plans for n gauge

i was wondering if any one can help i am looking for plans for a 6ft x 5ft n gauge i want to have high mountains ect but what hight should i do them ? and the best way to lay this out i will only have acsses to the front

 

"High mountains" is a relative term. What part of the country will you be modeling? Mountains like the Appalachians are tiny molehills compared to, say, the Rockies, the Cascades or the Sierra Nevada mountains in the West.

 

First and foremost... Welcome to TrainBoard Paul!

Only having access to the front is going to make many things impossible when you're facing 5 feet of depth.

I built my layout on casters so that I can roll it out into the center of the room for operating and flipping scenes (I have a center backdrop), and back against the wall for storage. If I just want to watch trains run, I can also run them while the layout is against the wall.

Perhaps first it would be best to determine the room set up before trying to design mountains.

 

layout

Welcome to trainboard. How big is the room or is this just your allotted space in a room? Like Mark said you could not reach across that size layout. Max reach for tall long armed people is about 32 inches. And that is if the surface is flat and has no poky breakable objects on it. Put a few trees on it and a building or two and you will barely be able to re rail a grounded car 30 inches from the edge. Sorry to smack you in the head with that reality but it is what it is. But like Mark said there are some ways around that. Casters are one. Make an L shaped layout where one leg of the L folds into the other for storage.

 

Welcome aboard. A lot of good advice on these boards. Read, read, read....

If you only have access from the front, DO NOT go past 30" in depth. Better to keep it 26"-28".

Think your layout through long term. Look at scenery and buildings. Like Specter3 said, add a building and a car at the front and that 30" seems unreachable.

I went through dozens of plans before I settled on simple oval with a couple of spurs with industries. This is to get my knowledge and modelling skills up to par for my next layout. Start small. You can always add.

Remember to have fun!

 

5 x 6? Five feet is LOTS of depth. And just perfect if you can get to its from both sides. Maybe way TOO deep if only from front!

Six feet is not awfully long.
To use a space like that (and I'm not sure if I woujldn't want to try to ren egotiate) I would think in terms of turnback lobes at the end filling the depth back to front, but a cut in toward the back of the layout at the middle.

You say youn can only get at the front of layout. What about the ENDS?

 

Speaking what I know about geology:

Older mountains are generally rounder and flatter than newer mountains. The mountain ranges in the eastern US might have been taller at some point, but they got eroded away over time. Also, the rock composition (generally metamorphic) is different in the eastern US than in the west.

Newer mountains are generally taller and created by earthquakes or volcanic activity; they have not been eroded away yet since they are still growing. A good-sized earthquake causes a mountain to grow by a couple inches. So multiply that over millions of years and it really adds up. Rock in the west is mostly sedimentary or igneous.

Some things to think about when you're modeling!

 

A 5 x 6 layout accessible ONLY from the front is tricky. If it is not accessible from the BACK, but accessible from one or two sides plus the front, somewhat less of a problem. Hardly anybody can reach across 5 feet to rerail trains, throw or check a switch, build the layout, etc. I have designed a number of layouts that have one END inaccessible against a wall, but two long sides-- and a scenic divider down the middle.

HOW can it be made practical if you really are boxed in on three sides? Perhaps if it is a U shapre open in the middle to get back towards the back... I worry about too-sharp curves. I like going a little broader than absolutely minimum "train set" radius- 9 3/4" for N. I spent a couple houirs last night trying to work out a layout with turnback curvesd on each side of the layout front at 12 inch radius. They simply did not allow any space in the middle with width enough to walk in.
I tried again this morning going down- against my preferences- to the old 9 3/4 inch radius for turnback curves on each side of the front.

Now I am trying for a MOUNTAIN layout, which to me doesn't just mean having a "mountain" somewhere on an otherwise roundy-round loop of track. It means CLIMBING a mountain with the railroad. Up up up. The ultimate examble of that is the Denver and Northwestern going over the crest of the continental divide at 11,600 feet before the Moffat Tunnel was built.
Just to show you little of the concept, here is the LOWER LEVEL of a layout I designed (just as an exercise to share with someone looking for track plans) for HO in a large 16 x 28 foot room.

The track would climb an actual 6 feet, and would represent the "GIANT'S LADDER" where three "rungs" of track on a mountainside make "steps" hundreds of feet long and several stories per step.... where the track rises from lush everygreen forsts above the timberline to tundralike desolation and finally a summit of year-round snow with a covered wye and summit station.
You are not going to do all this in 5 x 6 even in N scale. But this is what I mean by climbing.

Here is the analysis. If the track is really climbing, there is not going to be space in 5 x 6 to go up AND come back down again too. So I thought in terms of reverse loop to reverse loop main line. The top loop can represent the track going "over the hill" disappearing towards the other side...and a place to stage traffic. I chose 9 3/4 inc radius for inside track on the loop. I know Atlas makes 11 inch radius sectional track for the outside track on a double track minimum radius loop. I thought that might be a bit tight track-center to track-center. I prefer 12 inch but that might be a loittle much between tracks. So I made it the odd 11 1/2 inch on the plan. This reverse loop needs the length of the 6 foot dimension so it has to go on the back. But opening space in the middle of the layout keeps it within SOME reach.



If we have enough altitude change, the lower loop could also go on the back side in mirror image and be at a lower level, thus at least somewhat reachable.
The turnback loops on the sides would be single track, minimum radius 9 3/4 inch...
Going around a minimum radius turnback curve does NOT allow enough track length for an over-and-under grade separation with a reasonable gradient. However, letting the track run some distance in addition to the turnback curve brings it into a reasonable gradient, such as the track at the right side of the plan that runs all the wayy down the right side and turn back before coming to a place which it might run under the summit trackage.

I can imagine at LEAST three levels of track, with a grade change of 4 inches, possible four levels. Modeled mountain peaks could come 8 to 12 inches ABOVE the summit loop towards the back of the middle of the loop, and the level would drop at least 4 ro 6 inches to be alongside lower level track, but it could also drop somewhat BELOW that.
If your top track level were 60 inches (just below eye level for a typical male adult), the mountain peak might be 68 inches (head top level), and canyon could easily drop a foot below the lower track-- may 46 inch elevation. That would be 22 inch differential in scenery level. Would that give you enou8gh "mountain?" Of course, this would NOT be built on a flat tabletop but on some kind of open framework grid.

Here are some examples of scenery depth and height on a 3 foot by 11 foot HO layout I built back in 1970 with a simple figure-8 of track and a 4 inch track grade change...


...but LOTS of mountain level change.
Let me know if I should work further on detailing a 5 x 6 plan.

 

thank you for all your input and idears i spent a lot of yester day paying with track and looking at how to over come this and what i have come up with is to still go with that size but at the back have some big moutains i saw a thread on this sight Mountain Height in N Scale where [FONT=Trebuchet MS, Georgia, Verdana]HemiAdda2d[/FONT] had put 18'' mountains so i run my 9 3/4 trurn rounds at the back of the board and the track i dont want to be seen then build a 18" by 18" mountain at the back then giving me about 3 ft then at the front i will still be able to get to the track at the back from underneith for any work ect what are your thoughts on this

 

Here is a track plan I dreamed and schemed up for a mountain climbing railroad in 6 feet wide by 5 feet deep N scale.



The track comes out from hidden lower level staging at "Billville," 44 inch elevation. (I made up station and place names in alphabetical order for quick orientation.) Billville is about the biggest open space on the layout- a place for a couple of spurs. Hardly a yard.
Hey, this layout doesn't really have a yard as such. It features trains going from somewhere down in the valley up and over the divide.
Billville could have a few structures, possibly a wild west town sort of place.

LOTS of hidden track but never more than about one train length except the staging.
From Billville the line climbs through a tunnel and comes out to pass Camden Spur. Could possibly be a spot for loading a log car or two. Then up through another tunnel to pass over itself on Deer Gap Trestle-- a big wood affair.
Another tunnel and the line loops towards the left front of the layout OVER Billville at Earley Trestle.

At Fault, the line begins the final struggle to the summit. And here is the ONLY place trains can meet...but it is NOT the usual double-ended passing siding that can be entered from either end. It is a single-ended spur at Fault. However, the spur diverage downgrade. The railroad's rule is that the uphill train needs to take the spur if a meet is needed. A train can BACK downhill into the spur, and the downhill orientation helps the backing movement. It would be morem problematical to back a train pushing UPHILL. The track loops around "Glass Lake" in a mountain meadow and takes to the HiLine on the side of a cliff. The cliff juts out at one point requiring a short "Rifle Sight Notch Tunnel".
At Iceland is the summit station, located entirely inside a snowshed, open towards the downhill side which happens to be the front of the layout. The track actually forms a double-tracked reverse loop. There are two tracks visible at the front of the station. With short trains, two trains can be hidden on the back side of the reverse loop. The snowshed can have a dummy curved leg to simulate the appearance of a covered WYE that is somewhat sharper than would be practical for actual working track.
This is similar to the arrangement of Corona ("Crown") station at the Top of the World, Corona Pass in Colorado.

Two or four trains could be kept on the hidden lower-level stating.


It could accesible from underneath, and has several inches of clearance below the visible tracks on top. The layout would require short trains, short engine, short cars. The payoff would be the drama of an actual climb of 13 inches by the train, with a mountain peak towering another 8 to 10 inches higher at the back left corner.

I have pictures of a REAL railroad with scenes like this. But I gotta go fix supper for my wife.
Hope this has some ideas you can use, Paul.

 

thank you as soon as i can work out how to use track cad i have changer the idear slighty but going with something like that thank you

 

Here are pictures of the real railroad on which some parts of this plan are based- the Denver, Northwestern and Pacific, just after 1900. Before the 7-mile-long Moffat Tunnel was bored, the railroad ran a "temporary route" for 25 years over the top of the Continental Divide. Took over 30 miles to climb up and over to cover the distance from one end of the tunnel to the other.

There are several places where the track passes one place and then, after climbing on a roundabout route, comes back to cross over itself. This is one of the most famous- "Loop Tunnel."

The track goes through a tunnel under the "gap", runs a mile away around a mountain and comes back some 10 stories higher to cross the gap on a trestle.

Here is the loop of track running around a lake in a mountain meadow. The run around the lake is a reverse of directions to gain altitude.



And here a scene that shows two elements-- track at different elevations, running opposite directions in the same picture... but it also shows where the track goes above "timberline," where the trees abruptly stop because it is too cold and too high for them to grow.



I took these from a post card booklet that was mailed in 1910 from a traveler who wrote "the view I saw today."

 

N scale "train set minimum radius"--ie. 9 3/4" to get two turnback loops and space for a human access in 6 foot width-- to reach towards back of 5 foot depth, as "given" by original request.