Well, with the positive encouragement from the board in the post regarding my infant son, i decided to forage ahead with building an HO switching layout. Here is my most recent iteration of the track plan. I'm utilizing about half of my home office, and settled for the L design shown. I would like to spend some time off and on this summer finalizing a plan so I can start construction in the late fall. Since developing an interest in model railroading some 20 years ago, this would be my first real crack at doing a layout of my own. Fortunately, I've gone over a lot of material in those years and received inspiration for this layout from David Barrow's South Plains District and Lance Mindheim's How to Design a Small Switching Layout. When I thought about doing a layout I wanted to build around a grain elevator or two and shoot for a small town midwestern feel. I'm developing this as a Conrail branch located off the Indianapolis to St Louis Line, with a fictional location in western Indiana. Time period would be the mid to late 90's to capture the end of Conrail. I may also model this as a fictional Conrail spin-off so I can run a GP10 or an Alco painted and lettered for my own short line. To stretch it out a little further, I plan on keeping scenery somewhat generic so I can swap out a locomotive and run it as CNW or BN in the mid 90's. I wanted to go with 5 industries and settled with the ones on the plan. I also wanted ample space for each industry with a minimum of 2 car spots with room to spare. I designed the runaround and yard for 6 60+ ft cars. Typical car types would be covered hoppers, 50-60 ft boxcars, refrigerator cars and center beam flatcars at the modeled industries. I may also include an anhydrous tanker at one of the grain elevators. Possible car types at the transload facilty would include short covered hoppers for sand to send to a local concrete plant, gondolas that would take scrap metal directly from dumpsters spotted in the lot and flatcars to receive black corrugated drainage pipe for agricultural drainage projects. Minimum radius is 24". I'm leaning to Micro Engineering code 70 track, possibly using code 55 on sidings. All switches are #6. I'm undecided on control type; I have no plans of running more than 1 locomotive on this layout but I would like the sound options and constant voltage lights that DCC offers. Ideally I would operate the layout with a control stand-style throttle. A typical operating session would start at the runaround track or enter from staging. Cars would be picked up in yard 1. Yard 2 would then be used to sort cars for their destination (sorting A-B-C-D, etc.) If cars are coming from staging they would be left on the runaround until Yard 1 is open and then left in yard 1 for exchange. The transload facility and elevator would be worked first followed by moving down the line a ways and working the warehouse and building products distributor. The second elevator would be worked on a trip back from staging (locomotive turned with the 0-5-0) with new cars from "down the line" or I could employ a shoving platform to run to the elevator and back. Please take a look and let me know what you think. I have a few things I like and don't like already, but I would like to see if someone else can pick out an issue or two. Cheers!
Made A couple of changes (in yellow) to your plan. Purpose being so the switch stands (black) are outside the tracks & closer together vs any being between the tracks. Having been a conductor it's SOOO much easier & safer that way. >)
I agree that the ladder you have shown is a little more friendly to operate. I ended up going with the compound ladder as it is a little more space friendly. I actually ended up basing it on the NS - Nittany and Bald Eagle interchange at Tyrone, PA. I guess my HO conductor will have to hoof it a little. Maybe I can stop the the locomotive at the switch stand so he can board and ride to the next switch.
I felt like giving this a bump as I've been thinking about it lately and there seems to be a lot of good traffic as of late. Does anyone have an opinion if I should put the switch to the right of grain elevator E and switch it on the way out rather than the way back? My goal was to put as much distance as possible between the elevator and other structures to give it a more rural feel but I think it would be more prototypical to drop loads on the way out rather than carry them to the end of the line (staging) and turn.
