Hi everyone, Finally, after waiting over a year, I am moved in to a place where I have the space to build my first layout. I certainly want a room-sized empire, but that one will need to wait until we buy a house. Instead, this layout will be occupying a corner of my home office. The biggest limiting factor is that I will be moving in the next few years, as this is a rental, which has put a serious damper on my imagination. Anyways, lets get in to it. Some givens going in to this layout design: Moving, eventually. Needs to be modular/small enough to easily move. The space. Half of the walls in the room are currently blank, so I have 11 feet of wall space on one side, and another 8 on the left of that. Layout needs to fit in this space without coming out too far in to the room. Next, some serious druthers which I will not easily give up: DCC only. Era is roughly 1950's Pennsylvania Railroad. Some sort of loop, for the option of continuous running. Sometimes, I just want to watch them roll. Industries for switching, to keep it interesting. Connection to "the outside world" for staging and expanding Large minimum curve radius; Kato 12.4 in radius curves at minimum; the bigger, the better. Some less serious, more negotiable druthers: Industries; I like the idea of a coal mine scene, a factory, and a team track, for the variety of car types. Scenery; inspired by the mountains and towns of central/western Pennsylvania. Kato Unitrack; I already have a lot of this, and would like to stick with it even though the rails are prototypically too tall. On to the layout I designed, it was inspired by Dave Vollmer's Juniata Division for the basic form of the mainline. From his plan, I took it down to one mainline and freehanded my own industry spurs. The central part of the layout will be a small town scene, like Dave's, but slightly offset to allow for a line of trees and maybe a hill to make for a view block between the town and the mine scene. I also left out the staging/expansion on this plan; those will be built as a follow-on project to the main layout. I will also mention that this is planned to be built over a 80 by 36 inch interior door. Imgur link for version 1: https://imgur.com/a/qwrnZQp Imgur link for version 2: https://imgur.com/a/cBcT0m9 Anyways, I am looking for feedback (any and all!) on this track plan. Thanks in advance! Edit- Revised the track plan for a version 2, using Kato #6 switches on the main, and #4 elsewhere.
I like the theme for your railroad @Connor and your track plan too. Are the two bottommost turnouts curved? As you know, Kato doesn't make curved. Are your mainline turnouts #4 or #6? Kato has taken its lumps for derailments with its #4s, but there's belief that improved manufacturing tolerances have brought improvements. I'm using their #4s in my yard and spurs and have had to modify only one; the others have all been fine so far. Nonetheless, #6s on your mainline would be a better bet if they'll fit. You may want to download a track planning program like https://www.scarm.info/index.php . It's starter version is free and would easily accomodate what you have in mind.
@Hardcoaler, thanks for the feedback. I actually used SCARM for this plan, and previously all of the switches were standard Kato #4's (not curved!). I went ahead and revised the plan to use #6 switches on the mainline since I don't think the #4 turnouts I have fall under the improved tolerances group; I've had to tune at least half of the eight I have, and two of them are still rather picky. Anyways, the new plan is here: https://imgur.com/a/cBcT0m9
Looking great @Connor . I found a way to add in a 15 Deg. on my road too, much as you did. I just think they look cool in that kind of application. Oh, you gotta add a PRR interlocking tower in there somewhere.
It is, not sure why the link is not working... I can access it through other devices and incognito mode (i.e. not logged in to my Imgur account) just fine.
Both the attachment and the link work for me. Nice layout, and IMHO, it's hard to beat a hollow core door format for a small layout. A few questions/comments: Is the spur at upper left intended to be out-of-sight staging? Will it be covered? I would recommend holding the terrain back from covering the spur, so that you have easy access for uncoupling railcars, etc. there. Hidden staging should still be readily accessible... Also, track switches should not be in a tunnel, or otherwise limited from manual access. Derailments occur more often around switches than anywhere else, especially if trackwork is up to par (as it usually is with Unitrack.) The highway may have a steep grade to climb the mountain on the left, over the train tunnel. It seems implausible that, given an easier route off the left end of the layout below the lower tunnel entrance, "they" would have put a road where you have it. I would have it run more towards the lower left corner, crossing the tracks before they enter the tunnel. You'll want some space between road crossing and tunnel entrance (a blind crossing would be a safety hazard.) Also, keep in mind that, except in older areas that predated the railroads, automobile highways often followed, more or less alongside, the existing railroads, since the latter had already figured out efficient, low-grade paths through the regional terrain. So following alongside the railroad, off the layout at lower left would have been be a likely route.. In terms of industry sights, I would be inclined to swap the team track with the factory. Where the factory sits now limits you to some pretty small industries (it's shown the same size as the team track, which is very unlikely for a factory.) The current space for the industry is well suited for a team track, while there is more room for an interesting factory or other industrial site where the team track currently resides. Note that re-routing the highway slightly to cross the tracks below the tunnel entrance at lower left may cramp the new team track there, but it would certainly cramp an industry there even worse. What is the unlabeled red box across the spur from the farm & coal supply? Is it part of or related to F&C? If not, but they both need rail access, it would be best to offset them on either side of the spur, so that each can have a rail car or two spotted next to them. Is the interior of the loop intended to be a small town? Think about how the streets will run. I like not having the streets and city blocks running parallel/orthogonal to the edges of the layout. When integrating terrain into a layout, think about where water would flow in creeks or rivers that likely formed the terrain you are modelling. Especially in the case where the edge of a hill meets level terrain in a concave curve (like perhaps on the left side of your layout,) a creek or river would have carved that, cutting a bluff on the outer (right) side of the river's curve, and a gently sloping grade on the inner (left) side of the river. Bridges for highways and tracks to cross the river at lower left also add visual interest. You might consider flipping the switch from RH to LH that creates the two tracks for the coal mine, and pointing those two tracks more downward towards the bottom of the layout. This might even allow you to put the mine on the upper/left of those tracks, beside the river, instead of on the inside of them. This would give you a better view of the railcars at the mine too. You might even have a conveyor that crosses the river and enters the side of the hill on the other side. Smaller creeks (perfectly capable of carving terrain, given enough time) may even be dry most of the time, if modelling water puts you off. But these are all things I might do if this were my layout. It's not! Do what YOU want with your layout!!!
@BigJake, that is a lot of very good feedback. To answer some questions/comments: Any spurs off the layout will eventually connect to other modules that I plan to build in the future, after this section is done. Until those are built, they'll connect to temporary staging built out of Unitrack, again on a separate module. Your comment also got the wheels turning on the scenic cohesiveness of the scene, and how different parts of the layout tie together. I actually went in and mostly redid the plan, this time focusing more on how non-rail elements would look. I won't elaborate too much on that, only to say that the attached plan is just a general idea of what I want to do. Things like the roads, the exact position of the creek, etc. will change as I actually build the layout and sculpt the scenery. Also, the blank area on the upper left I am planning on placing a small town, offset 15-30 degrees from the edges of the layout.
Wow, that cleaned up a lot! Nice job! Now for a few new observations/suggestions. Take them for what they're worth (every penny you paid for them!) A freight house that needs two tracks is likely to be very busy, and likely too busy to allow use of it's main track as the switch lead for the industries on the right... But this is easily solved by flipping the direction of the piece-built crossover there (from righty to lefty). That way the switching lead for the industries on the right is away from the freight house, giving the latter unfettered access to un/load railcars on its adjacent track. I would use a (now left-hand) single crossover, rather than two #4 turnouts. The crossover is cheaper than two #4's, and by many reports, more reliable. It also only requires a single control (or finger flip) to throw both switches. If you swap that R718 for an R481 curve leading to the RH industries, your industries on the right will only need moving downward slightly if at all. I'm still perplexed by how the highway is going to climb the hill over the tunnel, and yet lay right next to the freight house on level ground. Also, most narrow freight houses had truck docks on the opposite side of the building from the rail line. Those trucks have to have room to back up to the docks at a right angle (unless you want to model a custom freight house with stair-stepped, angled truck dock, but even then they will need some room to turn around and back into those docks). I suggest a two-part change to address both problems: How about running the thru highway top to bottom (where the current road enters the layout), and make the right hand road just T into the new, vertical highway. This gives you plenty of room for parking the trucks/trailers at the freight house docks, and you no longer have the highway climbing the hill at left. I would add a siding along the top for the coal mine lead. That way your loco (hopefully) does not foul the mainline while it is dropping off empties and picking up full coal hoppers. You can help matters a bit by shoving the coal mine further right, for more switch lead & siding room. I would also flip the mine switch that selects between the tipple's two tracks from a lefty to a righty, to help move the mine lead further right, which probably helps. Do you intend to serve the smallish mine with the regular local, or will there be dedicated train to pick up fulls and drop off empties at the mine? That would make a difference between how much siding room you need to avoid fouling the main while working the coal mine. Either way, think about how many cars are in the train that delivers/picks up, and how many of those cars are actually for the mine. Some mines' tracks under/around the tipple had a slight slope, so that mine workers could move cars under the tipple using just the brakes on the cars. The point is, the loco would not have to stay there and move the hoppers past the tipple when filling. This was more often the case for a small mine that got its cars delivered in the daily freight, rather than a periodic, dedicated coal train.
