Since there have been many people working on plans for their layout lately, I thought it might be useful to have a thread where members post the track plan for their layouts. This is not for critiques (although there is never anything wrong with helpful suggestions) but rather just to see what others are doing as far as plans for their layouts in hopes that it may be helpful to some.
The Seneca Lake, Ontario, & Western presently occupies a 18.5 foot by 14.5 foot basement room and will by this time next year have grown to occupy both this room and a new 18’ x 14’ room presently under construction. I turned the jpg on its side so that it would be enlargeable here. It climbs from the “Lake” behind Hopewell Junction up to the summit of Bare Hill (a logging pike) a total of 11 inches. The mainline creates 3 levels (kinda like a nolix) rising to 4" behind Hopwell Junction Yard and then up to 8" behind that. This portion of the layout is a Point to Point, point to loop, and Loop to loop all in one. The area at the bottom will become an industrial area based loosely on the Lisk Plant found in Canandaigua, NY and the yards there. Enjoy!
I put this thread here just because it gets a lot more traffic and is more of a general “what are you doing” thing rather than “Help Me!” kind of thread… [8D] I will be adding a lot of switching opportunities in the new room as well as the Industrial yard at Canandaigua (although it probably won’t be called that). This part of the layout goes back about 22 years and back then I just wanted to run trains from one spot to another. You know “Roundy Round” out and back. [:p] Wish I knew as much today as I thought I knew back then! Thanks for posting.
I ran a sightly simpler version of this plan past the people over on the layout forum and made a few changes from their suggestions. Then I downloaded the 30 day trial of “Ship It” and tried some operations. From that I learned that I needed larger yards and more room to park passenger coaches at night.
Constructive criticism is always welcome.
N scale. 16 X 17
This is my most recent track plan. It is in and area that is 24’x10’ with a 4’x4’ additional area. I unfortunately think that I need to have an absolutely perfect track plan before I start contruction so I have made a few changes. I have recently came up with another idea for a plan, so I will have to see if it will work.
I am using Empire Express 1.6 as I use a Mac and the others don’t have Mac versions. It costs about $35 as I remember. You can download a free demo version but it doesn’t save the plan and you can’t print with it. When purchased you get a code that unlocks all the parts of it. Pretty cool actually, and quite easy to use. It is made and sold by Haddon Software. http://www.haddonsoftware.com/index.html
