I would imagine cost factors into it all. I haven't started purchasing anything yet but I was looking at some rolling stock a week or so ago and was surprised at the prices I found. Hopefully it makes a comeback. It would be great to see kids and adults getting excited about trains again, but we're in a different time and age so who knows. Speaking of purchasing items for the layout...is Broadway Limited any good? When I was last into this Kato seemed to be the preferred locomotive but just seeing what's for sale on Trainworld there's a lot of Broadway Limited stuff that already comes with DCC and sound.
Today I started drawing in grades and elevations (red markers)... To simplify it so folks don't have to try and read the red markers and figure out what's up and down, here's a cheat sheet... Brown - Elevation = 0" Blue - Elevation = 6" Dark Green - Elevation = 10" Yellow - 2% Grade Everything in the normal benchwork color will just conform to its surroundings as needed. Rail Modeller Pro isn't great for 3D design like some of the other softwares (wish it were), but here is some 3D imagery of the track just to help visualize... View from south of yard (green), engine service (salmon), mains (blue) and passenger (gray)... View from north of yard (green), mains (blue) and car service (brown)... View from the southeast of the Texas Tehachapi so you can see elevations. The inside tracks (light blue) will be concealed beneath the landscape (will enter and exit through tunnel openings). The outside tracks (darker blues and yellow) will be exposed as they climb around the hill (except for a tunnel section where they pass beneath the light blue tracks)... Another view of that from the north... This final shot is the UP yard in Rosenberg. As you exit the yard to the south (toward the viewer) it enters a tunnel along with the BNSF mainlines and after looping around it eventually joins up with them at about the same point where the lines cross over themselves... That's all for today, folks!
Here's a closer view of the Texas Tehachapi. That area was by far the hardest part to make all the elevations work...
I really like this plan, Hoss. It will keep you or your crew busy for hours running operations or you can easily run 2 trains on each line and just relax and enjoy watching them run.
Thanks. It's gonna be a minute or three before I can actually start building this particular layout, but I'm having a lot of fun developing the design. After I get this the way I want it I'll probably start drawing up a small layout to go in my current home to satisfy my itch and develop my skills until I have the space to build this one. I messed around with some mock scenery stuff over the weekend. Not much, really. Just sort of a visual of what the "Texas Tehachapi" might look like and then some dark green shading around the back mainlines through the rural area to represent forest/trees. My plan for the rural area is for the "low" land to be more pastures / farmland / small towns similar to what you'd find in Central Texas and for the back higher elevation area to be more heavily forested...
The wonderful wife and I did a little railfanning last week and I forgot to post pics. The engines below are the ones currently running for the Temple & Central Texas Railroad at Central Point Rail Park in Temple. It's going to take some custom paint jobs to get them on my layout, but eventually I plan to have them serving the industrial tracks (lavender) representing the rail park. CEFX 422 FTRL 1515 FTRX 3066 FTRX 3158 I've gotta say though...if I'm gonna do custom paint for these I might rather use the paint scheme they had on now retired LTEX 1446 & 1455. Not sure where these locos are now but they looked nice with their new paint jobs (downloaded from interwebs)...
I really like the paint scheme on 1446. If you want to be true to the prototype you can set your layout in the 2015-2020 period or you can ignore or maybe stretch reality and run 1446 and 1455 in a present day setting. One good thing about the other locomotives is that they are all different. They would give you a lot of variety in the T&CT roster. The only problem is that they are, at least in my opinion, ugly. 1446 is quite attractive.
I like that paint scheme too. I'm pretty much planning to model from the 90's up to current day, so it works if that's the route I choose to take.
A little Friday night tweaking before my wife gets home and we go get our karaoke on... Added some tunnel entrance markers to make it a bit easier for folks other than me to see where the routes go in and out. It would be real easy to think that AA and BBB at the top of this photo connect, but they don't... Expanded the UP Rosenberg yard a bit and added more interchange connections with the BNSF mains... Added a hidden track ("C") to make UP traffic a bit more interesting. Previously both of the spots marked as "C" just went into tunnel portals and dead-ended at the edge of the layout (to infinity and beyond). Now they're connected with a hidden track beneath the elevated scenery (green). Also, in theory the UP line that crosses the split BNSF mains at the Brazos River connects with the curved line at the yard that runs off the edge of the layout. This is still a "to infinity and beyond" track that requires a little imagination... And a revised overview just for giggles...
I drove the Temple to Smithville route over the weekend that I was wanting to change this layout to and decided I didn't like it. I mean, it could have worked, but the prototypically half of that line is in rough shape with low speed limits and most trains seem to get routed around it. So, I'm sticking with my original route with some modifications. The lower level will model BNSF from Temple to Milano and the upper level will model Union Pacific from Taylor to Milano. The two railroads cross at Milano so my helix from lower to upper is at that location, allowing them to share track rights if their respective owners (me) deem it beneficial for both companies. I didn't do too much design work over the weekend. A few modifications to accommodate Milano being the end of my lines but not much beyond that. LOWER LEVEL UPPER LEVEL
It’s good that you are doing all this planning. By the time you are able to begin construction you should have a solid plan.
Right now it's mostly just dreaming. It'll be a few years before I have the space for a layout of this size, but I'm making a hobby out of design. I do plan to draw up something smaller that I can start on this year, but I'm not in a hurry. Right now I'm just having fun researching routes and letting my imagination run with them. I did buy some locomotives though! Pics coming soon!
A smaller layout can be a lot of fun and keeps your interest up while you wait to build your dream layout.
I know what you mean. Dreaming... er, planning, yeah, planning... can be addictive! So far I've had other constraints (moving, etc.) that have held off actually being able to build my layout, that allowed me to continue planning, and revising those plans, in search of the perfect (for me) layout. It's hard to convince myself that my plan is good enough to quit tweaking and start building. I'm sure that I'll find some issues where the plan looked better on the computer screen that it does on the layout in progress, so I'll have some more opportunities to tweak it after I start building it. And I've seen enough examples here of folks modifying their "finished" layout to implement a new idea.
Yes I've done a lot of that. Still using most of the basic plan but have made a number of changes. Good to have that initial plan though as you have to start somewhere. Sumner
In my experience every plan, no matter how great it looks on paper, requires some tweaking. Some plans require a little tweaking and some require a lot. I think larger layouts like Hoss is planning are easier than smaller ones like you are working on. I agree, having a plan is a great way to start. It gives a very good idea of what can fit into the available space.
My biggest constraint right now is space. Not having that gives me oodles of time for dreaming, planning, tweaking, perfecting, tweaking some more, going a whole different route, going back to the original route, tweaking, planning, perfecting, etc. I have a 17 year old who will be leaving for either the college or military soon (he's still deciding which). Once he is gone I plan to do some reshuffling and should then be able to start a small layout. Just not sure which room it will be in yet.
I learned a ton doing my small test layout, all transferable to the main one I'm working on now. Also now a great place to run new to me used DC locos, program DCC ones, speed match locos and just watch trains go around...... https://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/UP%20Canyon%20Division/Test%20Track%20-Index.html Sumner
