Shelf depth is 8". Cannot go any deeper then this. Both sides are 4’ in length. Construction will be on top of 2" thick foam.
The green shading is an elevated portion of the city that will be above the “operating” portion of the layout. The black shading at a 90* angle to it is a bridge making it seem like the “top” goes some where.
Red dashes is chain link fence closing off an area.
Minimum radius (although it may not appear to be) is somewhere in the 12" range. Didn’t have a compass, so I had to try to free-hand it in. Not exactly the best at that. Switches are somewhere in the area of #6. Probably going to end up being hand laid.
Hidden staging under the elevated town.
Point “A” is a length of track long enough to spot up 1 off-road diesel tankcar. Fueling locomotives, etc.
Point “B” is the engine shed. Based on an old kit that I have sitting in the closet.
Point “C” is the loading dock for a small factory. Planning on building it with the “modular building” pieces from Walthers or whoever. Empty boxcars in for loading, loaded boxcars in with supplies.
Point “D” is a small transload facility. Loading dock for boxcars / flats and a pit with a mobile-conveyor for unloading hoppers. Thinking salt, stone, etc.
Point “E” is for covered hoppers. Plastic pellets in via rail, empty hoppers out. Switch back may or may not go under the town. Not sure how to swing that. Thought about having another bridge to go across a gap. A tunnel for one customer is just way too expensive to justify.
Point “F” is for running around what comes out of staging. Trains in staging will be kept short, 5-6 cars at most. Trains wi
Clicking didn’t work. I uploaded it to photobucket, and the blue represents new track. I added another runaround (I guess it doesn’t look good, so forget it). the only other thing I did was set-up an interchange with another RR. It would require a small 1-track staging yard (in brown). Really, only things I could think of, great job.
Let’s see Packers#1! I think you missed where he said that this was a SHELF layout and that he couldn’t go any wider than what the drawing showed. You also seem to have difficulty with what are the dimensions and space requirements for an actually turnout. The one you drew in at the bottom of the diagram seems to take off from the other track at about a 80 deg angle. Not possible at all. Your other track diagrams also exhibit the same, lets say, impossible track geometry. I’d suggest you spend some time study some turnouts and get an idea of how much space they take up and how to show them in a track diagram.
Jerry, will you please grow up. Why do you consistently take shots at everyone. My layout drawings are renderings, never meant to be exactly copied. BTW, it forms a sort of box, so the little track fits. Chill, willya? I won’t pursue this matter with Jerry any further, mods.
If HO, I suggest you go back and review the scale of your diagram. I don’t think what you have drawn can actually fit on a 8" wide shelf. For example, at the bottom of the diagram you have 4 parallel tracks - 2 exposed and 2 hidden under the buildings. With track on 2" centers that only gives you 1" on the front and on the backside for clearance. If you figure the need to have a greater than 2" spacing between track 2 and track 3 because of the buildings/scenery components, you now have everything right on the edge of the shelf.
Same thing with you passing siding at F. I count 8 squares for the depth; that puts the mainline and the passing siding on about 1.25 to 1.5" on center. Probably not feasible.
Other than accessing the engine servicing area, I don’t see the purpose of those visible tracks on the north/south peninsula. I suggest that whole trains arrive from the staging tracks and imagine that is where locomotives are serviced and stored. I suggest something like a port area, team tracks, or warehouses be substituted for the front half of the north/south peninsula, and reconfigure the tracks accordingly.
Taking my Brain convert it to HO, like 8x8 16" wide just for the thought of it, I think you can do a lot more to this layout in the space. You should hit one of the freebie PC track planning softwares and poke around with them and work the fits around, then you may see more possibilities.
Is all the track one level? The staging sounds like its under the city portion, hidden?
As a rule when I can I will avoid parallel tracks to the table edge just for more scenick interest.
one engine to the left of the leftmost turnout along the upper wall
one engine plus one car left or the turnout heading up towards the upper right hand corner
one engine plus one car for the switchback in the upper right hand corner
industry track in upper left hand corner is just long enough for one car to be coupled or uncoupled on straight track
As you can see - your plan works reasonably well along the upper wall (apart from the rightmost turnout leading into your curve), but it does leaves you with less space for scenery than you originally drew in.
Where it seems to breaks down a bit is in that curve joining the two wings. Have a look at the unconnected piece of track w/one small and one curved turnout to the left of the curve.
That is a 10" radius curve, a small turnout and a curved turnout drawn to scale.
Sorry Sawyer - the turnouts you put into your proposed modifications in this thread (and other threads) are way, way, way too optimistic - they leave the track at impossibly steep angles.
Try this for a hand drawn sketch - if you want to draw in a #4 turnout (the sharpest kind for realistic use), you mark out out one square/inch/centimeter/“unit” to the side of the track. then you mark out 4 such units forward. Then you connect the point where the turnout deviates from the main and that point which is 1-4 units away. That is how sharp the sharpest turnout can be.
Another way of thinking about it - tan(angle) = 1/4 (0.25), arc tan (0.25) equals 14 degrees, just a smidgeon better than halving a 45 degree angle two times. Or put another way - a 45 degree angle (cutting diagonally across each square) is about 4 times too sharp.
Grow up? How about read the posting. The first statement is about the dimensions of the layout and how it ca NOT be any larger than shown. What’s the first thing you do - add a siding that projects into the room about 12" in the middle of the shelf. The second is to add another run around track in between two run around tracks. Read the post, study the diagram, think about things a little instead of being in such a rush to be the first to reply.
Don’t you mean your drawings are renderings that could never be built? Take a look at some of the subsequent posts and you’ll see the same comments about your track geometry being out of whack.
Granite-I like your plan.I would possibly make a couple of changes.At point D it looks like a potential foulinf point.I would eliminate it and use the right hand side of point E as a team track.Take out the left side of E.On the upper left,I would take out one of the small buildings and then move the remaining small one and the larger one farther to the left giving you more track space for more cars at that point.Just a thought.Bob
PS-I think it strange that I posted this reply this morning and in over 12 hours there has been no other replies.This is not the first time this has happened. On at least two other occasions I have made replies to a post and then nothing.What seems to be the problem?I get the impression that my comments are either not wanted or that my presence is no longer welcome.If that is the case let me know and I’ll have the mods remove my profile etc.
dont worry about time delays of replies and so on, I have seen old posts getting popped front as people dig back reading threads, brains are working on ideas so the dont expect rapido replies.
Threads have to die sometime. My impression is that about 20% of my posts are the last ever in the threads I’ve ever contributed. To ease my ego, I say “Mark, you had the last word.” Does that help?
This thread, like many others, includes the word “little”, like the turnouts are a “little optimistic” and so on.
It irritates me when people say “a little” when they really mean “very” or “much.” This ubiquitous expression, I suppose, is trying to soften the blow, but it doesn’t fool me. Does it fool you?
Relax - it is not a reflection on you as a person if people do comment on something you’ve written, or if they don’t comment on something that you’ve written. In this case, I (and a bunch of other people, I am sure) did read your comment.
I didn’t see anything in particular to comment about you comment - essensially your main point seemed to be roughly the same as I had written a few posts back - that rightmost right hand turnout leading into the corner curve won’t really work as drawn.
Only difference is our argument for why it wouldn’t work - you pointed out potensial fouling between curve and straight ahead siding, I pointed out that it wouldn’t work well with a curve leading off a turnout here - the curve radius would be too small. So this turnout may have two strikes against it instead of one - but one is enough.
Then you advocate having just one track going off into the upper right hand corner instead of two tracks and dropping the switchback. While I indicated in my drawing that if he wanted to have two tracks here, it might be better to branch both of the track, and that he would need to make sure any switchback was long enough for minimum one engine, one car. Both sets of advice are doable. There is probably also quite a few other ways of dealing with trackage in that corner.
The original poster has already gotten quite a few comments - he might want to go back to redes
