Hi I'm Donald. I tring to come up with a 4'x8' track plant that will be easy to addon to. On my track plan I want a coal tipple(Walthers New River Mining), lumber company with a coal dealer (Atlas lumber company) and a warehouse(????). I have looked at every track plan book that I can get a hold of and looked at meny Model Railroader track plans. But none of them really interested me. Any one here got any track plan ideals that will be easy to add onto in the future?? Thanks for the help.
Hmmm... Sounds like you'll maybe need to get an elevation if you want to have a loop of track and more space for operations. A track could detach from the mainline and go to an industry on top of a hill over the mainline. That could let you more space on the non-elevated section for other industries (if you don't count the space the hill need).
Here is an interesting idea for a coal mine that allows you to run both full and empty coal cars without removing the loads or resetting the loads. In this case its rock from a quarry on it's way to a crusher. http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/4x8/operation/lilo/ His demo's are well worth seeing. He even uses a cheap foil covered paper ballon for a pond, and it looks great.
Linn Wescott's "101 Trackplans For Model Railroaders" might have some interesting trackplans for you. Stay cool and run steam....
Donald this plan is done in 2x7. I could see it in 3 x 7 using larger curves. It has an alternative to "Empties in / Loads out"
Donald are you doing an HO scale layout? I assume you are doing something with modern diesels. For a really small layout you may want to backdate to the transition era when there were more coal related industries. I figured you might like that run through the backdrop coal mine idea. You could put a power plant or large factory on the other side of the backdrop. You might want to consider other types of trains besides coal. With that track plan you could fit a couple other industries on the spurs so that you can switch different types of cars. That small layout shows passenger service as an added complication to the operation of the layout. If you model an era when they still did a little passenger service you might be able to run a doddlebug or rail diesel car for passenger service. One thing to remember with small layouts, is that you will end up running on small radius curves. The small radius will severly limit what kind of engines and rolling stock you use. At the same time the limitations can actually add to the creativity required to build that layout. I look forward to seeing what you decide to do.
Traingeekboy, he wants to model in HO. Here is a web site Donald with some track plans. Maybe they don't have all you expect for your layout but you will be able to find some ideas. http://www.thortrains.net/4holayx.html Effectively, a locomotive like a dash-9 (the model you mention in the recommend radius post) will fit on 18 radius but will not be realistic and you'll also have more difficulties to have a reasonnable amount of track on an 4' by 8' table if you use larger radius curves. Try to forget the big C-C locomotives and concentrate on B-B types if you want to have diesel locomotives. Also try to backdate the era you want to model. In the 70's, the freight locomotives were mostly B-B types and longer trains (which you'll probably not have) had 4 and + units to haul them.
If you like I'll redraw my "Cheap Easy and Quick" into 4x8. That or a variation of it would fit thie bill. I do agree: 4 axil engines
Train fan gave you a ogg link there. Thor has some nice HO scale Door panel layouts too. I oggled them quite a bit when I was thinking of jumping scales again. http://www.thortrains.net/marx/drlayho1.html If you really must have modern diesels on a 4x8 you should consider switching to N scale. You will find that it is more suitable to that kind of footprint.
I just made a track plan very fast tonight and I think it has some operationnal interests. It's on word and since I'm not very comfortable with computers, I don't know what to do . Can somebody help me please?
Train Fan you can probably copy and paste it into Paint. From there you can save it as a BMP - so you can edit it in the future Then save it as a JPG ******* Or you can send me the file and I will see what I can do. grey_one AT windingstream.com replace " AT " with "@" Enjoy
Trainfan, get a railimages account. It's free! YAY!!!! And it allows you to join the trainboard community to an even greater extent. We'll chat you through the actual posting of images when you get that account running.
