09-06-2009, 06:18 AM
2-8-2 Wrote:doctorwayne Wrote:...reworking the trackplan...
Those are the scariest words in the world to me.
I'm a planner. I have a lot of books on railroading, and I like to think that I'm a pretty well-versed individual. I enjoy reading John Armstrong's writings on track planning, but honestly, there are several concepts that I just can't seem to wrap my head around. With my former layout, I went with a "canned trackplan" in sectional track because I couldn't piece all the elements together that I wanted into the same space.
With this new layout, I have twice the space. I have a general idea of what I want, which is an industry-focused operational layout. Sure, I want mainline continuous running. But I also want to switch out multiple industries and give the overall feeling that I'm operating a railroad. My hope was to get a lot of this hashed out beforehand, so that when it came time to start laying track, I could move along quickly. Maybe I just need to put up the benchwork and just start laying track. Once I see it in 3D, some of those concepts outlined in the books I read will make more sense to me.
I was once a planner, too, but it's probably just as well most of them never got built.
I found, too, that the more I "planned", the less I actually "built". I prefer now to start with the concept of what I expect the layout to provide, then build whatever fits into the available space. 
My suggestion was merely to offer a solution to using that more-or-less unreachable area by moving one of the existing elements of the original plan. You could just as easily fill that space with a mountain, lake, large industry, or a city scene. In any case, put something there that won't require maintenance beyond the occasional cleaning.Wayne