Hi guys! I am an N scaler who has dabbled in Z and am now converting in the other direction and going HO! I have a 2x8 bit of benchwork that my neighbor is going to give me this week or next that is coming from a layout that he is sadly dismantling and I would like to do a switching layout on it that I could easily attach loops to either end to have a full loop track. I would like it to mostly resemble a classification yard where I can mix and match trains to take on loops around it when I get the urge for continual running, or when I just want to play like I am getting a few trains ready to go out. The benchwork can be added onto at either end to allow for the turn around tracks, but I would like the "yard" to take up a good chunk of the 2x8 table. Please help me guys! Thank you in advance and I can't wait to see what you come up with! I will try and post a few of my own as well when I can figure out the Atlas track planning software.
Ok, I have been playing with the Atlas RTS track planner and I cannot figure out how to get a pic from it unless I screencap it and then crop it in photoshop. Is there an easier way?
From the file menu, select "Save as" and you can change to one of several different graphic formats (I just saved one as a .BMP file).
Ok, this really isn't the best plan on earth, but it's a vague idea of what I would be looking at making. I am always open to suggestions! I have never made a switching layout before and think it would be really fun to have one where I could spend hours on end shuffling cars around. Anyway, anyone who can help would be greatly appreciated! http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x424/WyCoWestern/HOScale1.jpg
Stein has some very groovy 2'x8' ideas here on his site. His "Industrial Switching in 2x7 feet" might work well for you. I'd give them some serious consideration: you can always add 4'x4' loops (with autoreversers) to the mains. (though the staging cassette might work better, unless you absolutely need the roundyround). Remember to leave room for the industries themselves!
Some basics when switching scale to H0 1) Your minimum curve radius should be about 2.5x to 3x the length of your longest car or locomotive. 40' cars are 40 x 12" = 480" long in 1:1 scale, 480" : 87.1 = 5.5" long in H0 scale 60' cars are about 8.2" long in H0 scale 90' cars are about 12.4" long in H0 scale A short diesel switcher engine is about 6-7" long A good looking curve is 4x the length of the longest piece of rolling stock A curve you can automatically couple on with self centering couplers is 5x the length of the longest rolling stock For practical purposes, a rule of the thumb is that you need about 4 feet (48") of depth to do a turnback curve for fairly small rolling stock in H0 scale (i.e. with 20-22" radius). 2) Your reach from the edge of the layout to the track furthest from the layout should be less than 2 feet (24") for a layout at chest height. Your reach can be increased to 30" for a layout at waist height or if you plan to stand on a chair to reach things on your layout. Reaching across foreground objects makes it harder to reach things further back. For practical purposes, this means that a H0 scale layout with a turnback curve needs to be on a table which can be reached both from the front and the rear - ie that a 4 foot deep layout needs a minimum of 2 feet of aisle depth behind the layout, 4 feet of layout depth and 2 feet of aisle space at the front of the layout, or 8 feet of depth to allow turnback curves. Alternately, you can get away with 6 feet of depth, and a hole or a popout popup inside the turnback curve. But the more you come to depend on gimmicks like rollout tables or standing on ladders to reach across things, the more of a pain it will be to work on the layout and the less likely it will be that you will continue to work on and use the layout. In contrast, an N scale layout with fairly wide curves (for N scale) of about 13-15" radius - 30-32" depth can be built on a hollow core door (which has that depth), and can be pushed up against a wall and still reached across from one side only, and one with sharp curve radius (9 3/4" curves - which means about 21-22" diameter, including safety distances outside the curve) can be built on a 2 foot deep shelf. For practical purposes, a 2 foot deep layout is a non-starter for a continuous run loop in H0 scale - curve radius of 10" of less is not practical for H0 scale, unless you have some extremely small locomotives and rolling stock - on the order of 3-4" long or less. In practice, just very small iron ore jennies and tiny engines, or engines heavily modified with wheels that can swivel extremely wide. Then it might work (although it will look like an amusement park ride, not a railroad). Everything taken into account - if you want to do H0 scale on a 2 x 8 foot layout, forget about continous run loops. This size layout is a switching layout in H0 scale. Continuous run loops on tables start at about 4x6 or 4x8 feet in H0 scale, which with the added aisle space will need about 8x8 or 8 x10 feet of floor space. H0 scale and 2x8 means that what you should look at is a small switching layout. If you want continuous run loops in 2 feet or 30" of depth and 7-8 feet of length, then you need to change to N scale. 3) Spur lengths and room for scenery and buildings - a spur which is too short to hold one car, and have a car length of clearance between the car and the turnout is too short to be useful for anything. A layout which just has track crammed in everywhere will have no room for buildings and scenery. I.e. no room for any places where cars can come from or head to. Decide upon a theme for your layout, and leave space for buildings and scenery, instead of cramming in track everywhere you can put tracks. Operational fun is more dependent on how you run your layout than on how much track you have. You can e.g. have a lot of fun with a relatively simple track plan - like this 15" x 8 foot layout I am building on my dining room table: Smile, Stein
Here are some other small switching plans in H0 scale: "itdan": "miller01": "ness street yard" (based on a design by "Shortliner" Jack Trollope): "64th street yard" (based on Dave Howell's 63rd street yard): There are many possibilities for a small switching layout in 2x8 feet in H0 scale. Smile, Stein
First of all, thank you all for your ideas and plans! If everyone is ok with it I might modify one of them for my own use. Stein, I know that a 2x8 won't fit any turnarounds, that's why I added pieces to the ends on the plan I posted the link to. It's hard to get a turnaround on a 2x8 table in N scale, let alone HO. Now, for your question PW. I am getting some HO scale stuff that I traded for some of my N scale and I would like some kind of layout to run them. My neighbor also has HO and I sometimes operate at the Greeley Freight Station Museum on their MASSIVE 5,500 sq. ft. layout and when I get enough volunteer hours with them I will be able to bring my own trains and run them over there. Otherwise I am mainly N scale and have a 4x8 N layout. I also dabble in Z scale, but I just have a little loop with a siding for a Z layout.
I think you are misunderstanding my reply. My point was not that you cannot make a dogbone shaped layout. Of course you can, if you have the space available. But what you have drawn is not a "2x8 foot layout". It is a 16 foot long layout, which for about half it's length will be 4 feet deep and need access on the sides and maybe at the back. It does not merely have a track that goes off each end of the 2x8 that can be connected to a removable section that provides loop functionality in some way - it's filled with tracks squeezed in all over the place along the entire 16 feet of length. This is 16 foot long layout, not a 2x8. Do you actually have room for 16 to 20 foot (if you need 2 foot aisles on both short ends) long and up to 4 foot deep layout? What does the room where you want to build your layout look like? Here is an example of a fixed 2x8 foot layout with removable connecting track at the ends, arranged in a way that quite possibly could be fitted into a normal sized bedroom: Curve radius in this type of setup is minimum 26" radius - i.e. big enough for fairly large engines and rolling stock. Smile, Stein
Here is another concept idea - instead of trying to get a loop and continuous run, it would be possible to add a "traverser" (a piece of table mounted on drawer slides, so the various tracks on the movable table can be aligned with one track leading into the actual layout): This would be a style of layout where you do not just run loops - you on the 2x8 foot visible layout model some location where several trains arrive during an operating session, do something and then depart again. But this would take 12 x 2 feet of space always assigned to the layout. So it often comes down to what you want to accomplish - if continuous running on a loop track is the most important goal for you, then it would seem that it would be a far smarter choice than a 2x8 plus some form of loop in H0 scale to go back to N scale again and do a loop of N scale track on a hollow core door - 32" deep, 6 2/3rds feet long. Functionally a N scale 32" x 80" it about the equivalent of a 5 x 12 foot table in H0 scale (i.e. it would allow wide curves - wide for N scale), while still fitting up against a wall using far less floor space in the room than any arrangement of a H0 scale 2x8 plus looping in some form. Tell me if we are hitting you too hard with those ideas. In the final analysis it is, of course, your layout, and you will have to make the final decisions on what to do and how to do it. Grin, Stein
Btw - one last thing, and I am off to bed again (BTW - I hate being jet lagged). Since you originally wanted a yard - you won't really be able to build a sensible classification yard in 2x8 feet in H0 scale, if you by classification yard mean a yard where you will have several trains arrive with cars, the cars being sorted into blocks by destinations, and then several trains will depart with the various blocks. Classification yards are huge sorting machines, and they need a layout (or at least staging) to sensibly feed in arriving trains and take away departing trains. But the kind of yard you easily can build in a 2x8 foot layout is your local little auxiliary yard - a couple of tracks where a local can sort a handful of cars, leave a few inbound cars temporarily while pulling outbound cars from the industry, or leave outbound cars temporarily until it is time to head on down the line or back towards wherever the train came from. For that matter - such a small yard can also be where an industry switcher of some time lives, where it leaves outbound cars from it's industry for the main railroad to pick up, and where the main railroad drops off cars for the industry, which the industry switcher will then spot at specific locations on the layout. Here is an example of such a small industry/auxiliary yard on a layout just a little bigger than 2x8 feet (it is 2 feet x 8 1/2 feet): I'll stop bombarding you with ideas now, and let you have some time to think about what your goals are. They are not necessarily the same as my goals when I plan a layout for myself Smile, Stein
Groovy, was just curious since that amount of space is obviously much easier to work with in N-scale. I know that if I had some HO stuff, I'd want to run it. That's why I have barely any of it (1 car, PC boxcar with missing trucks, and a roof for a heavyweight passenger car). Anyway, excellent. And keep up the good work with the Shapeways products!
Here's an idea for the 2'x8' portion...w/ lots of yard (2 small yards to move cars in and out of...), mainline cuts across...some switching to do needing a variety of cars. Lemmeknow what you think...
Lots of tracks, turnouts seemingly branching off at too optimistic angles, short switchback leads, cars at industries on the switchback lead on the left along the top has to be moved before you can access cars at the industries along the right at the top. About par for the course for a beginner. If you redraw this with realistic short turnouts (I have used Peco code 75 small turnouts here, since they are compact), you will be able to move two cars at a time via the switchback yard lead at lower right, and you will be able to move a max of about three 40' cars between the yard and the main, doing a weird zig-zag pattern to get from the mainline to the yard via backing up onto the uppermost yard track. If you just want a simple yard in 8 feet of length, with room to move a few cars out of the yard, you could do something like this: Smile, Stein
Stein, I used the Atlas C83 #4 turnout templates provided with the CadRail program, so I have to figure that they are pretty much exactly as shown. I do really like the configuration for the 8.5' layout above, perhaps a little closer to the backdrop so that the backdrop buildings don't take up as much of the usable layout space...but that's me. The angle is a good aspect. I think I'll fiddle with that a little.
Stein, I really like the plans you are posting! So far my favorites are the first one you posted with the slightly s-curved mainline and the one with the Federal Street overpass. I am looking for something very similar to one of these two and think that if it is ok with you I will try and do both of them and see which one I like best. I will be using Atlas Code 100 flex and Atlas switches. I am getting them dirt cheap from my neighbor who is dismantling his layout and building a switching layout of his own. If you have more plans, I would love to see them! I like the idea of being able to make this a module and connecting some other modules to it for when I want to run continual trains while switching. I might do it backwards though and have a scenery break or background behind the switching part then have the train loop around the back of the module. Not quite sure yet. The room I am using for my train room is 10.25' by 12.25' and I already have a 4x8 N scale layout in there so this might be a tight fit and kind of tricky to do if not impossible. I might have to bite the bullet and just leave it as a module for now and get my kicks with continual running either at the museum or on my N scale layout.
Ok guys, I took one of the plans posted on here (thanks Stein!) and modified it a touch. It will fit on a 4x11 and the curves will be tight, but it is acceptable to me for now. Please let me know what you guys think! http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x424/WyCoWestern/HOScaleSwitchingLayoutV21.jpg
Hi -- Sorry about the delay in the follow up. We have been a bit distracted over here the last couple of days by the terrorist attack that hit us on Friday afternoon. What I think. Mmmm - I see these challenges: 1) Curve radius will by necessity be very tight - 18" or maybe 20". 2) Since your crossover from the main to the siding meets the turnout to the two industry tracks at upper right, you get more of an S curve. 3) Will you be running this without the continuous run curves sometimes - i.e. with only a 2 x 8 foot section? If so, your lead (the mainline on the right, from the right end of the runaround to the end of the 8 feet) is pretty short - only has room for an engine and maybe one car. Stein
Hi Stein, I agree with you on a few things and I have modified my plan a bit to fit a 4x10 space. I decided that my room being 10'3" x 12'5" of useable space would be better suited using a slightly different design. Here is a reworked version of my track plan as well as a render of a model I made of the new layout. http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x424/WyCoWestern/HOScaleSwitchingLayoutV22.jpg In this render, the green block represents my HO layout, the red will be my N scale, the blue is my desk and the purple is a small wire shelving unit. I think this will work out nicely, but my girlfriend is concerned that I won't be able to reach back into the back corner of the room. I don't consider this a terribly big deal considering my N scale layout is on wheels and there will be wiggle room between the end of the N scale table and the wall plus I can pull it out towards the desk and crawl under should I need to. Has anyone else run into a similar issue? I am thinking this will work out awesomely, but my logic has been flawed in the past lol.
