Triplex, This is certainly a well-thought-out discusssion of your requirements. About a year ago, I posted a discussion of the railroad I'm building in a 11 x 23 stall of my garage. It seems to meet some of your requirements. I don't have time today to rewrite it to answer some of your requirements but, in summary: 650 feet of mainline--325 up and 325 back A very long yard lead that serves as a linear staging area One helper district--trains need enough power to get up the predominant 2.5% grade, but need helpers for the one 2.75% ruling grade. Eliminate bridges and the predominant grade could drop to 1.5% or so, and you could eliminate or keep the one ruling grade. Lots of aisle width. Big industries. Easily runs 6 long trains under DCC; haven't thought about block control. A huge staging yard--not run-through, though--can be put along the wall of the other stalls of the garage. The discussion starts at this URL: http://www.trainboard.com/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/9/t/004090/p/1.html Then it continues at: http://www.trainboard.com/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/9/t/004130/p/1.html and http://www.trainboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/ubb/get_topic/f/9/t/004141.html? I've made a whole lot of progress since last fall, but haven't had time to photo it and rewrite. If it's interesting to you I could annotate this older post in response to questions.
Pete- I've seen those threads about your layout before. In my mind, your layout is on its way to becoming one of the "great model railroads". It's one of the few layouts that reminds me of something I might build. The basic configuration, providing far more mainline than I asked for, a large yard, long-train capacity (20' is quite easy to handle, IIRC) and good aisles, is excellent. All the details can of course be changed to suit. I would keep the ruling grade. Just a few problems: This topic is to find the minimum space I need. I'm not sure how conducive your plan is to being shrunk (it would increase the grades, among other things). Also, it's not designed in my style. I prefer wide shelves, which rules out triple-decking. If I go twice-around, I want wide shelves to avoid overcrowding. If I go once-around, I won't take the opportunity to narrow the shelves. I want to do what N scale is supposed to be good for - not just modelling the railroad, but its environment. Last, it's just annoying. More mainline than I asked for, but not more than I know what to do with - that is, if I had the shelf area to do it. My rule of thumb is, no more linear feet of mainline than square footage of shelf area. Despite this, I will say that if I had your space, a derivative of your plan would definitely be under consideration.
Thanks for the compliments, Triplex! I have about 330 square feet of shelf area, and about 325 feet of mainline run--but it's double tracked, without crossovers (yet), for the 650 foot end result. Why not consider a stall in a garage? Splitting and insulating the garage was a minor cost. Now my three-stall garage was already insulated and finished, so building a wall was easy, for me at least, who put myself through college with framing and drywall jobs. But even converting an uninsulated and unfinished garage wouldn't have added that much cost. Compared to other items, insulation and sheetrock are relatively cheap--though the recent prices for both singe my eyebrows! I'm usually surprised when I visit people with layouts in uninsulated, unfinished spaces. Finishing a space is heavy labor, but a do-it-yourselfer can probably do it for the cost of a few good engines. And the heavy labor has been reduced by today's pneumatic tools. I think I said I split the garage in a weekend, start to finish. If I had started with an unfinished garage, it probably would have taken three weekends. To me, given the effort in building the layout, even three weekends was inconsequential. I've split garages three times now. The first two times it meant my car had to sit out in the cold in New England--not a big deal, actually. My major expense was the heat-pump, which had to run on 115V. It's nothing more than an expensive ($900) room air conditioner that can run in reverse when it's cold. If I had 230V out there, it would have been much cheaper. But it was the best buy I ever made. Seeing as the furnace for the west side of the house is in the other stalls, and hot engines from cars park there, it never gets below 60 degrees F. in the "real" garage. Though it can get hot in the summer! My second expense was track lighting--about $300. I should have gone with flourescents. I'm just too lazy to move the lighting heads. Good idea--lousy in practice. $100 worth of good flourescents would have been better. I may switch yet. I can legally do my own electrical, which saves money. I think you said you were considering a double deck. Perhaps you could consider a double deck on the long side of your potential space, and only a single deck on the other? I have three decks on one side, but only two decks on the other. I use one short side to climb between decks. If I had three decks all around, I'd climb way beyond my eyesight level--except for very narrow shelves. I'm considering that climb above the "Plutonium Plant," in order to incorporate a Nn3 line. Good luck in your search for space. I think I lucked out. If you could see some of the earlier versions of the design, you'd probably laugh. I went conservative on the aisle widths, and that has proven, over and over again, the way to go.
I went for full double-deck on that sketch because I needed the space. I never considered anything less. 1.5 decks in ~200 square feet isn't quite enough. Now, I don't have anything like that. No garage, and a useless basement (unfinished, uneven ceiling barely high enough to stand in, and full of other stuff anyway). However, I won't be here forever. Once I'm out of college, I can set out on my life in a better place. Then my dream model railroad can begin.
You're right. But you can still define or design modules to build and maybe take with you (very unlikely) or to adapt when you find a suitable home. If you look closely, my engine facilities are just a bent, twisted, reversed, and squeezed version of John Armstrong's plan for a mid-sized club. I've built that plan twice now--the latest seems to work. So--dream on! It takes a lot of dreams and hard work to make a plan, whether it be model railroading or life.
Look at my sketch. A multi-lap mainline isn't conducive to any form of modular construction. Nor is double-decking. Besides, having only made one layout (and that one never got completed), I'm not skilled enough to construct anything that could be a part of a lifetime layout. For the moment, all I can do is plan. And plan I will. My preliminary estimates suggest that 10' is in fact the ideal width for my basic concept. The length could probably be reduced to 18' and it would still work. If the room were fairly square, however, I'd need more than 200 sq. ft. Now that I know the space I need, I can start drawing more precise plans for various room sizes in that range. Maybe sometime I'll find a way to cut the space requirement. But for now, I can start thinking about specifics again. Considering my desires, what are some ideas I should look at using? What track planning errors am I likely to make?
I've just realized (actually, I worried about it before) a colossal problem with my idea/plan. Open-top traffic will be important... but I provided no continuous running and no opportunity for loads-in/empties-out arrangments (they work best on peninsulas, preferably where points near opposite ends of the line are near each other). Double-decking isn't conducive to continuous running, because you need to figure how to get between decks twice. A through yard would take up more space than the one I showed. What can I do? The 10x20 room is already a bigger space than I was aiming for.
Don't sweat the size differential. Use the increased size to your advantage. Remember, it's better to have too much than too little in this hobby. You don't have to use all of it. And next time you may not have the option of that much space. That size (10 x20) is a blessing.
First, to make things absolutely clear, I don't have the 10x20 room. What I mean is, I was aiming to design a layout that fit the type of railroading I wanted and figure how big it would be at a minimum. I initially hoped it could be done in considerably less than 200 square feet. (Go back to the first page.) I can certainly figure how to use any space - I'd still be double-decking in N in 1000 square feet! I drew a rough idea (in an earlier post) for the 200 sq. ft. layout, but I'm starting to think there are problems with it that can't be solved in that space.
I think of linear layouts in terms of aisle plus shelf layout on each side. An aisle takes three feet or so. Each shelf can be a foot or so minimum up to 2 feet deep. Three feet starts leading to reachability problems. Three foot aisle plus two feet of shelf layout on each side adds up a space 7 feet wide. A little wider allows a slightly wider place to work in a wye or reverse loop. But until you go up to 14 feet wide, you can't have TWO aisles with a two foot shelf of layout on each side of each aisle. So plan, dream, scheme or hope for layout room in 7 or 8 foot width increments. Someday, I would like to have a room that would allow THREE aisles, about 20 feet long, plus a vertical access, a stairway entrance so the room can be built with no doors to stop the flow of trains and no duckunders, liftups, stepovers, etc. By the way, I am cheating. I have not read all of this thread. Just throwing out my generic formula for an ideal space. This was MY idea with many of my desires designed with "aisle and shelf concept" into 14 x 28 (if I remember correctly) for a space I DON'T HAVE... main level: http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/abq.jpg upper level: http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/abr.jpg
I was advised earlier, based on my desires, to plan for width in 9 foot increments (4 foot aisle for lots of operators, 2-1/2 foot shelves because they allow twice-around or more without too much crowding.) This idea really helped me with my rough concept. Why don't you read from the beginning - "generic" ideas about layout design don't always suit me. The maybe you can tell me: How much space do I need if the room is optimally proportioned? What are optimal proportions? How much more space do I need if the room is a different shape?
Triplex, I've been reading your "givens and druthers" for what you'd like to have in a layout. Sounds like an interesting challenge! I think I'll start sketching some designs in XTrak and see what I can come up with. Mike C Phoenix Az
Trip, a mighty set of ideas.....and it would be a railroad to remember. I personally think, with peninsulas etc to increase your mainline running length, you're looking at a 20x20 room. How about multi level and use a nolix to change..... you could get your room down to 10x20 (or there abouts), but the bodies in the aisles are going to compound issues
That's exactly what I was thinking! 10x20, no peninsulas, multideck, nolix. A very wide aisle (singular) would be possible. The mianline would be long enough without peninsulas, but some other aspects of track planning are easier with them. That's one of my problems. The other is, how do I put in the desirable (hidden) continuous-running connection on a multideck layout? And this is my minimum modern mainline railroad.
elevations, elevation, elevations The only way to ohide it is to hide it, if ya get my drift.... stick it under a mountain, behind a backdrop....something like that.
I meant, either I leave both sides of the mountain crossing visible, so both ends of the line are on the lower deck, or I have to make a helper-worthy hidden connection (which I don't want). It's not a question of visibility, but grades. Anyway, when I made my last post, I forgot about a new idea I had. An E-shaped layout in 18x12. The main yard would be double-ended, with the body tracks bent through 180 around the end of the peninsula. The line would climb to the upper deck, then come back down. Both "ends" would be on the main deck, connecting to a bottom level: hidden through staging with return loops.
Triplex - this may not be exactly what you want, but might give you ideas http://members.ozemail.com.au/~andkeller/page8.htm Hope it helps Shortliner(Jack)away up here in the Highlands [ September 19, 2005, 11:12 AM: Message edited by: shortliner ]
That isn't what I want. It's a nice and unusual layout, but several separate vignette-like scenes isn't what I want. In my first post in this thread, I explained my priorities. I said I valued track and operation above scenic realism, but wanted both mainline running between towns and switching in towns. It is important to have enough visible mainline to produce decent running times by the fast clock.
Triplex, I just don't have time to reread the entire thread, nor the memory capacity, among other things competing for my attention, to recall everything written on the thread. When I drop in to this forum, I do my best to refresh my memory, but that's not always successful. With the time I have, I have to scan these topics. It seems, from a quick reading, that an 18 x 12 or 20 x 10 space might be suitable for a nolix, with at least the first deck in an "E" configuration. I don't know where your entrance will be. An entrance on the short wall will entail a different design than an entrance on the long wall. I considered the "hidden return" long and hard. My previous layout had a hidden return, which was a pain in the neck because it wasn't readily accessible. So most of it got "daylighted, and I had to invent a new concept of operations. On my new layout there is very little hidden track. It's essentially a folded dogbone extended over three levels in a nolix. You go from "Base" to "Summit" on one track, and return on the other. Given the physical separation between first deck and third deck, I believe it's just not apparent that I have, in essence, a really long loop. I don't need hidden track with this scheme. Rich Weyand is building a huge layout with hidden (but accessible) return tracks. They take about 1-3/4 inches out of his space for each 180 degree turn, but you can see them from the backside. Because I'm in a 23 x 10 space, I don't have room for a backside, and neither will you without some exquisite (and complicated) design.
