Bedroom Switching Layout Design

[Omaha Road Man]

Hello all, first post here and thought I'd submit my layout plan for review. I'm modeling the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha (Omaha Road-I know, creative user name right?) in Eau Claire, WI in 1951. Eau Claire was a major junction for the Omaha with one of the lines north to Spooner/Superior/Ashland originating there. There was a major classification yard just to the east of town and a small yard in town with a dedicated switch job to handle local industries and passenger switching. This was the route of the famous CNW 'Twin Cities 400' but besides the flashy streamliners up to 10 passenger trains a day stopped here in 1951-most needed at least some switching of their express/mail consist. My plan focuses on the small yard/depot area and the two major industries in town-a US Rubber tire plant and a paper mill.



The track in the upper left that appears to go off plan is a helix located half in a closer. The helix will go down to a lower level staging area. I won't be tackling the helix right away-there is plenty of other railroad to build first. The helix will likely be the last feature added, once I've gotten the hang of things.

Just looking at the plan as I type this I already have one or two ideas-one being flipping the yard so the ladder is at the bottum and moving/adding a crossover or two to make industry switching easer. I'll wait to do that until I get a bit of feedback though

As always suggestions are welcome and encouraged. I'm sure I've made more than a few bone headed design errors here and am certainly thick skinned-fire away .

[Ralph]

Hi and welcome! Your plan looks like creative use of space to me. I like the operating concept too. Keep us up to date. I have great admiration for any one willing to construct a helix!
Ralph

[Gary S]

Welcome to Big Blue. How do I go about enlarging the image of the layout? When I clicked on the image, it was enlarged but some of the track appears to be missing. Could you post a larger image here?

Thanks, and again, welcome aboard!

[P5se Camelback]

Hey! O.R. Man ...

Welcome to Big Blue!

So the piece of track that appears to be all-by-itself-not-attached-to-anything is actually part of a helix that is mostly in the closet in the upper left? And what takes you to the helix ... I'm guessing the tail of the wye? :?

Looking pretty adventuresome! Good luck and keep us informed! There's a lot of building of stuff going on at this forum, and we not only "talk" about it, we post lots of photos ... or as they are sometimes called ... Fo-Toes or ... Faux-Toes.

Have fun!

We'll watch!

[nachoman]

I like the concept. One concern is being able to reach all the way into the corners. The tracks look a little far back to reach in case of derailments or to uncouple cars.

[ocalicreek]

Welcome to The Gauge, Omaha Road!

First off, the plan looks great. It should provide you with a nice evening's switching work. However, don't put off the helix and staging for too long or you may just have too much fun operating the rest of the layout and it won't get built. In fact, why do you need the staging? If the small yard will hold enough cars for the switch jobs at the paper mill and rubber plant, then use the closet for something else.

Also, how about running the switch lead (I'm guessing that's what it is) for the rubber plant sidings parallel to the wye tail track. You may gain a little more room that way. On that subject, it seems the two major industries are set up the same way, with a switchback configuration. Perhaps you could vary this by changing one to a different configuration. Switchbacks can get old after a while, especially if ALL off the industry spots are accessed via the switchback/lead track.

Other than that, it's a great looking plan. How high will it be?

Also, tell us a little about your modeling background. It helps so we don't assume you're a newbie to the hobby, and not just the forum...unless you are just getting started, in which case, that's a pretty aggressive plan for a first timer! So give us a little history, please.

Thanks for posting and welcome again to The Gauge.

Galen

[Omaha Road Man]

Stupid imageshack, here's a bigger version:

As for modeling experience-very little. Long time armchair modeler, first time layout builder. I am planning on taking it slow though; will probably build the tire plant area first and expand from there.

As far as staging goes, it would be nice for the various passenger trains. I currently don't have any model railroading friends in the area but I would certainly like to meet some people and have more than solo op sessions. Between the passenger trains, transfer jobs from staging, etc you could easily keep 2 or 3 operators quite busy.

[Omaha Road Man]

And revision 1. Didn't label it; everything is still where it was in the first plan.
-Flipped the yard, like it a lot more; got some extra length out of the yard tracks-not critical but can't hurt
-Ran tire plant lead parallel to wye tail track per suggestion
-Made Paper Mill lead a non-switch back per suggestion; it also adds more room for tracks there. Switch arrangement in paper mill area is by no means final

Finances withstanding I am shooting to start construction sometime after the 4th, woot!

[Gary S]

Thanks for resizing the image, ORM. The plan is certainly ambitious, and I appreciate your motivation. Rough count is 25 turn-outs and 120+ feet of track in roughly 70 square feet of actual layout space. Also a helix, and a "reversing loop" at the wye. That's alot fo stuff in a small area!

For my tastes, it is a bit complicated, but that is just me. I understand the desire to pack as much as you can into the limited space. I would consider doing away with some of the extra spurs at the industries which will result in fewer but longer spurs. An example would be in the last drawing in the extreme lower right hand corner where the spur heads almost straight down toward the bottom of the page. Eliminating the branch on that spur would simplify things. Instead of 2 - one car length spurs, you would have 1 - 3 car spur. This can actually add to the operations, as you may have to pull a car already on the spur to place another car behind it, then put the original car back.

Also on the multiple spurs: Do you have enough room to actually put structures there?

Considering the last drawing - there are two tracks entering the yard area from the top and three leaving at the bottom. Would it hamper your operational scheme to simplify to 1 track at the top and two at the bottom? Could some of those tracks serve double duty? I didn't take the time to figure out exactly why those tracks are there, so just throwing some thoughts at you.

[MasonJar]

Looks like a great start. Nice mix of yard, industry, and a bit of mainline for scenery!

Given the size of the room, I would suggest that you eliminate the helix and use either a simple grade to get to staging, or use "surround staging" - the concept, if not invented by, popularized by Mike Hamer in MRP and GMR several years ago. Here's a link to his track plan and photos. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ovar.ca/MemberLayouts/Mike%20Hamer/Hamer.htm">http://ovar.ca/MemberLayouts/Mike%20Hamer/Hamer.htm</a><!-- m -->

One caveat - for surround staging, you need to have exacting trackwork and top notch rolling stock to avoid derailments in hard to access areas.

Andrew

[ocalicreek]

Um...this is N scale, right?

Galen

[Triplex]

Note that only 6 parallel tracks fit in one foot, if that. That's HO spacing.

[ocalicreek]

Note that only 6 parallel tracks fit in one foot, if that. That's HO spacing.

That's what I thought, too, but those turnouts are mighty short.

Galen

[Omaha Road Man]

Yard and industry turnouts are Peco small turnouts. Remember, this layout will be operating 40' cars and short locomotives. In the latest revision mainline turnouts (the ones being used by passenger equipment at least) are Peco medium turnouts.

Here is an overall plan:


Changes in this revision:
-Upgrading mainline turnouts to mediums instead of smalls
-Replacement of random industry spurs in lower left with an interchange-this is more prototypical and will fit the space better
-Added/moved crossovers in yard area to let local switcher handle passenger switching easier
-Re-arranged turnouts at bottom of tire plant where trains exit east leg of the wye

On the last point, here is a comparison of before and after designs of this area:

At the top is the new design, bottom the old. As you can see from my EXCELLENT artistic skills, in the old design trains taking the primary arrival track at the passenger station would have to negotiate three turnouts, making an awkward S curve. In the new design trains going to either track will only have to go through ONE turnout and both options will provide a nice, gentle curve. The new plan uses the same number of turnouts in this area and lets the mainline ones be upgraded to mediums.

And finally, here is what I'm thinking of building first:


This will get me started on what should be fairly straightforward benchwork (I'll probably build this as a shelf) while still having trains to run. I can even attach a temporary staging yard at one or both ends. The paper mill trackage (bottom of plan) is still not finalized but the lead is how I want it so that's not super important.

Man, I'm getting really excited now. My local club should be having a meeting on Tuesday; will be my first time there and hopefully I can make some good contacts. If I get really ambitious I'll start cutting lumber next week...WOOT!