During the winter months the weather in my area could make it pretty hard to work on my layout in my train room, Construction on my ho-scale layout is on hold until I can get some more flex-track and so I have had some time to think about making a small n-scale layout in my bed-room so that I will have something to work on when the weather is bad. Here is the Track-plan I came up with: It is set on the New Haven Railroad during the 50's, although I might occasionally change the date so I can run some Penn Central Stuff. I already see a few design flaws such as S-curves and switchbacks, Any Ideas on how to fix these?
Thanks for sharing your plan, it's an interesting configuration. I'm not familiar with the geography of the area being modeled (Connecticut?), or your plan for operating the layout, so some of these comments may be irrelevant. A runaround track at Huntington might be useful, unless of course this is prototypical and trains reversed in or out depending on which way they were heading. There are 2 tracks running from Huntington to Milford, one via Shelton. The outboard track is there to reach the industry at lower right but given that the industry is situated between Shelton and Mitford would it fit with the prototype to run this siding from the inboard track between Shelton and Mitford instead?
My layout is prototypical in the names of the towns only, I did the design first, and then I selected some town names from a places in Connecticut. Thanks for the comment, I will try to add some of your ideas into the next version of my design. :tb-biggrin:
I couldn't resist trying some ideas on your trackplan. The main one is in the staging tracks. It adds a reversing section (added complexity) but gives more flexibility in how the staging tracks can function and gives a way to turn trains around for variety.
A really great plan in terms of semantic. I like northlakenorthern version since it has fewer turnouts. However the distance form Huntington to Shelton seems awful short to be called two towns.
Flip the switches in Milford to the staging track and Huntington so the diverging track goes to your loop. Also, do the same for the switch in Shelton. You'll get rid of the S-curves that way.
Here is my latest version: I don't want to make a wye to the staging because I want to keep wiring simple, I want this layout to be a fun, easy to build layout, This won't be my main layout, just something to operate when the weather is to bad to work on my main layout. I want to keep turnouts to a minimum since they can get very expensive when added up. so I want to have a 10 turnout max.
Well I simply made the right look more visually appealing, and it could possibly simulate an interchange with the NYC or Boston & Albany. I moved an industry of the run-around to keep operations simpler as well as break up the "blocky" look. When building the layout you might want to make the sidings non parallel to the layout edge. I also hinted at the idea of a team track, although the run around can be made into one. You can practice handlaying a curved turnout at that area.
Been a while since you posted this -- have you made any progress? or is there another thread? I found this one pretty interesting and would love to see it in construction.
Thanks for your interest! I have decided to make another Ho-scale shelf layout, but using the same theme as this layout. You can find the design discussion thread here: http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3243&start=75
