1st attempt @ drawing up a layout- opinions?

My paint skills are very, very poor, please try to look past them.

Where i put the green arrows I was hoping for advice on what radius to use?

Track will be unitrack with powercab dcc.(neither of which I have yet)

Please feel free to comment good or bad, i have never set up a train before s I literally know pretty much nothing.

Also, is the 11" radius going to limit my locomotive selection or will most of them be ok on 11"?

 

Xtrkcad is a free track planning program I highly recommend. It allows you to build a precise layout to ensure you've allowed enough room for curves, turnouts, ect. It even has its own Unitrack library to drag and drop from.

The only downside is that it is a bit intuitive, but the Beginners Tutorial should cover more than enough to get you started.

11" is the smallest I've ever gone and I've operated the Athearn Chalenger and InterMountain Cab Forward without issue. However, if you have enough space, I would push the minimum radius as much as possible. Thunder Ridge, my next layout, is a 4x8 walk around and has a minimum radius of 14", and that is only on a few inch section of one curve. The rest are even larger radius.

 

Here's an example of how the plan looks when drawn in Xtrkcad. Everything in the plan is exactly to scale of how it will fit in real life.



(I only drew a double mainline, but you could add as many tracks as you want)


Also, think about how you might add visual attraction to the design. Right now you have trains running in circles with 3 stub end tracks in the middle. With 18 feet of length, you have tons of potential to create a highly prototypical miniature railroad.

Imagine if the left end were a city/town and the right end were a coal mine/harbor/cattle ranch. You could have trains picking up goods at the right end and delivering them to the left end and you'd still have plenty of space in between for some great scenery.

If that appeals to you, you can even go in and create multiple pick up/drop off industries on either end. Basically the sky's your limit.


Finally, Here's a mostly generic post I make quite often when members explore new layouts. The principles apply to any layout design.

 

Thanks so much fo the tips, i'm going to download the program now.

 

I've been using the xtrkcad a lot the last 2 days, but I keep running into the same issue- I have 0 creativity! I have tried looking at other layout pictures, but they all have scenery and its hard to see the actual track layout. It seems a lot of people use 4x8 to set up and with me having only 44" on the ends and 32" in the middle it seems I run out of room to use a lof of the ideas.

Any recomendations for track ideas? Not the setting, but more the actual shape of the track?

 

Here are two albums on RailImages that have several different designs you can sort through.

Layout Design - Mark Watson

Track Plans for Others - ppuin

But I want to encourage you to think about the setting before trying out actual shapes. Once you have a concept of what you want to include on the layout, the shapes will come automatically and you'll end up with a plan that is infinitely more successful.

 

Thanks for the links Mark, thats what I was looking for. I will be sure to do plenty of planning, probably not even getting set up till fall. I've just had trouble coming up with ideas other than ovals and a yard

 

The thread below covers a design I helped user WS10 with which has similar dimensions to your allotted space. I highly recommend reading it all and seeing how much WS10 put into his wants and needs and how that drove the final design. Working with Chris was one of the funnest collaborations for me.

WS10's Cooper Mining Layout