I have room for a 5'x18" switching layout. I've been playing with track plans and I think I'm close enough to what I want to ask for some advice as far as fine tuning the design. These two designs are variations on many I've seen here on TrainBoard. I'm going with Atlas Customline #6 turnouts and flextrack for the whole thing, so there's a little wriggle room built in. Unfortunately, I have no room for staging on either end, so the Interchange track is going to be fulfilling that function. I do like these two plans because they're not completely stuffed full of track. They'll let me add a fair amount of scenery to the layout. I'm not entirely happy with the back of this one, where you have to use the cement plant track as the lead for the warehouse and food processing siding. I think I like this one better. I did have a thought about replacing the Amalgamated Anodyne building with diesel servicing facilities, or even adding a second parallel track for that. What do you think? What would you change? Any and all suggestions and comments are welcomed!
Hmmm. Well, I lean toward the second one somewhat. The reason being it has less track parallel to the layout edges. The worst potential problem I can see are the Golden Flame (top and bottom drawing), and Amalgamated (bottom only) industries. As designed those will both also need to be used as switching leads. If anything significant is already spotted, that car or those cars will could be in the way.
I like the second plan a bit better also. I'm not sure the interchange track would hold one car for every industry in either plan. So the local switcher might not visit every location every session. According to my Rule #1, this is fine and it's exactly how I operate my layout.
Thanks for the input, it's much appreciated. I probably would've gotten more responses if I had posted this in the design section. Here's what I've come up with based on the feedback. I've cleared the leads and rotated everything a bit to remove the "parallel to the front edge" issue. Even with the taller structures, I think I kept the access lines open for decoupling and vision. I agree that every location doesn't need to be switched every time. I've read a couple of Lance Mindheim's books and he advocates that as well. Makes sense to me. My current layout is a loop with a couple sidings and an interchange. I use the Simple Switchlist System for it, where you start with a specific set of cars for a session. Place some randomly (and logically) at the sidings, and the rest at the interchange. Then work your local. The switchlist shows the final disposition of the cars, so if a car should be at a location and isn't, set it. If it shouldn't be but is, pick it up. And if it's already there, then leave it. This works well enough for me for now without getting too bogged down in detail.
