About a two months ago I decided to go to a point to point track plan and maybe a month ago I posted a plan for semi-hidden staging that everyone agreed was just terrible. Here is another go at it, this time the entire layout is pictured. I could not figure out how to get it onto Photobucket in a readable condition so I posted it on my web site.
N guage, it will be DCC long before it is done. There is a 30 inch walkway around 3 sides and almost 5 feet between the end with the open U and the work bench that runs along one entire wall.
No need to be kind, I am a big boy. Several things need to be tweaked. The siding labeled 17 needs to be completely rethought and I am considering making the 2 passenger stations serviceable from both sides, the mainline and the passing siding. The parallel sidings will be laid parallel. I am just about out of patience with track design software.
I am not an expert, but here are my first thoughts…
The loops at the bottom right are real tight. I don’t think it will work like that. You might be able to stack the loops, eliminating one of the passenger terminals, I think.
It looks to me like there is about twice as much track as will fit in the space. For me it is way too busy. If yuo want to get the long run I think some line of double deck arrangement would be better. Since you have room around the outside a mushroom might work.
Neither main yard has a lead. When you switch you foul the main.
Those are my first thoughts. I am sure others will be along!
I think the spur tracks at #4 are too short to be effective. Take #4 down to just 2 tracks and I think they will still have the same capacity.
I think the round house would look better with fewer loco tracks. The “complete circle” look is cool but only if there is enough room for it and if the round table is a big one (like 90 feet or larger).
The big problem and to me show stopper appears to be the two reversing loops and yards in the lower right hand corner. I think the curves are too tight (less than 9" radius). I think I would lower one of these loops and tunnel it under the other yard. That would do a lot to relieve the congestion. Another idea might be to just make one large yard and make the layout a point to loop instead of point to point. The third idea would be to make the whole yard a big curve and used each end of the yard as a separate city.
I was hoping that with the older equipment I could get by with the sharp curves in the yards. I do need to get the passenger cars through it though. I could flair out the peninsula with the yards. I will see how much wider I can make them.
Stacking the yards just won’t work. I only have enough mainline to raise the track about 8 inches which would not give me enough clearance for the lower deck and would eliminate the possibility of running as a loop.
Fouling the main in the Georgetown yard would be hard to do. It was the proverbial end of the line. The yardmaster does have to be on his toes to keep at least one of the 3 A/D tracks clear to use as a run around. The Cincinnati end did interchange with PRR tracks on the eastern edge of Cincinnati could try to include that.
I was looking at #4 and you have a point. What if I just used a Pico 3 way turnout? I could get 3 24 inch sidings instead of 4 18 inch tracks. Not really a gain but 2 less switches to buy. I could do the same with 5 and 6 one 3 way switch instead of 2 regular turnouts.
I agree about the roundhouse. I was having a Tim the Tool Man moment. If it is there use it.
The yard or yards are giving me fits. I wonder if I moved it to the upper right corner and called one end Cincinnati and the other Georgetown. If I did that I would just make it a staging yard and not worry about service tracks, towers, buildings etc.
I think you should divest your fantasy of one of the yards. I use the term fantasy because I believe that you have a dream, and that you have come a long way towards rendering it here…not being snarky.
I also agree that the table and house area are crammed. Could you live with about half that capacity in stalls and radial tracks? Also, could you use the left track descending from the throat above the table to become an access to the servicing facility? That way, one is an entry for waiting locos at this busy installation, and the other gets them on their way ASAP after their time in the house. The real roads, especially in busy division servicing facilities, would have at least two such tracks to the table.
I think I see a concrete result of the CAD experience that has left you frustrated. It is the straights that are not rendered straight, but stepped by the software. This may result in some unpleasant discoveries when you try to mate up ends, or to avoid S-curves or weird radii.
Don’t despair!! Rome wasn’t built in a day! [:D] And it had little planning.
Is it possible to see a plan of the room this layout is going in? This layout seems very busy and very tight. The roundhouse almost dwarves the yard. I believe that Atlas RTS maybe beyond want you want to accomplish. Also, I know that P&G is a fairly large place in reality but, you have it much too large on your layout. In fact, I don’t see anyplace on your layout where you could place the buildings to go with your sidings. Very very cramped indeed.
Is it possible to see a plan of the room this layout is going in? It might be just me but, I think you might be slightly better served by a shelf layout that goes around the room. This could give you more room to lay out your yards and industries.
You are going to have to stack the loops or reconfigure them, they are about 6" radius in places the way you’ve drawn them. Since you have a continuous connection, my votee would be to lose the loops all together.
The yards have no leads so you switchers will have to clear anything on the mains.
All the industrial areas are the same design. A siding with spurs that break out away from the middle.
selector: My fantasy is more a signed First Edition of Daschall Hammett’s Maltese Falcon in jacket. This is more of a quest. I am not dead set on to yards, my first attempt was to hide one on one side of the backdrop and just use it for staging. I am reworking it two ways, flaring out the end with the yards and trying to get an acceptable radius curve for an N guage yard and scrapping the separate yards and moving to the upper right corner and wrap it around the corner. You are so right about being frustrated with the CAD programs. I went back to XtrackCad last night and when it told my I could not have a room bigger than 48X96 (4 foot by 8 foot) I just about deleted it from the computer. I really would like to be ale to use track other than Atlas.
jcmark611: A picture is worth a thousand words so…
From the doorway, where I am sanding, to the far wall is 17 feet. From the base of the cabinets to the other wall is 16 feet. Here is the doorway…
The doorway is 80 inches wide. The walls not shown have 6 foot long baseboard heaters and windows about 4 1/2 feet above the floor. Around the walls just will not work in this room. P&G is the only industry where I really thought about the buildings. They were just going to bump out of the back drop.
Dave: OK I am going to seriously look into loosing one yard and then simplify the industrial areas.
Are you totally against blocking the windows or countertop you have in the room? Maybe you could run it around three side with a peninsula in the middle of the room?
You don’t need to simplify them as much as get a little variety in the design. Also remember that the buildings in an industrial area will have to fit into the “city”, so the fronts and sides of the buildings will end up parallel or at right angles to each other. The more industrialized the more rigid that tendency, the more rural the more free form it is. So if you are in a larger city, one way you can emphasize that is to make your spurs more parallel, rather than fan shaped.
The windows are high enough that they will not be blocked. The counter top can not be blocked. To much useful storage and to many family members use it. I went back to the graph paper and drew it out going from the doorway along the two long walls to the counter, with a peninsula coming out 13 feet from the wall I do gain a little length but I still run into the problem of needing 2 yards. I could possibly widen the last few feet to 30 inches and try to work in some staging.
Huh? Did you do the free registration? There is no limit that I am aware of. I’m dinf 12x14 with no trouble (induced by the program, anyway). Go about halfway down the Xtrkcad page and follow the link. It tells you how to register.
You could have a staging yard on one side of the divider and a yard on the other side. You could lose the loops and have continuous running, or you could have the staging single ended and maybe have the loop for the other side go under.
Here’s what I have in 12x14. This isn’t the latest, but close enough. The sparser level is from about 8 to 15 inches above the lower. The entry side and the side with the hidden in plain sight staging are open, the others on walls.
Don’t give up on the design/planning phase. And, don’t give up on the XtrkCad registration. I used the train sim in XtrkCad along with the stats design info and numerous inputs from the forum members to tweak yard length, passing siding length and many other variables to arrive at something I think meets my goals. I’ve run the train sim so many times that I can dream it. I almost know every piece of track in my mind.
Just use these cad programs, especially the freebies as guides… Even with AutoCad, no track plan of mine has ever survived the first spike (exactly as drawn)… That said, Why have you ruled out grades?? Nothing says they have to be stacked one on top of the other but elevating to a point of clearance, one of your terminal ends may allow you to use a wider radius on the loops… Yards or not, you are going to still have the same tight radius problems as you have it drawn… With N scale you don’t need very much and the transitions could prove visually interesting…
I know you want continuous running opertunity but nothing says you can’t run a track from about where you have industry #2 downgrade along the edge to meet up with the track you currently have joining the 2 tracks. It might even add to your realism some… Last time I drove through Cincinatti, the area looked kind of hilly to me…
I’m also assuming here that ALL trackage will be visable and reachable, nothing against walls… Correct?
OK Dave! that was more helpful than you would think. I will keep this in mind when reworking the area closest to Cincinnati. It sounds like a good way to impart a city or country feel to an area. Let me make sure I have it right…
In a city the sidings stay closer to the main line due to restrictions the urban environment place on the right-of-way.
In rural, less dense areas, the siding can go to the industry in a less direct path if that makes economic sense. ( If a factory is on the wrong side of a creek that the mainline crosses farther down the siding may start farther away but on the correct side of the creek to avoid another bridge)
I need to remember that railroads hate to lay more track than absolutely needed. It costs money.
Registration? Duh… I feel stupid. I will take care of that as soon as I get back from work. Thanks for the tip. Sometimes the answer is so obvious you don’t even see it.
Tom : Both those likes are great resources. I had never seen Joe’s layout statistics and I sure need to study the other one. I registered my copy and after 3 hours of work I have the table tops drawn for both walk around and around the walls with a peninsula. Laying track is getting easier.
rolleiman : OK I will admit it. grades scare me. I really do like your idea of having siding 2 as sort of a “river level” track that could join with the Georgetown yard and give me some continuous running if I wanted. I will work on that and a plan with stacked yards.
Thanks every one for your input. Now back to the drawing board.
Everyone is giving good advice about trackwork and such, to that I’ll add that you really need yard leads. You have space, put them in. The loops are solvable issues, either tunnel one under the other or join them as suggested. You won’t use them in operations, so joining them really isn’t an issue if you just want to run trains.
The issue I want to bring up is cohesion. I don’t know your vision, so I’m asking not telling. One of the perks of N scale is the ration of scenery to train, making long magestic trains run through a lot of scenery. You on the other hand have created a very dense switching layout that appears to have little room for scenery. In fact, I am wondering how you are going to tie this all together so that the layout exceeds the plywood empire with a couple cool structures stage. I’m wondering how you will tie this all together with scenery.
The other puzzle for me is that you have created an opoeration based layout without any staging. You want a lot of operations so you put in a lot of sidings. Without the staging you are shooting yourself in the foot as you limit the logical movement of cars.
You really should have two staging yards although they could be joined into one. For best operations your railroad would look something like this.
Rest of World Points East (Staging)–Yard–Inustries–Yard–Rest of World Points West (Staging).
Agian since your yards are so close, you could conceivibly use one staging yard that is accessed by both classification yards.
