Please see the updated layout further on in this thread.
First off a little background on myself. I’m a operating kind of guy. As a former brakeman, dispatcher office operator, Tower Operator I like operation. Not really interested in industrial switching. Necessities are;
Double track,
Long sidings,
Plenty of interlockings,
A hump yard,
A passenger station,
A engine house and facilities,
Two levels,
Around the wall with accessibility without openings in the layout.
Most of this has been thought of in the attached drawing (left and right side since it is a wide image and the restriction of photo size for attachments.
The yet to be built room will be 10x19’ in a un-finished basement with a stone foundation. One wall will be the foundation (open, no layout except for a short portion). The built walls (all wood, no cheap drywall) will have the layout in a ‘self’ like design. The basement get very humid anytime it rains, especially in the spring (varies from as low as 40% to close to 100%). I will have a dehumidifier for that enclosed room. I’m hoping by somewhat isolating the room on three sides and partially enclosing the ceiling I will have a handle on humidity. There is no issue in the winter other than temperature (varies from 40-45 degrees to close to 80 degrees).
Other than the humidity, am I going to have a issue with ‘heat kinks’ and/or pull aparts?? Those figures are extremes. Temp. ranges from close to upper 40’s to upper 70’s. High humidity is usually short lived, except under long rainy periods (mostly in the spring).
I talked to a modeler locally in HO scale and he had problems with pull-aparts & heat kinks. But, that was in HO. Is N more or less prone to this?
My first (real) layout was a 5x7’ modified ‘L’ shaped table in a bedroom. For a 1st (real) layout, my major resign fault was excessive grades, es
I’ve been using a de-humidifier in an occasionally damp location for years, and it works great. I’ve got a hose from it to a floor drain. Only problem is that mold grows in the condensate and tends to plug the hose. I clean it out once in awhile, and it’s acceptable to me.
On the plan: I think I’d like a hump bypass track. And it would be nice to have a turntable or a wye or something like that.
First, the drawing doesn’t appear to have the turnouts drawn to scale, so you may find things won’t fit as intended. There are some very sharp turnout angles shown.
Since you like operation, having some kind of staging for trains before they enter/after they leave the major yard would seem to be desirable. As the plan currently stands, you don’t have a way to support the traffic that would be using the yard, unless you want to just have a small number of trains that get made up and then broken down again without traveling anywhere.
I also have some concern about the single-ended hump yard. There’s only one way in our out, which means everything that gets classified has to come back out over the hump. This would be an unusual prototype situation, and very restrictive for multiple person operations, but you’d have to decide for yourself if those are potential problems for you.
For the basement rather than getting a dehumidifier consider a portable air conditioner. They have them now that are 3 in one. Heat, Cool, and dehumidifiy only. The cooling mode will of course also dehumidify.
With the heat mode you’ll be able to run in the winter as well.
Here’s a link to one but there are many more out there. They’ve become very popular the last couple of years. There are many sizes, features and price ranges.
That basement space of yours is interesting. Does it really have a 30 degree or so swing in temperatures? My basement is unfinished (concrete foundation walls and floor) and it pretty much stays between 55 and 60 year round. Yes, you are going to have issues with expansion and contraction of your layout. My recommendation would be to leave a small, gap with an unsoldered rail joiner between your power districts to allow for expansion and contraction.
I lived in a house with a fieldstone foundation before I moved here. I actually had running water in the basement when it rained. Do you have a way to vent to the outside? That will be a crucial component of a portable heating / cooling / dehumidifying system. And make sure you aren’t kidding yourself about conditions in that basement. Mold, etc. on your layout would not be pretty, and humid air destroys electronics.
When you say you’re an operating guy who doesn’t want a lot of industrial switching, I assume you just want to move cars around the layout. If so, you’ve done pretty well, although I agree that the yard should be double ended. You can make some retarders out of styrene to keep your cars from running out of the far end of your yard (and don’t put a very big hump in it – maybe half an inch of height will do you). It looks like you did this drawing with drafting tools and just fudged the turnouts. I’d invest in some software (or use one of the free ones) and make sure you’re not kidding yourself on what will fit. Personally, I like AnyRail, but there are lots of other products out there.
Over the years, there have been a few discussions on the forums about hump yards. I think the consensus is that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to get one that really works the way the prototype does. There is simply no way to reliably control the roll. There’s too much variation between models, and there is no practical working retarder that I’ve ever seen.
This is what I plan on doing. I already have a hose draining the condensate from the two furnaces (house is a 1917 double) to the floor drain. I don’t have any mold there, so I wouldn’t expect it here, but the hose is a larger diameter that what I believe dehumidifier hoses are, so that may be a factor and it is on a slight incline aiding draining.
I have thought about a bypass at the top of the bowl back to the hump lead, but didn’t think it would be much of a benefit. As to a ‘wye’ or TT, that would be nice, but there isn’t any real room I don’t think without major revisions.
Correct, the turnouts and probably to short & sharp. I realize this, but I’m unsure of which track I will use; Atlas or Peco, I’m leaning towards Peco, but that is another topic.
Staging meaning storage, usually a somewhat hidden as a layover area. Correct? I was hoping the three long sidings might suffice. How about adding a parallel siding off some of those?
I also thought about a two ended hump yard, but mostly dismissed this due to space at the other end and basically no where to go with the ‘hill’ at the end of the tracks. Where you see where the 10 tracks end will be a steep incline where some type of passenger station will be. That is another problem I haven’t got into yet until the table is built and I have a 3d perspective. My original layout had the same deal, a single ended hump.where I had to pull back over the hill to extract made up blocks of cars.
This will probably be a single person operation the majority of the time. One ML train on automatic, then either a 2nd ML train or yard operation which is how I operated my 5x7’ layout. Yes, I know this is a huge difference between that and this. I will have to think about this some more.
I have seen those silly so called ‘portable’ AC units. You have to run the exhaust outside somehow, you also have the condensate to deal with (though the same with a dehumidifier).
1st off they are 2x the price of a similar capacity window unit,
Second, they are way less efficient,
Third, electric heat is very expensive. If anything a small natural gas powered heater, or just taping off the furnace ducts (overhead) would be a far better idea.
Yes. The foundation is stone. I watch the humidity and temperature all the time I go down there though high temperatures I never was concerned about until now. I’m guessing at 80 as a extreme high, more like 75. Average winter temperature is 50.
In the 30 + years I have lived here, I only had two ‘floods’. At the highest point on the basement floor the water was only three inches. This was solved by the city adding a third sewer pipe under the main street near me (in addition to the two already there) as a ‘holding tank’ for heavy ran runoff. There hasn’t been a problem since. I do have seepage after substantial rains at two locations, neither in the proposed room. One location I just apparently sealed it off using hydraulic cement, but it is too soon to tell if it will work since we are past the rainy season. The other location is as bad, but it it within two feet of the floor drain at the lowest part of the basement so it isn’t a major issue.
Any other ‘seepage’ is just that, where the foundation meets the floor it is just damp and this is at floor level.
I did use a compass, but you are right, I freehanded the turnouts. I know some won’t fit as shown, but I’m not at that stage right now. I’m not a graphic artist, I don’t want to do AutoCad or anything close, but I would like to look into software. I did d/l a free program called 'SCRAM", but haven’t installed it yet.
Staging isn’t necessarily what I would call “storage” or “layover,” but use of the term is open to debate depending on how the track is being used during operation. By staging, i mean places for a train to originate before it gets to your modeled yard, or teerminate after it leaves (I interpret layover as someplace where a train temporarily waits before it runs again). As your plan sits right now, you can support only a couple of trains coming to or leaving your yard, so it will be tough to represent much “throughput” or variety. If you’re OK with this limitation I suppose that’s fine, as you’re primarily intending to run solo.
If you think of your layout as being a theater stage, “staging” tracks would be like the off stage wings where actors wait to enter the stage and then where they exit the stage. It represents the non-modelled portion of the railroad, since no one has room to model everything. It’s basically a place where trains are made up (often by hand, sometimes called “fiddling”) ahead of the operating session and are sitting ready to go when the session starts.
For example if you want a layout with a hump yard, you might have trains arriving in the yard from the staging area to be broken down and sent over the hump, and have switchers working to assemble new trains would be sent out from the yard and go into staging.
What type of track you use has a LOT to do in planning the layout. If you’re planning on running a lot of passenger trains, you may want very broad turnouts / switches like No. 8 or even larger. However, not all model track lines make turnouts larger than No.6. BTW if you’re worried about humidity and expansion / contraction, take a look at Kato Unitrack. Since the roadbed and track is connected, it isn’t affected the way the traditional cork roadbed glued on plywood is.
Generally “operating” and “indistrial switching” go together. Operating a layout normally implies way freights stopping to drop off and pick up cars, switchers making up and braking down trains etc. I think you may be more of a “runner”; someone who wants to see long mainline trains running smoothly along a well scenicked layout - normally with “continous run” trackplan rather than a point-to-point layout. Of course operating can involve scheduling meets between trains, running on a timetable etc. so mayb
If your floor is damp it’s because the water table is just beneath it. You might consider a sump pump. Half of my neighborhood has them and it does the trick. As to the portable AC units I know 2 people with them and they work fine. Also electric heat is almost as the same price as oil or lower today since the fuel prices have risen.
With those large swings in humidity and temperature you’re sure to have issues wiht benchwork expanding and contracting. Also mold potentially growing in any plaster or similar scenery materials. Just suggestions your decision.
I designed Phase 1 of my layout on RTS, a free program from Atlas (www.atlasrr.com) and Phase 2 on XTrakCad from www.xtrkcad.org. Both are free. There’s a bit of a learning curve, more for XtrakCad, but it’s also a more capable program.
Another option is to get a few of the turnouts you plan to use, make paper copies of them and then physically lay out the track plan full sized on the floor. This also helps you visualize the actual layout. When I did Phase 1, I went through this exercise with old brass track, and it helped me pick out some flaws in my plan. (Don’t actually use old brass track for your layout, though.)
To address the possible expansion/contraction issues, seal your benchwork with a good enamel paint. The other issues humidity and temperature control have been pretty much addressed by other posters.
I haven’t decided about using cork or not yet. Since you mentioned it, regarding ‘heat kinks’, what/where does cork come into play that is glued down to a plywood base, how or why does that affect the rail?
Understood about staging and yes about being a “runner” .
I thought the expansion and contraction was just a rail problem? At least the focol point of concern.
How much humidity and for how long are we talking about here? This isn’t the tropics.
Regarding the sump pump; That would be to large of a undertaking. The perimeter of the whole basement would have to be dug up.
Often what is perceived as rail expansion/contraction issues with temperature in the model turns out to actually be change in the wood from variations in humidity. The wood shrinks or expands and that change is visible in the track.
I never had the issue and I never have seen it. The only 1st hand report were from co-workers in HO scale. By the description it wasn’t the framework that changed, it was the rail.
If it was framework, I can’t imagine that it would be much more than a few MM’s over a 10’+ of table. If so, if the benchwork expands, wouldn’t the track expand along with it (within reason)?