’t stick out too far. I wondered if an interchangeable cassette might work as well, but I don’t see enough traffic for that to be any better than a static staging track.
I am going to look over the carendt site in the next few days. I already see some things that could be helpful.
