Well here's what Ive come up with to fit into my 10x11 spare room. I have a rough drawn track plan and some pictures of the sub roadbed. to the top (north) behind the backdrop will be a 3 or 4 track staging area know as Oscoda trackage rights will be shared from their to the Wye at Loud Dam. The northern lead from the wye will lead back to staging, this will be the xyz railroad. continuing through the wye will be the main line railroad. This area of the route has a single 2.5% grade. in the south east corner i plan to have a yard and a engine terminal ware helpers will be added. leaving the yard area to the north again i plan to have 4% grades. this route will lead into a small closet to the south of the room which will be hidden staging. and a loop for continuous running. the gird is 6" Any suggestions are always welcome, and maybe a drawing for a yard area =)
Revisit the Grade? If still possible I would revisit the 4% grade: that is awfully steep! Looking at your track plan it appears that you do not need to have such a steep grade to get enough clearance to cross over the lower tracks. 4% will create issues, not so much going up (just add more helpers) but coming down. Lighter cars (IM Woodchip gons, log cars) will be pushed outward and tend to derail. (if that sounds like experience talking, it is....) Also some engines will "buck" if being pushed by the train (reason is too much play in the driveshafts), which can lead to derailments and uncoupling. I have a 2.5% mountain grade (and 2.25% in a helix, but that is another story): 2.5% does not sound much, but a 30 car train requires two 2882 engines and the rear pusher will do some real work keeping the slack bunched! To get some initial ideas on yard design just do a searcj for "Yard" in Trainboard search function and you should get a lot of very useful initial ideas. Besides that I love your trackplan: Keep us posted on your progress! Cheers Dirk
thank you for the heads up. its funny you should mention that i was thinking about the grades, i was working on an area today that's about 2.2%. While working on the Sub roadbed it dident seem like much but i set a few cars and a loco on it and what a world of difference that makes. again thanks i would have been very dissipated and frustrated.
I'd love to see more progress shots of this, as it is the same size of the room that I'll be working with! Keep them coming!
well ive made some good progress on the layout over the past few weeks. Im running trains now with good results, only 2 or 3 locations ware i had to fix the trackwork one being major ware i had to over hall the plywood roadbed. the others mostly dirived from reuseing bent rail joiners. still have one more bug to work out. i stumbled apon a coal facility idea located along the Y however it required me to make a change in the track plan. but it works out because the change gives me a little more runtime on the mainline.
Just came across your thread. It looks like you are taking full advantage of the available room you have and have room for some great scenery! :thumbs_up::thumbs_up:
Heres some photo updates. the coal area is coming together, the 2 tracks to the left are for empty's in and the one to the right comes from the flood loader for loads out. on the other side of the layout i plan to have an area for off loading coal so that the inbound empty's from the coal side will go out as the outbound empty's from a electric plant. Track work reliability is much better i still have one switch to replace as i keep getting derailments when the switch is thrown. which is odd being it is a peco. (the only one on the layout currently) but Ive moved everything else around and have the same result. At what point and after how much operation do you decide that the track work is as good as it can be? In other news i got what i think is a decent deal on some Deluxe innovation Twin Tub Coal gondolas in BNSF mineral red. the ad stated of the 10 cars, their was only 3 different road numbers between them. turns out that's what the boxes say. Each car has its own different road number, and even better yet their none of the 10 that already have. I was pretty excited about that.
Speed_man_17, Your facility on your layout is coming along very good and looks like you have an excellent operational plan!
Nice to see the flood loader. Will you have a view block so it doesn't look like you are bringing loaded cars through? Not a biggie, but just wondering.
A start on the Background got one wall painted up this afternoon. looks pretty good considering our 1st attempt, (girlfriend helped me with this) all air brushed. heres a few photos.
very lice looking backdrop and track work. Like the progress that you are making. Very nice, thanks for sharing with us.
well i wasent planning on going to far with the backdrop but i dident much care for just the blue sky so heres what we have about 5 - 6 hours into this. i am half way down a 8' wall. pictures are a bit dark. i need to work on getting some lighting now as well. hopefully soon. thou now i have to fix my car, deer are a pain here in mid-Michigan.
Moving along the line over the past few weeks. Ive spent the past few days correcting my track work. I purchased a Fox valley GEVO, runs and looks excellent, has a HECK of a time staying on the rails, though a lot do in part to my track work, however i have fixed the bugs in the track work. and completed about 15 laps trouble free. I cant tell you how close i was to hanging it up in the 1st few hours of running the GEVO, after running countless trouble free laps with my Kato SD-70 and then having so many issues with derailments, UGH, I'm sure most have all been their before, frustration and depressing. I have roughed in this part of the layout, it is based off of a crossing in Memphis, tn. though their the mainline crosses 3 times. originally i had planed to cut it down to two, however from the crossing to the single main line was less then the length of the trains i plan to run. so i pushed the double main back before the crossing. It don't look as cool, but it just works better. The crossing leads into the closet ware staging will be, i included a drawing of the track plan for this area. photos of my Kato SD-70 and the new Fox Valley GEVO
