WANTED: Design Advice on an HO layout - Please...

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I am starting a new thread because my posts were too large. (Sorry 'bout that, I am new to this and didn’t realize how long it would take to load) [#oops]

Hope this ones a bit better…

As it first appeared, I agree Chip. But I did intend to put in spurs. Am I correct in assuming that there’s nothing prototypically wrong with having a passing siding also act as a runaround and serve the industries?

I widened the benchwork a few inches at a couple of places and added the spur tracks as I could fit them, also put in some industries and shanty’s from the libraires of the RTS.

I am hoping things aren’t too crowded. (I’m seeing lotsa trees to blend the backdrop with the foreground, this is the northeast, right?)

I also added a couple of short tunnels along the main for interest and to break up the long stretch along the back wall.

Here’s what I have for the main lower level

My goals for the la

2

Actually, no, there are some things wrong with using a passing siding for industry service track. For starters, if a car is spotted on the track it becomes an obstacle to the siding’s use for passing, or for doing runaround moves to switch other industries. There is no reason why an industry siding can’t be double-ended, but in that case it is an industrial spur that could feasibly be used for runaround moves or passing (although the prototype probably wouldn’t allow that–the track is owned by the industry, and probably frowns upon things like scheduled meets off their loading dock) rather than the other way around.

The one notable exception would be passenger stations: often a flag-stop station would be right on the main. This is because passenger/freight loading at a small station just takes a couple of minutes, rather than unloading cars which can be a fairly lengthy process.

I think the far left is getting cut off–I notice what looks like one end of a big yard that starts to curve and then just ends. Curved track like that is fine for a staging yard but as Chip mentioned, you’ll want straight track for yards.

3

If you want to check out your design to see if it will support prototype operation easily, then take a look at these design formulas on my web site.

Before you ever cut a stick of lumber or lay one scrap of track, these formulas will give you all the insight you need to see if your design is going to work – and suggest the changes you need to make to fix the design while it’s still on paper.

4

What you have drawn is a project of massive proportions. Unless you have a club to help you with it, it will take you many, many years to complete. In addition, the way you have the room set up, the focal point of the layout is the helix.

In his book, Mid-sized and Manageable track plans, Iain Rice gives a good discussion of the the relationship between time/money/space and in essence, he advises people not to bite off more than they can chew. Joe, the previous poster has a layout in proportion to your design, but he has people from all over the country coming to run on it and he has help working on it.

In our area, there is another layout of that size. likewise, he has help–several people come over every week to work on it. In essence, it has become a club layout, if not in name.

I’m not saying you should base your decision on what I have to say. Although I don’t have the space you have, I have a basement to work with. I started with a two level layout and realized how many compromises I had to make to have the second level. what I decided was to have one level and put twice as much effort into it–make it really nice. I found that I could have all the design features I wanted–and better at that, just not as many sidings or as long a run.

In any case, a double deck layout does not look as good as single deck. There is too much visual distraction until you are up close.

So my advice, take it for what you paid for it:

Make one nice level.

Loose the long center peninsula. Use smaller 5’-wide peninsulas going north and south if you want.

Widen the benchwork along the walls to 30", Provide depth of scenery and vary the track work. Make extended branch lines and service industries. Run a double mainline so you can have trains running opposite directions while drinking your beer.

Put a spectacular yard on the long wall (or an

5

Hello again, I’ve revised the yard on the upper level of the mushroom. By moving it further onto the top of the helix the relationships greatly improve.

The switching lead is 13’ lg. and the stub ended storage tracks are all 12’ lg. so they should just about take an avarage full length train. (Less loco’s & Caboose.)

I read somewhere on Joe F’s many informative posts (Thank You, Thank You, Thank You[bow]) that you can build a yard on a curve if you accommodate a 5x car length relationship to radius. The inner-most (#1) track in my yard is the main, and is 27.5" R. and the tracks are on 2-1/2" centers, so this design should work, even being able to couple/un-couple passenger equipment on tracks #6 & #7.

I put in a 2-stall enginehouse with a RIP track in front, and a caboose track above that. I again added some structures from the software. I included 2 passenger platforms between the #2 & #3 tracks because although I don’t plan on extensive pass op’s, I do have a couple of steamers I’d like to run as excursion trains, (A BLI Hudson w/sound in NYC & a Bachmann Pennsy K-4) and thought they would add interest in the yard. I’ll put a sanding tower right where track #2 comes off the ladder, and a paved area for truck refueling just beyond that. (before the platforms.) Any advice here is especially appreciated.

Here’s the plan:

As to the various posts, I’d like to thank you for your comments & keep 'em comin!

I suppose I wasn’t clear about my use of a passing siding. I didn’t intend to put industries directly on them, just branch the spurs from them. Also, as you can now see, the area I cropped off in the lower level view is the stagi

6

As for the replies, everyone wants help, but few are willing to do the helping. Last year I posted a plan on the Layout Design Special Interest Group and didn’t get a lot of help. They said it was because my plan wasn’t well developed and I kept making changes based upon the input. It was if it wore them down. This year I posted a plan and got no comments. I mentioned this to one of the members and I was told there was a procedure to submit the plan. So I spent a couple hours following procedure and trying to make it as easy as possible.

I got two comments and one didn’t appear to have read my notes about the layout.

I also got fewer comments here than I would have expected.

So I think there’s couple things going on.

The more sophisticated the layout, the less qualified people feel to make comments.

The larger the layout, the more work it is. The tendencies is to say, I’ll do it when I have time, then never have more time. There’s only a few people here that will take on a larger project. There’s even fewer that have experience in building a larger project.

So if you are a newbee with a 4 x 8, it’s small, you don’t know a lot, comments are easy, and it’s easy to dish out advice. Read some of those comments sometime, half are “looks good.”

I think the more you can chunk your requests into bite sized nuggets, the more response you will get.

So I think that yard design will work. However, I still question why you would put the yard on the peninsula when you have nice long walls that would be more efficient use of space and lack the challenges of the tight area. The peninsula would make for some very nice urban or industrial switching.

7

Thought I’d restore this as people coming in late might want to know.

8

Lower Level,

If you are doing local switching you might have some trouble switching at Benning and Chip’s Summit. Although you have a runaround if you use the large passing siding, switching head in’s will tie up both sections of the track. This will make large ops session of more than 1-2 difficult. You could say that westbounds switch one side and eastbounds switch the other, but then your type of switching becomes less interesting. It depends on how the layout is going to be operated.

Angusville looks okay, but I don’t like the double switchback to get to the industry on the far left. It messes with cars in the industry in the center. It seems to me that with the space you have you can work it out so you only switch one direction fro each of them. Even if it takes a curved turnout.

Jennysburg has the same problem as the first two mentioned on a smaller scale. Your solution to switching is splitting the main and switching off the two sides of the main. This is workable for a single operator or maybe two. But get three or four guys and you’re going to have people struggling to figure out which track to come in on, and if you have a dispatcher, well he won’t be your friend. My suggestion would be to take a look at some what others have done. I may be off base here. I’ve just never seen it done this way.

9

Upper level.

You need a runaround in South Wilson. It has the same switchback as Angusville, but not as intrusive on the industry. Still, it can be avoided.

Benning, Chip’s Summit. Same comments as lower level. Also, why do they have the same names as the lower level. They should be different places than what’s below them.

10

Chip makes a lot of good points as to why larger layouts get very few thorough reviews. In my case, I have never built a large layout (although I helped my Dad with his). So most of my input would be

11

I have bookmarked your website Joe, and started to read some of it.

Very good advice, and I see it will be very helpful to my layout situation also.

I have to go ffto work right now, but this weekend I intend to set down and study it closely.

Thanks for your help!

Ed

12

Firstly, I would like to correct myself. I had a brain fart.

For some reason I was thinking full lenght pass cars were 8" lg. Tracks #6 & #7 are 40" & 42" radius respectivly and will only accommodate 60’ Harrimans. Full length 85’ are 12" lg and will need 60" radius curves. This doesn’t bother me however because the yard will be used for frieght.

Thanks Chip for the re-post. And maybe you’re right, I should just post seperate threads with more specific questions.

Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve loved to have put the yard along the back wall. There are 2 reasons I didn’t.

1st is no-stoop design. I suppose I should’ve mentioned it in my layout goals but It’s really considered by me to be a given, not a druther. To make this happen within the constraints of my 81-1/2" ceiling height the entire line from the helix lower exit to the nod-under at the basement entrance has to be on a 2.5% grade.

2nd is fairly dramatic scenery. Again due to the ceiling height, the deck seperation on the mushroom area has to be held to 15" and that only leaves ~3" for upper deck thickness. (If I am to obtain a 12" reveal for the lower scene at Jennysburg) This wouldn’t leave much (if any) scenery below track level. But yes, I could do urban in this area, that’s why I thought the yar

13

Hi Fred, I must admit you have me scratching my head a bit

I’m going to take these one at a time…

I mean, sure your appearance is going to be compromised on somewhat smaller radii, but this sounds like a little overkill to me. Will a full length pass car look that bad going around a 28" or even 30" R. curve? Wait, you’re saying it won’t even track reliably.

If this standard is to be adhered to, then (in HO) we can’t even think about running passenger equipment on anything less than 36" radius curves. (With 60" R. being preferred!) That’s huge man!!! And I guess we should just forget about steam altogether… Why do they even make 18" & 22" R. track when nothing but switchers and 40’ cars will run on it? This all seems a bit extreme to me.

Yes, as I stated before, I definitely plan to run Joe’s formulas. But this is going to tell me about the mechanics of the layout, from a mathematical standpoint. What I’m looking for here is the aesthetics, from an experien

14

Charlie

For me there is a couple of problems operationally so some questions for you to think about.

1 Is there enough room for 2 or 3 operators to work Wilson Yard, South Wilson and Angusville? Doesn’t look lie enough to me.

2 Is a a double track helix really required? Looks like the second track would be for staging rather than up/down tracks.

I would suggest the following;

1 Put the class yard on the longest wall where Little Falls is now. Straight yards are preferred and you could add your helpers to through trains here.

2 Put a passing track at Staging Alley. Allows you to pause trains before entering the class yard or staging.

3 Put the track from Staging Alley to Jennysburg on a narrow shelf on the outside of the helix. Gives a better feeling that trains have come some distance before entering the class yard, reduces hidden track and may reduce the visual impact of the helix.

4 Eliminate the staging track in the helix. Reduces hidden track.

5 Put a small yard where Wilson Yard is now. Helpers can cut off here and return as extra dynamic braking on the next through train back to the class yard.

6 Eliminate the blob at Brendaville if possible to provide more aisle space.

7 Then look at the industry trackage as others have suggested.

All considered you have a good concept.

Bill

15

Concerning minimum radius I urge you to read the LDSIG (http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Curve_radius_rule-of-thumb) rule of thumb for curve radius, including my comments - link is at the bottom of the page. You are right - in my experience, most of the time 2.5X the longest car will work (30" radius for an 80ft passenger car). But if you have a short car mixed in with your long car train, or run long trains, it is possible to have problems such as coupler/diaphram mismatches and string lining at 2.5X.&nb

16

Some suggestions that are partly from my own personal experiences building and operating my own layout, which is an around-the-room layout. Don’t take offense, but just take it for what it’s worth. I spent almost 4 years playing around with designs, reading several books and websites along the way. My design kept getting more and more complicated until it exploded into a much simpler layout with much less spaghetti.

    1. You’ll want your yard straight, and it will never be long enough. Double-ended is nicer than single-ended like you have, but the switches take up a lot of space. I’d move your yard to the Little Falls wall, and move Little Falls over to where you have South Wilson. Building a scene takes less space than a yard. For proper yard work you’ll want twice as much yard space as you have cars.

  2. Switches take up a LOT more room that you planned when drawing the layout. You’ll get less yard and passing siding than you planned.

  3. I’d see waht could be done to deepen the layout shelves. Once you build the scenery you wont have much space for the tracks along the Little Falls area especially. You’ll want at least 24", and maybe even 30" to build the layout. You may want to move the helix/mountain left and down, and combine the Wilson Yard and South Wilson areas. It’ll open things up and reduce the amount of work to build this. It’ll also give you more possibilities for building scenery.

  4. Instead of raising the entire floor in some areas, which is a cool idea by the way, have you thought of temporary raised platforms? I build from a platform to improve access, but then I operate from the floor to increase realism.

  5. Personally, I wouldn’t build the layout quite so tall. You’ll have access problems while it’s under construction. Mine’s only 55" tall on the main level, and it’s tall enough for me. You also have to think about the other people that might be running or wo

17

Okay, you guys have given me a lot to think about…

In response to Bill:

  1. I’m not sure how comfortable you’ll be, but I think 2 operators can fit in the area at Wilson/S. Wilson/Angusville as it’s 3’ wide and over 9’ lg.

  2. I’m not sure yet if the 2nd track will be used as staging for a long (60 car) unit train that will transverse the layout once in an op session, or as a long passing track for another meet… All I do know is that I’m planning on using the “Easy Helix” pre-fab assy (Unless anyone’s aware of issues with it.) and it accommodates 2 tracks (28" & 30.75" radius in HO) so basically, the second track is almost free. Why not put it in and increase operational capabilities?

[quote user=“bagal”]

I would suggest the following;

1 Put the class yard on the longest wall where Little Falls is now. Straight yards are preferred and you could add your helpers to through trains here.

2 Put a passing track at Staging Alley. Allows you to pause trains before entering the class yard or staging.

3 Put the track from Staging Alley to Jennysburg on a narrow shelf on the outside of the helix. Gives a better feeling that trains have come some distance before entering the class yard, reduces hidden track and may reduce the visual impact of the helix.

4 Eliminate the staging track in the helix. Reduces hidden track.

5 Put a small yard where Wilson Yard is now. Helpers can cut off here and return as extra dynamic braking on the next through train back to

18
  1. Have you thought of turning your helix into a mountain, where the trains climb up the mountain from one level to the next? Climbing on mountains is more natural - it’s expected. Plus it solves the problem of what to do for the backdrop. Make all of your elevation changes consistent with ralistic scenery - mountains.

You’ve never been to Disneyland then.

19

Well Charlie it seems you have already thought along the lines of my suggestions.

With regard to putting the yard along the long wall and the effect on aisle width:

2’ wide provides for an 8 track yard, albeit without much room for scenery. With 3’ aisles that leaves 3’ for the neck of the peninsula + the back wall. Could the shelf on the back wall be narrowed to 1’ by extending the shelf over the door to accomodate the curve into South Wilson?

The may require reducing the Brendaville blob size. The height gain requirement could be taken care of by several hidden loops in the Brendaville blob. You could even have a short branch under Chips Summit.

It could be that your room available is really too tight to do what I suggest. Its hard for me to tell without doing some drawings.

When the others are referring to a mountain instead of a helix they are possibly referring to a steady climb along the peninsula to gain the top level. I don’t think you have enough room to achieve that however.

As to whether your curved yard will work I could not say. They can look nice but I will stay with a straight yard.

I still like your design and have had a good look at it as it has some similarities with my layout. I don’t have a return helix but have staging yards at top and bottom levels. Each staging yard has a return loop for continuous running but in an operational sense it is point to point as yours is.

Hope it goes well for you.

Bill

20

Im going to have to sit down and go over it slowly, the plans that is.

Alot of your industry is going to close your mains while you switch. You evidently like passing sidings; however I am reminded of an old MR article that had trouble getting through trains into and out of a town being switched. The entire town in question was literally “Bypassed” with some extra track that permitted the local to get to whatever industry it wants to.

At first glance I gotta tell you this layout is going to be VERY expensive. The wood needed for the raised floors are going to have to be top notch quality. Im talking 4" thick 14" wide King James Planks of the Early Colonial Style or they will drive you and your crew nuts with creaking, especailly when some big boy weighed down with 50 years of life experience gets up on there.

That yard is BIG. Think about the trains you are going to deploy from there. Assume a train of X length comes in from staging, works it’s way around the railroad and arrives at the yard. By the time you finish dealing with that train you have another coming down what is essentially a single track main from staging. Perhaps you are building a train taking freight out back to staging. What are you going to do when these two goliaths meet on the main?

That yard drill track is HUGE. but around the corner and “Excuse me’s” all around (Pun intended) every move back and forth. It’s going to be where people gather. Im reminded of cattle gathered at the holding pen by the kill floor.

I like the radius, I like the curves I like the 3 foot asiles.

Those walls. Are they set in “Stone?” or can you sorta push one or two in a few feet here and there to gain that extra room?

Little Falls is awful thin. It looks like… what 8 inches? Hardly something substantual enough to hold a hammering manifest that might be using helper service. What happens if a real long passenger car comes off the track? (You laugh, but consider it…) it