I drew up a plan today. It’s 6x10. The main goes off this table and will run on the 4x4 table, swing around and come back, making a loop for continous running.
the numbers indicate the industries-
1- Glacier Gravel- Walthers
2- Columbia feed Mill- walthers
3- grain elevator- walthers
4- (top left, can’t quite read it in the pic) stockyard- life-like (it’s one I already own)
5- Golden Valley freight house- Walthers
heres the plan for the book- You can see I expanded the yard and engine service facility and eliminated a reverse loop.
What do you think of the one I drew and how can I improve it? I’d like a few more spurs and industries.
Side note- There might be another industry next to the freight house on the same spur.
From what I can see, you have good potential for switching fun. I like to spread the industries around the layout so I don’t have all my spurs and sidings in the same area. That get old after a while, particully when you have 2 or more trains getting in each others way. You can only run in so many directions at once, as I’ve found, much to my embarrassment as a local plows the express off the track! I have my industries at opposite ends of the layout with spurs and sidings for each, as well as interchanges coming in from a branch line. This gets very interseting, as I have 2 trains running on the main line in different directions AT THE SAME TIME! In standard DC. Figure out how I did it and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong. It’s very simple.
If the table sticks out into the room, looks interesting. If it is up against a wall, you will have problems reaching a lot of track and potential problems, much less trouble building it. I figure a two foot reach is about it for comfort and three foot for discomfort but possible.
I will be able to walk around the layout. I’ve considered putting a backdrop at an angle that would follow the yard. What do you think of that? Also, I will eventually go DCC or a walkaround throttle with DC.
any suggestions for adding more spurs?
Also, I’d like a meat packing plant for 2 reasons. (1) to move cattle from the stock yard to the MPP. (2) to have a use for my 5 40’ reefers. I think somebody (maybe Alpine?) made a Swift meat packing plant. Am I right?
Well, this may not be a problem, but i’ve run into here and thought a head’s up can’t hurt.
So you build trains in the yard, and pull out onto the main, running clockwise. To drop or pick up on spur 5, you have to back most of the way around the reversing loop. Spotting on spurs 2 and 3 are clean, but then you have to back into the reversing loop again, from the other direction, to drop or pickup on spur 1.
Noiw you truck on around the main for a lap or five, back into the yard, and break up all the cars you picked up into new trains and repeat the process once again. Other than backing around the reversing loop, it can’t be used as a reversing loop from the standard operation direction. If you build the trains in the yard, haul them out on the main with a switcher, and then attach your motive power on the other end, the access to the spurs is reversed, and you can use the reversing loop to turn a train at speed, but then you are back in the first situation, except you now have to back in the yard, which means the next iteration of operations can’t run counterclock, it’s sort of a one shot or alternating schedule.
Lots of people won’t care about this, but it does add some complexity to operations, and it’s something to at least think about before laying track.
If the reversing loop were reversed, then a second reversing loop could be accomplished, in the direction you have it running now, by extending one of the yard spurs, which would also effectively give your switcher a run around. Just a thought.
Jeff, I see where you’re going. Maybe I will include a second reverse loop. I’ll modify the plan and post another pic tomorrow. I could also have another industry along the second loop.
I think the more trackplans you draw, the happier you’ll be with the end result. That’s why I took the time to work through the Atlas RTS tutorial and learned how to use the software. It only took about ten minutes, and now I have tons of variations for future expansion, and I learn a lot each time a drawing gets modified. It’s amazing to me how much better a layout plan gets from the first attempt to the latest, better traffic flow, more opportunities to fit new scenes into the plan, etc.
But the progress isn’t always good, sometimes it leads down a blind alley, maybe just in one respect, while other things improve. That’s when I’m glad to have all te old digital plans right there in the same folder, combine this part over here, with that solution over there, click, click, click moving forward all the while.
I’ve done a lot of drafting and I wouldn’t go back to pen and paper at gunpoint, not after experiencing the ease of digital design. I still enjoy doing a nice set of plans by hand, but not in this hobby, where volume of output, trial and error, is directly related with ultimate satisfaction.
Sketching is still faster, but to make sure it all really fits, the software is hard to beat. Give it a try, what do you have to lose. If the program doesn’t fit your headspace, you’re only out a download and ten minutes for the tutorial.
I always knew that some people were faster learning software than am I, but 10 minutes to learn a CAD program? Even one as limited as RTS?
I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours using a fine model railroad CAD program (3rd PlanIt) and I’m still learning. Maybe I’m just dim.
Just my opinion, but I think it’s often a poor idea for newbies to design to start with CAD immediately. There are so many good-looking but horribly designed layouts on the web today … in fact there are sites seemingly dedicated to precisely-rendered bone-headed ideas.
IMHO, newbies to design who really want to do it right should spend time getting a foundation from sources like John Armstrong’s Track Planning for Realistic Operation (Kalmbach) and the publications of the Layout Design SIG. Good design is much more about thinking than drawing.
Those who are new to design but just want to build something in a hurry would probably be better served with a reference to a quality published design that’s well-thought-out.
All just my opinion, your mileage may vary, void were prohibited …
I’d say that you decidedly need to re-think the arrangement of turnouts in the upper part of the track diagram. As it stands, having 8 turnouts in what appears to be about 4 feet at the top center of the trackplan is probably impossible. Likewise for the turnouts feeding the three tracks in the upper right. Even the diverging angles seem too large unless they are all #4’s. Try working with photocopies of turnouts from the Walthers catalog.
Here’s the new trackplan
I added a second reverse loop and another spur.
Here’s how the train can switch all the spurs-
Departing the yard, running clockwise, switch spur #3.
Then, go up the second reverse loop and switch the un-numbered spur.
Go down that loop and up onto the first loop and switch spur #5.
Then go all the way around loop 1 and run on the main to switch spur #2.
Then go all the way around loop 2 and go around loop 1 and switch spur 1.
Next, head down the loop and onto the main and you’ve switched the industries and you’re headed clockwise, just as you left the yard.[:D]
The more things put into the center of the space the less locations there are for access hatches.
It would be so much easier to just add a run-around somewhere. The run-around could double as a siding so it would be possible to run two trains at once.
Seems WAY overyarded for a layout this size.
It is going to be very hard to reach those two (three) industrial siding that were put near the center of the space.
I disagree. I see lots of yard work and very little switching. That big of a yard is going to need a whole lot more industries to keep it busy.
This might have gotten more response over in the layout form.
First thing I would do instead of trying to draw a plan freehand, is to get three things, all of which you may already have .
A Compass- for drawing curve at a proper radius
A Protractor- for drawing correct sized turnouts.
A Ruler- straight lines, track, building outlines etc
Choose and easy “scale” on the ruler to use, such as 1 inch = 1 foot. This would make a 6ft x 10ft layout a 6 inch x 10 inch drawing. This is how I started drawing layouts and until Xtrkcad came along, it was all I used. (I too couldn’t seem to master either 3rd-planit or CadRail, but RTS and Xtrkcad was 30 minutes max learning.) This will give you a nice clean scaled drawing that will better show what will and will not fit.
Short of that, download one of the free software programs for drawing layouts, (RTS is easiest to learn), and then start drawing the layout as you see it.
TZ, there is going to be a siding on the 4x4 layout that will be attachted to the left side of this. I don’t think it’s overyarded. It’s a generous size, but there will be some extra freight cars sitting in the yard. Those sidings in the middle will have remote turnouts.
