A hole in the wall X4 - a liftout bridge (page 12)

[nachoman]

Wow, those are some ambitious plans!

A few comments on your proposed HOn3 track plan: First, I always try to avoid having inaccessible turnouts. The one leg of your cumbres wye would be difficult to reach for maintenance and derailments. It is inevitable that sometime you will drive the train against a switch facing the wrong way, and cause a derailment. When that happens, that means you will be reaching under the layout to the most inaccessible point, and complicated if there is an n-scale layout underneath.

Second, your overall plan philosophy works well at keeping things from looking too congested. Be warned, though, that keeping things un-congested-looking on a layout that small usually means exaggerated topography. In other words, there will be a relatively steep escarpment between Cumbres and windy point, and the track going under the bridge and into the tunnel in the animas river valley may look a little strange, especially since you will see the durango yard right atop the tunnel portal.

Of course, I think exaggerated topography is a good thing, because if we built everything to scale with accurate mountain slope angles of 20-25 degrees, our layouts would be pretty flat and boring. I am facing similar issues on my own layout, where very steep escarpments will separate various levels of track. The steep cliffs will be quite interesting, but locating tunnel entrances in such a place they look natural will be a challenge.