Well, I regained right-of-way in my basement. I know you guys have seen a million plans from me on this subject, but I think the time has come to actually build. Please let me know if you see anything I am missing.
A couple of notes:
The top yard track is a caboose track.
The 4% grade leads to the staging that simulates the lumber cutting operation.
When you ask for comments on “glaring” problems, then to me that means you want to hear about what sticks out, and shouts “Alert!”. To me, what jumps out at me is the lack of scenery space, considering what you intend to fit in. I commend you on developing a plan that locates not only the buildings but also the roads and streams… not everybody goes to that level of envisioning, but I believe that it can really pay off. However, I think you have underestimated the “footprint” of these elements, like the width of the stream course (it needs to be wider than the shorelines), the need for shoulders on the roads and preferably curves of a certain minimum radius. For cars and trucks to navigate a road, it needs curves of at least, say, 40-foot radius (centerline); you might cheat this a little bit, but even a 4" radius (real dimensions) would feel a lot more natural than the hard right angle you’ve shown.
How might you achieve these goals? If it were me, I’d consider giving up a siding or two. But you could also just do some things such as let the stream go into a culvert and the road can wiggle over it; in the real world, this happens often, as the road follows the stream course and the old stream just gets buried. You might also elevate the roadway and have it cross the tracks by bridging above, rather than at grade.
That’s what jumps out at me. I so often see great layouts compromised scenically because of a lack of sufficient space given over to the scenery elements - they end up with train-height retaining walls everywhere, or unrelenting cliff faces, or any of the other standard tricks to deal with the tight proximities. But these features are nowhere near as common in the real world, and so no matter how skillfully done, the scene just doesn’t look real.
Thanks for the observations. From what I presented I can see your concerns.
However, the cars and trucks are in this layout are horses and wagons. At your suggestion I will smooth out the curves in the roads a little.
The long straight track above the roundhouse is a trestle with the actual elevations in the corners and around the pipe, and although they are a little steep in places, they will be covered with trees. The upper right corner is a also a trestle above a canyon and falls.
The lower right area will be lifted off my old layout. You can see how I handled the “retaining wall problem.”
The Rock Ridge rides again!
Lots of places with a lot of track in small areas, potentially at different elevations.
The right hand blob has very minimal tail room since everything is a switchback.
Why all the curly Q’s in the blobs? If you reversed the switches in the main on the leads, you could straighten out the leads and simplify the tracks, possibly having more room for industries.
Lumber branch has no operation, just a straight pull and shove. Wake me up when we get there.
The only runaround outside the yard is on the liftout section which means that during operation it will HAVE to be a duck under.
No station at the main yard? I would lose the road along the front and put a station there .
Why all the roads connecting all the town sites? Lose all the bridges and connecting roads. Why take the train when its clerrly a 10 minute walk from one end of the layout to the other.
You have a HUGE lumber mill with only one track serving the mill and no obvious log dump to feed it.
My comments:
The pit width, center-right, narrows from ~24" to ~12". I’m not sure if you’re built like a bean pole or not, but working in that wedge, especially since there’s yard work involved on that end, might be uncomfortable.
In staging, would a curved turnout buy you some more track length on the “lower” yard?
Or for that matter, instead of having the ladders close up the left-hand sides of each, can you increase the staging loop radius and loop all three tracks around in parallel? That might give you more options on train lengths & serial staging.
Yes. Long live Malcom[bow] (Joking [swg])
As mentioned before, the old town of Rock Ridge from the previous layout is being dumped in the lower right blob. The track, in this case, is fitting the landscape. There is a mountain in the way of the reversing the turnout. Not ideal, but hey, there it is.
[quote]
4. Lumber branch has no operation, just a straight pull and shove. Wake me up when we get there.[/
These are great ideas. I built the staging yard for the capacity of work I envisioned, but I can also see room for expansion along the lines of your thinking.
Thanks.
Perhaps this is a strange observation, but is there something preventing you from swapping rooms? The one on the left will not have an active “hallway” or the garage door to worry about, and is a bit deeper (top to bottom of the picture), a plus. That may cut down on the dust you could get from the garage foot-traffic: another plus, and allows for a junkroom (oops, storage space) by that door. The extra space vertically will fix the squeezing pit area near the cattle pens. Mirror-reversing the layout’s staging can put it into a clean closet in that storage area, and shouldn’t be a problem since you are already considering cctv monitoring anyway.
Just a couple of thoughts. Have fun, George
George,
Yes, the staging is a small shelf that goes over the washer/dryer and sink.
My comment wasn’t about the mill, it was about the branch. There are no spurs off of it, no sidings, just one long, slow shove up the hill and one long slow trip down the hill. You could just as easily automate it where once the log train passes the ore mine, you just push a button and it just runs up to staging and then stops in the track, untouched by human hands. Same for a loaded train, it just runs out of staging and then stops short of the ore mill switch.
How do you plan to operate it? That is how do you plan car flow?
If I am a car of cut lumber going to west staging, how do I get from the mill to west staging? How did the empty get to the mill? What train do I ride? How do I get on the train, what end is the engine on? Am I switched at the yard? How do I get set out at the yard, how do I get picked up? What train picks me up, what train sets me out?
Same questions for a car going to east staging.
Looks to me like you aren’t going to be able to support more than two trains on the layout at any given time (ignoring anything on the logging branch). Thinking about operations, I withdraw my suggestion about the station at the yard and suggest instead you replace the road with a siding. The absolutely most critical constraint on the layout is the liftout siding. The use of that siding will completely define the operation. The second most critical spot is the double ende
That sounds cool although I cannot see much advantage to it. Like you said it is just a dull run and not much to it. We are talking saving the train operator maybe 10 seconds labor. Still having automatically terminate in staging might be worthwhile.
All cars in and out both directions wil
Problems is way too strong a word, I like challenges better. The only thing that I noticed is the tracks leaning to the staging area behind the roundhouse where they make their way through the wall. What the reach back to the farthest point? If something happens to go wrong like a derailment no that it ever happens any more in model railroading are you going to be able to reach that with out having to do any acrobatics? It appears that the stair case is open underneath so ace’s there shouldn’t be an issue. One last question what it the height of your bench work? The higher up you go the shorter your reach is, ask me how I know this. All in all looks like a plan that will afford you a lot of interesting running and scenery opportunities.
Nothing “fatal” as far as operations, but …
The layout is extremely “busy,” packed with structures and track yet the industrial environment of sawmill, lumbering, and mining belong in wide-open spaces. The track plan is more consistent with a compact, urban area with industries quite different than planned. Bottom line, it looks like a model railroad, not a model of a railroad. I would have made more compromises, leaving things out (like “do I really need a yard?”), but our preferences seem to be quite different.
Mark
Mark,
I hear what you are saying. Ideally a lot of things would be different like more time, money and space. I have explored quite a few options before getting down to building. I wanted to go with operations and with a prototype. I really wanted to do the California Western around 1917, and the interchange with the NWP but the operational possibilities were limited. I then researched Nevada Valley and the railroads of the Santa Cruz area. I was able to come up with plans that almost worked, but they took up the entire basement. I lost trackage rights when my wife developed a new technique in her art that required making a mess and literally had to tear out the benchwork I had built.
The idea of a small Western town sustained by a big industry that it is served by a railroad is very appealing. I like the idea of small trains and very big trees.
BTW: The huge lumber facility owned by the Union Lumber Company is surrounded by the town of Fort Bragg. Sandwiched in between is the yard. That is not what I am modeling, Just showing there is a prototype to justify about anything.
Union Lumber 1911:
Alleghany,
Yeah, I know. The compromise is that I didn’t put any turnouts there. The upper right trestle is also a potential probelm. I just have to make sure to lay good, always clean track eh? I can get to it using ladders and acrobatics.
The height will be 48 inches.
The staging area in the other room bothers me. I’d move the turn outs into the main room and just have two or three loops of track for staging. Make room by putting the lumber mill tight into the lower left corner. Actually run your main line through the building. Give the lumber mill 2 or 3 tracks with the tail track being the main on the duck under. I’d delete the turntable. Hack up your existing section to make a reverse loop to turn engines. Cut your yard back to 2 or 3 tracks.
The challenges/opportunities here reminds one of the classic Givens & Druthers exercise of John Armstrong inspiration.
Since this isn’t a really a "design’ excercise, the plan is based on recycled layout so there really isn’t anything to design or change. Its all pretty well fixed.
How about taking the Rock Ridge end of the layout and rotating it 90° counterclockwise. Flip flop the staging tracks and put them at the right end of the layout, then connect those sections with a stretch of track with buildings along it, or filled with scenery. You end up with more layout, AND you don’t have to worry about someone flying in through the door leading out to the garage and slamming it into Rock Ridge. Plus, you’ll be able to open the door all the way. Just a couple of suggestions
IT is not like I haven’t explored other options. Only the lower right blob has any part of the old layout.
But since tearing out the old 4x8 Rock Ridge and Train City, I’ve studied and drawn plans for:
The California Western, Fort Bragg to Willis with a fair chunk of the Northwestern Pacific in 1917. It was eventually rejected because pretty much all the engines of the CW would have to be custom built.
The Nevada Valley Narrow Gauge with connection to the SP. Eventually rejected because there was not enough operational capacity to warrant an op session of any length.
I had pretty much settled on modeling the SP in the Santa Cruz area around 1905. There was very nice produce shipping trade as well as several large lumber operations. One thing kinda different was a laundry operation I’ve never seen modeled before. After I had about 1/3 of the benchwork done, my wife’s art career took a turn and she needed floor space in the basement and the benchwork had to come down. It took about 2 years to consider starting over.
My current plan, Rock Ridge 1905, has a fair amount of stuff to do in the space I am allowed–and should look like it was meant to be this way.
Here’s the Santa Cruz benchwork:
