okay guys been out of the hobby for a while all together. buddy of mine saw my trains and said why don't you get back into the hobby, next thing i know im railfanning the mainline in town and going to the lhs near me haha so i have a table built its 6 ft wide by 10 ft long with caster wheels on it storage it be tucked against 2 walls one long side one 6 ft side. my likes are modern ns and csx for roads era 70's to modern day times. continuis running with switching involved coal or gravel i have a lot of hopper cars a warehouse of sort to make into a ho scale guitar manufactuer. these are the only things i have set in stone so could somone help me with a track plan and scale is ho scale i tried n scale and yeah not for me lol. if possible a twice around style layout would be nice for a decent mainline other than a removable staging yard add on the size i have is as large as i can go no around the walls style layout i wish i could but this is what i have ot work with i hope this is enough details if ive left out anything let me know and i will add it in so please some track planning guru please help me because i suck at these computer track planning programs and would like a diagram to go off of for the layout thanks in advance zach.
Good to know the bug has bitten again! A guitar manufacturer is a new idea. Will be curious to see how that comes together.
yeah well my other hobby is playing guitar and only way i coudl think of intergrating the two is to have a guitar factory that recieves loads of lumber and hardware ect and ships out the finished product via rail. i just suck at track planning i can think it out like i typed but when it coems to drawing it out on paper or on a pc program i aint so good at it.
Southern, 3' reach into the center of the table is going to be painful, most keep it to 30" or less. Have you decided on which track you are going to use? What are you switch preferences? What are the minimum curves for your equipment? Will it be DC or DCC?
Why not draw the area you will be using without any layout on it but showing the space you have available, include windows, furnace or laundry appliances etc that could impede a design. You might very well end up with a better "final" plan. And P.S. Post the area you have available here.
the layout will be dcc ran off a nce system i am thinking atlas flex track want a minimum of 24 inch radius but would like larger than that say maybe 26 inch radii no 6 turnouts for industries and no 8s on mainline i have no real prefrence on switch brand all ive ever used was atlas in past am open to suggestions on that as well. and the table is alright i am a tall person 6 ft tall and it is at a 44 inch height with casters on it really don't have any more space to use this is in my bedroom i have a ton of furniture in here the layout will be in middle of room to work on or operate pushed against walls when not in use its all i can alot to the model rr sadly. thanks for the help
You might want to start looking at plans for all kinds of scales. Maybe an N scale plan that is 3x5 feet could be done in HO scale for your space. Or one bigger in O or S scale can be reduced. A lot of times I go to my search engine and just type in model railroad track plan and the hit the images tab to see what's out there. There are a ton of plans all over the internet. Here is a sample of what's out there: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=HO+Scale+Train+Plans&FORM=IRBPRS&crslsl=0#a It's kind of easy to say I want a plan, but the possibilities are really just endless. Do you want a over and under to double your mainline run. DO you want a figure eight type of plan, etc. Someone else had suggested printing out and cutting apart plans in order to get the various elements you like in different plans; you may want to do that. Hope that helps.
