Rick, At my age, I am 69 year old, this may be my last layout andI do not want to make a mistake. Since Ilack the experience of “operations” and DCC I thought I ask for help so that Ido not build a layout that does not work for operations. I believe this forum is the right place tocontact knowledgeable people. It is not my intention to waste anyone’s time and if I haveI apologize. I am not kicking tires, I finallyhave the time and the space to build it and I am going to build it God willing. Lucky I have a gentlemen already working on a trackplan. He and I both welcome any and all commentsand input into the design. You’ll agreethat 2 brains are better than one, three or four even better. So far I have read all answers to my question and I am verygrateful to you and all others. I’ve gotgood advice that will help me and I hope to get even more. I am not into photography but I’ll take a photo of my trainroom before and after. Sincerely, Lee
I re-read your first post and you already have an idea of what you want on it, so start with a basic plan of bench work design and mainline. You want a lot which is why I suggested a double deck. No need to apologies either. I personally prefer a nolix but for you and speed of construction, you might consider a commercial helix. Here is a link to commercial helix's. I think they are value for money, easy and quick to put up. http://www.ashlintrains.com/n-scale-1-160-3/ Once you have your design completed, you don't really need a completed track plan to start. Figure out where the helix is going to go, then start at the other end with your first deck, build the deck to the helix. Decide on your mainline configuration then with the first deck in start laying track for the area, this will give you more experience to finish the layout and better plan your top deck. Then when bottom deck is completed with track, then build your helix. I understand your not wanting to make mistakes, I'm about to turn 67 in less than a month but the reality is - you are going to make them. So the faster you start building, the faster you can make your mistakes and correct them. In N scale, the very best engine to use, I hand push mine around, is an SD90, this sucker will find every almost invisible kink in your track and derail if you don't get the turnouts right. I don't even look at the track when I'm pushing the SD90 around, I can feel the ever so slight tug of it moving, finding a flaw I didn't see. So rather than get all of your track design done, decide on what industries are going to go on your first deck and away you go. You will have gobs of time to sweat the second deck design latter and.... you'll have more valuable experience. Yard by yard is very hard, inch by inch is a cinch. PS: Submit your first deck track plan here for critique, you will get more help that way.
If you are getting some design help from someone see if you can load up an image of your ideas as they progress. It is easier to help someone design based on what their ideas are. The group think works best as a design as you go, where the group gets to point out potential problems. Some basic concepts to keep in mind... 1. How long are trains going to be? You need to make sure that blocks are the length of your average train. With single track this would mean specifically how long are passing sidings. With double track, how long between crossovers. You need to be able to get your fast freight and passenger trains around your slow freight drags. 2. Things like switch leads in areas like yards and industries are always important. You do not want to foul up your mainline with a switcher. 3. You said you want operations, but there are sort of two levels of operation. There is the mainline running of trains either on a schedule with a clock, or in a sequential order for a little less stress. And there are yard and industry car movements that happen on an individual basis. The two overlap, as trains move blocks of cars to local yards and then get broken down and then rebuilt as locals to take cars to industries. 4. If you add a passenger train to the layout, you once again add optional levels of operation as anything with passenger, or mail cars, has priority over other trains. Even a single doodlebug as a local passenger train will out class all other freight trains. So as you design toward an operation oriented layout, you need to think of how the different stations will get served by passenger trains. 5. There are some concepts that get mentioned a lot in operational layouts in order to create a sense of real mainline traffic such as staging. Staging is where you hold made up trains in a yard that are just waiting to "come on stage" when they are scheduled to appear. But this is a style choice. Frank Ellison (sp?) who was a huge influence on model railroading was entirely against it and used actual yards for cities both at the ends and in the middle of his layout. And lastly, if you make the mainline in a logical useful way, the rest will end up falling into place. Most big layouts one sees in magazines have had sections reworked over time. I think the biggest delusion that model railroaders believe in, is that once you build it, it's built. I have never had a layout get built without running into hitches somewhere and having to rebuild. Most people get to the rebuild stage and decide the layout sucks and just tear out and start over; Pointing at myself here. Another fallacy is the idea that one needs a giant layout to do operations. Operations are really just a set of rules for a game you play with your trains. Even the smallest layout can be interesting with the right game to play on it. With all of those possibilities in mind, it's worth considering what you personally like as far as operations. And again I would suggest a tester layout. Besides a small tester is always handy to have around until you get the real layout built. My reasoning is that it's easy to read articles and get convinced you need to do something with your layout, but maybe that is not for you. It seems everyone has a point where they lose interest in a layout and it is different for everyone. I lose interest after I get my trains running and play a bit. I think I mostly like the aspect of working toward the goal of having a mainline up and running and then I'm distracted. But back to the tester. A lot of people think that what they want is lots of switching on their layout. But not everyone is into switching cars. It's good to know if this is something you want to minimize. You might discover you like big train movements on the mainline instead. I would suggest building something really small and quick like a time saver layout and playing with that. You can always pull the track and put it on the main layout, but it's good to know if you like the detailed movement of a switcher, or if you like the fast movement of many trains. Or, maybe you like both, but need to consider that for every industry you put on the layout, you slow down mainline action since mainline trains will be waiting on delivery of those cars to and from industries. The entire concept of realistic operations on layouts can be sort of a fad thing that model railroaders like to present as being real. Railroads are businesses. Our layouts are recreation. You can get as crazy as you want on operations, but really operations is a game we play. Games have been around for along time and the way games get designed generally has to do with equal measures of realism and playability. The more realism you have the less playability you have. Or at least the more detail you have, the more time it will take to play the game. Well, I can write novels on here and get kind of off in left field, but maybe some of this makes sense. Sadly work calls and I must run along. Oh yeah. Most important! Is it Fun? he he he
