Hello Everyone, excuse me in advance for being long winded but my situation has been on my mind a while now and I would sure like some input/feedback from the Model Railroading Community. I’m contemplating making a change to a switching layout. Could someone tell me their experience of going from a nice layout and gobbs of rollingstock and locos to a select few? Has a switching layout helped you to focus on an era and to get things done? As I get older (53 in April) the 2 crawl unders and a layout that takes every inch of the train room is becoming less appealing to me. I would be going from a 3 times around 14’ x 10’ rendition of the Late Doug Smith’s Brooke Valley layout to a horseshoe 2’ wide rendition of Dave Barrows South Plains District switching layout (Been eying this one for years). I have rendered Dave Barrow’s wonderful South Plains District switching layout to fit a 14’4" x 9’10" room in Horseshoe style. It would accommodate 3 Operators with staging, interchange, a Grain Elevator w/storage yard and the kicker, a second railroad with it’s own industries to work. I apologize for bringing up a subject that quite possibly has already been aired out but would still input/feedback on my particular situation. Okay, I’ll shut up now and let the Community speak. Thank You Everyone.
I had to search the layout you’re speaking of, as I hadn’t seen it.
The overall dimensions of both modules when set up appear to be 18 inches by 16 feet. Your benchwork is 2 feet deep with an overall length of around 36 feet if it were in a straight line, if I understand it correctly.
From looking at the South Plains District (both modules), the switch backs seem very compressed and extremely too small to enjoy working; that is unless you like moving one car at a time over and over to get to one on the far end. I find that with such a bottle neck, people usually use their hand to just pick up the car they are trying to get to. That said, I wouldn’t try to get rid of them, but increase the length of the tail track so that you can move whole cuts of cars in and out.
Looking at the Industry Yard module, the “yard” needs a lead. Otherwise as your other operators are switching, you’re not going to be able to do any making up / switching of the inbound or outbound locals. My suggestion, since you’ve got basically double the length of the two modules would be to bring the yard to the front of the benchwork, add it’s own lead, and an A/D track (or two!), and a long enough yard lead where you can double at least two tracks together and still have room to pull the entire cut. I would add some length to the yard tracks, because otherwise it will always be full.
While you’re adding length, I don’t know if I would necessarily keep the engine terminal. Perhaps one of the two-bay locomotive sheds from PikeStuff like the one HERE would work well. I see this layout as being a small branch line off a larger sub division. A fuel truck would be appropriate for filling locomotives, and scheduled maintenance would be done back at the shops at a larger terminal. I would imagine you could utilize locomotives like SW1500s, any of the early GP series, Alco switchers, etc.
Loo
Speaking as a (sometime) operator on, not a builder or owner of, a switching layout, my one observation is that to my way of thinking, a switching layout really ups the ante for having no dead spots for power, zero derailments, engines that do not stall, smooth track, cars and locomotives with absolutely correct coupler heights that couple every time, and no peculiarities of access for uncoupling or seeing the sides of cars and their reporting marks (which should be visible and not totally obscured by weathering). It is also really nice to have the car number on the car ends on a switching layout, whereas I can manage without them on a normal running layout.
Normal/average flaws in track, wiring, locomotives and rolling stock that pass by almost without notice on a “running” layout (admittedly, that is no reason to tolerate any of them) become magnified on a switching layout.
And this is a purely personal observation, but at the cost of appearance, I happen to like the ability to use the delayed action uncoupling of Kadee couplers on a switching layout, even though I am well aware the modern trend is to not have magnets built in to the track, and to snip off the pin in favor of accurate cast brake line hoses.
The other purely personal observation is that for whatever reason, I find scale sound on a switching layout increasingly annoying versus having the sound equipped loco approach and pass by on a running layout. When it is right there for the entire evening … listener fatigue sets in (listener fatigue is a real phenomenon and one read quite a bit about it in Stereo Review and High Fidelity magazines back in the 1960s and 70s).
Dave Nelson
I went from a 16’x 14’ L shaped layout with two main lines and numerous switching opportunities to a 13’x 18” switching layout when we downsized to a new home which didn’t have the room for a large layout. My switching layout shares one side of the spare bedroom.
Do I miss my big layout, you bet! I really enjoyed the long trains and my Big Boy and the large diesels (now shelf queens) pulling 30 car loads plus being able to do some switching when I felt like it, while still being able to run some roundy round stuff at the same time.
I’m trying to learn prototypical operations, but honestly I’m finding the switching layout somewhat boring. I have seven industries and I picked those with care so that I would be able to use at least two types of cars for each one with some having four or more. I use a switching list to move cars and mix it up pretty well (East bound, West bound, using the local industrial switcher to do the switching, etc). I guess because of its small size I feel somewhat lost when everything is completed and the train has no place to go. The layout isn’t large enough to support a yard at each end. So my staging area is all I have and the 0-5-0 leaves a little to be desired for a yard switcher.Maybe as time goes on and I learn a little more I’ll realize more opportunities then I’m seeing now.
I will say the great folks on this forum have been very helpful and I read everything I can about prototypical switching and it has helped me a lot, but as of now I still have that “where’s the beef” feeling about my smaller layout.
I can’t offer an opinion on your choice of a new layout which will be much larger than mine as I don’t have the expertise to do so, but there are a lot of knowledgeable folks on here that I’m sure will be able to give you some great advice.
I guess my point is get all the advice you can before you make a final decision I wi
Gosh! At 53 you’re a young sprout. Crawl unders do sound a bit much though. Have a friend 81+ has a rolling office chair to get under his duck under. I’m looking at one gate.
Now to my question. Your discription of your former layout interested me. Do you know where can I find a track plan for it? Tried Google “Doug Smith’s Brook Valley” and found pages of “stuff”, but nothing on a layout or a plan for it… Also checked the Layout Database with no luck.
Sorry your current layout has lost it’s luster, but you are among very good company by the sounds of many of the threads in these forums.
Whatever decision you make, I hope you enjoy it for many years to come.
Good luck,
Richard
Hi Everyone, I have not yet seen this version (but you can bet your sweet bippie I’m going to check it out first chance I get) but apparently there is an article of Doug Smith’s revised Brooke Valley Layout in the September 1994 issue of Model Railroader Magazine. Doug’s original layout is from the 1950’s and I believe there was an article in Model Railroader about it around 1953? A two part series of the South Plains layout by David Barrow is in the September 1996 issue of Model Railroader. Excellent feedback from everyone so far. Unless there are any objections I will post a pic of my rendition of the South Plains District to give everyone a better idea of what I’ve been scheming. Ok, all for now but keep that insightful feedback and wonderful ideas coming. From a very Grateful Fellow Model Railroader, Thank You Everyone.
http://www.citrusmodelrrclub.org/index21.htm. - A link to a Gentlemen who has done the Brooke Valley in N-Scale with Great Pics. Cowman, I will look to see what issue of Model Railroader the article of the Brooke Valley was in and let you know. Thanks again Everyone
Through various moves and room sizes I have done the around the room several times. Twice with a duckner and once where the stairs came up within the room such that I could enter without the duckunder. Yes, duckunders are a pain and I would try to avoid them as much as possible as I get older as well. But, like you time has led me to a room just under 12x12. The way this room is laid out, I lose one big corner to an entrance & pass through to another room. The best description of the room matches pretty close to the bedroom size used in MRP for their variour bedroom layout issues.
Which leads me to, yes, I have gone down from a main line to a branch line switching terminal, in my case a small southern mill town in the 1950s. Essentially the town occupies one wall, the local countryside the adjacent wall, and a fiddle year representing the junction/rest of the world on part of another.
The biggest problem, if you call it that, is the limited size of the room itself, not the fact that I don’t have a main line train. Instead, as someone noted above, the short distances mean lead tracks, sidings, and industry tracks are too short and some things get crammed too close together. As someone mentioned, the South Plains is pretty cramped with track. Part of that is his philosophy at the time was to model a schematic, not a town. So he laid everything just paralled and crammed them in, even if they would have been a mile apart.
Bottom line, is yes, I would do the switching layout again even if I had larger space. I’d just spread things out little more and lengthen some track.
If you like everything other than the duck under you could consider increasing the height of your present layout, unless it is two decks, to allow your self to use a desk chair or mechanics wheeled seat to roll under.
If you are unhappy with the layout for some other reason as well it may be time to design a new one, with out a duck under.
Someone will undoubtedly parrot the phrase real railroads are point to point, however I differ with that assumption in most cases. Most railroads interchange cars with other railroads so when their line ends it is actually connected to someone else’s railroad and the freight continues on via another carrier.
Some railroads such as the Virginian hauled a product in this case coal to a trans-load facility in this case a port and returned the empties back to the origination point. Even so unless one is modeling one end of the railroad the other end is so far away as to defy depiction in the space available to us unless we were to model a terminal or belt line railway. And those railroads generally have multiple connections and in some cases offer continuous running capabilities as the meander around their respective cities.
If I were redesigning a layout and wanted to avoid duck-under access I would do so but still find a way to have staging and continuous running if at all possible on a switching layout. It is possible to operate a layout with continuous running as a point to point but impossible to do the reverse. More choices will allow more enjoyment.
J.Rob
Isn’t that what bad orders and a RIP track is for?[swg] I will say though that good wiring and clean track are very important. Right now I belong to a model railroad club, and that is my layout. NO ONE cleans or really takes car of the track, so it can be hard to do switching chores. Extremely annoying when that’s what you like to do.
That being said, an occasional derail or “bad order” car adds a little protoism with out operating 100% prototypical. When I do run I do include some ‘common sense’ 1:1 things like slowing through busy areas, manually uncoupling, keeping vehicle pathways clear, completely stopping before throwing switches, and making sure clearance points aren’t blocked. Little things that are more prototypical, but I’m not going all out. The club does have Train Sequence lists printed out, and that’s all I follow, although some rules like “Go to Jct A and wait for disp. clearance to enter main track” I don’t worry about. The club is pretty informal. It doesn’t seem anyone wants to actually run formal operating sessions, happy coming in on Saturday and just running what you want.
With that all said I am planning an N scale switcher layout for at home. When I want to run a long train I do it Saturday on the clubs big HO layout.