I have been playing around with Xtrak and have also begun to build my 1st layout, its sitting on a 55x32 inch door, let me know what you think.
Couple of suggestions: 1) Rotate layout 180 degrees, so the tracks where you will be coupling and uncoupling cars is out towards the room instead of in towards the wall. and/or 2) If you have the room, place layout in a different way in the room - say as a peninsula sticking into the room with walk-around access on three sides, and then put a backdrop down along the center of the table (the long way), splitting the layout into two visually separate scenes. That way your train can come from elsewhere and go elsewhere. Then you could e.g. do something similar in style to this H0 scale 4x8 foot layout (which corresponds to a 53" x 26" table in N scale): http://www.layoutvision.com/id49.html - i.e. let the two sides of the layout represent different places. Smile, Stein
Looks like nice beginnings there. Rotate the layout is a good idea; the moving out to leave walk around room is ok but not necessary due to the width. Would make it slightly easier but.
I agree that it would make access only slightly easier. But making it possible to split the layout into two visually separate scenes would increase scenic and operational possibilities by quite a bit. It would create a railroad where trains come "up the line" or "down the line", either passing through the scene, or stopping to do some kind of work, and then either continuing or heading back. Basically it would transform the layout from a table you look down at from a helicopter perspective, to consisting of two different scenes you look into. The two scenes can be given entirely different scenic treatments - say one being rural, one urban, or one mountainous and the other a plains scene or whatever, without it being visually disturbing. By having a viewblock down the center, you can model buildings as 2D (flats) or 2.5D (partial buildings) instead of full buildings - making it easier to create believable large buildings for the kind of industries that would need railroad service. So scenically, it makes a big difference. But it comes with a space requirement cost - you need that access from both sides to carry it off in a good way. So it takes up more of the room. It is hard to say whether the OP has room or not, since we have no idea about what the room where he has his layout looks like. Smile, Stein
I agree, looks like a good start, and depending on space, the scenic divide will make long term operations even better. If you have to have the layout in the corner, think about putting rollers on the legs, so you can turn it around, for variety. It looks like you are using #4 switches. Make sure you "fix" the points by filing small pockets into the rails, for flawless running.
Thanks for all of the advice guys, I will definately rotate the layout 180 degrees for ease of working in the small yard. I will not be able to move the layout away from the wall so cannot try suggestion #2 by Stein. As far as the switches go I am using two #6 on the outer oval and the rest are #4, I have realised that the #4 seem to work well if there is a straight section between them and a curve.
Ok so I ended up drilling all the holes for the turnout wires and power and completely forgot to switch the layout 180 so the switching area was closer to me, although this did help with the tunnel my son wanted on the layout, no bridge so he had to have a tunnel. Here are some more recent pictures of my progress.
