I am considering using this as a basis for my next railroad and would like to hear from those that may have done the same. One change I will be making though is to place the staging to the right side of the main layout accessed from under the “Yellow Jacket Mine”. I am not a big fan of hidden track, much less hidden staging, so it will be placed outside the footprint of the railroad shown. Most likely parallel to the wall at the top of the drawing, over the adjacent hobby workbench.
I used it as the basis for my layout design. I too, don’t like the hidden staging but haven’t come up with a better way to do it and fit in my space. Since I have a larger space (almost15’x16’) I have increased the minimum radius and minimum turnout. I also have increased the spacing between the elevated areas and the lower areas (both horizontally and vertically), so that I could do more scenery and less retaining walls. Since I have a corner of the room missing, I have to build a gate to fill the gap.
I am building the RR&N as the protolanced SP Klamath River branch line. You can read about my start in the above thread posted by Stein. The more I work with this plan the more I like it. Like anything, you have to tweak it a little to make it yours.
I have been a little slow with time as the summer has other things in store for me. Right now I do have the roadbed and track completed for what I call my basement section - I connected the 2 hidden staging tracks to form a complete lower loop. Although not visible I do have total access to this track. It will also have cassette staging on the other side of the backdrop that ties in to the basement section. I have hooked up temp wiring just to get a train to go around and to see how the track works. It sure is going to be nice to watch a 10 - 12 car train go into a 2’ tunnel and disappear for almost 2 minutes before you see it again! Truly a sense of the train going somewhere!
Current updates (for anyone following) since my last post are the already mentioned basement section is in, the backdrop walls are up on all 4 sides (waiting till the upper section (mine section) is installed before I put up the vinyl flooring backdrop up). The lighting is in.
I have also tweaked the plan some more. I have changed the UNK Industries to a lumber reloader it increase rail traffic in Happy Camp (on my plan the local is different). I changed the lumber yard in Happy Camp to a woodchip loader to increase rail traffic and is more realistic (Byron if you read this thread - see people on the forums do listen once in awhile). I also changed the “strip mall” of small industries that had LCL traffic to Vaguely DeFind plant #2 (man I LOVE those pics of Vaguely DeFind in WPF- just what I was trying to do with UNK (Unknown) industries but a much better execution).
I always liked the idea of a single turntable serving two adjacent yards which are distant schematically as in this track plan, when this is practical. It reduces the need for duplicating costly and space-eating features.
