Can you tell I am never done fixing my plans?

My last plan was something I really could of done things with, but ran intoa few problems: lack of experience with laying flex made my layout incredibly unreliable. Nothing could get around the layout with derailing at least 3 times. Not to mention I put in an Sbend that really messed up passenger traffic.... Then, I started getting sick of the duck under to get into the room.

So the above plan is how I combat it.

This is currently in the concept stages. And the track is pretty much all gonna be Kato Unitrack due to the reliability.


blue = mainline
green = coach yard
red = freight yard
yellow = engine mtc

I'm finding Winrail9 to be a real pain in the arse... What has been laid out physically (coach yard, mainline) does not work properly in Winrail9.... ITS SNAP TRACK!!!!!!


Anyways, it will give you a decent idea of what I'm doing here.


The engine mtc facility is largely incomplete. There is one track off the main line that is the "coal" track for the coaling tower. There will be a separate track off the turntable that will switch into a pair of running tracks into the coal tower that does not connect to the rest of the layout.... for space reasons unfortunately.


The green coach yard is where Winrail9 does its dirty dead and really messes things up. There should be two tracks that are connected on both ends, then a stub end track as well.

The mainline is going to lead to a helix that will take it to a second level. But I got this awesome 2x9 area that I wanna put a town in, some hills, and even have the track cross over itself. So I'm thinking a branch line... but I'm at a loss of how to get there... the white tracks is where i'm starting my concept.

The freight section is going to be peco turnouts and atlas flex track, code 80 all the way around. Being straight and level track, I should have no problems with the flex. But it should also give me enough room to put down most of my rolling stock or all of it.


The orange section is the benchwork as its constructed currently. I can squeeze the north section to a 30" depth if I need too... but right now I'm pretty happy with the reaches.

Luke,
I sympathize with your frustration. When I look at this new concept and your concepts of the past and all of the problems you've had, I think for you, simpler would be better. It seems your biting off too much and getting frusturated too quickly. I really think you should shy away from a helix as this brings a whole new world of frusturations as well. It does open up possiblities and we've seen a few use them with satisfaction but....

My last layout was an out n back. I had a lot of fun with it as I pretty much liked to watch the trains run and it gave me a lot of mainline to do just that. It appeared as though it were a double mainline but because of the out n back, it was just 1 really long one.
What if, we did that with your space? Simplify a little...

This is a very simple concept plan using Kato's 12-3/8" diameter. I tried to pull off several things in your space. First, I tried to minimize your reach to 2'4 as reaching way across the layout gets old after a while. I also tried to get you a lot of mainline with some industrial areas while keeping things simple.
Let's start at B...
lower level yard area... keep your yard small but you still have room for a turntable and a roundhouse as well as some engine maintenance stuff and 4 or 5 tracks for freight.
C. This is where both lines start to climb at a 2% grade up into the hills towards D. Also in this area, you can add some industries or something to add interest.
D. Both lines go around a big sweeping curve and continue up into the hills along the backdrop.

E. The track does not have to hug the back wall in this area. By now, you may have enough rise to accomplish the 2" needed to cross over the tracks at C if you would like.
F.. Not much happenning here.
G. The upper tracks could cross over the lower in this area creating some intersting terrain.
A. UP high, you could make a mountain town or something in the middle of the loop or hide the back of the track inside of a tunnel.
I kept it simple but you can wiggle it up here and there for more interest... just don't do it too much or your trains will look like they are on a roller coaster so to speak. Thoughts?
This simple design has a mainline stretch of about 92'. Play with it. See if it gives you any ideas.

thats pretty fantastic, and it actually works pretty decently. I think I will play with that, thank you very much!

I do agree, I think I am biting off more than I can chew... this looks like it could be one of the solutions to the whole mess!

Wiredup Wrote:

<...>

The orange section is the benchwork as its constructed currently. I can squeeze the north section to a 30" depth if I need too... but right now I'm pretty happy with the reaches.

Couple of comments:

I assume layout is up against the walls on all sides ?

If I assume that your squares are 1 foot squares (and not 6" squares or some such thing), you seem to have too long reaches in all three corners and along the entire north wall.

Remember that the diagonal across a 12"x12" foot square is about 17" long (follows from Pythagoras theorem about length of sides of right angle triangles - longest side is square root of sum of squares of sides). So the reach in e.g the lower left hand corner is about 51" (3 x 17").

Very narrow walk-in passage in the lower right corner - looks like about 15" or so ? So you probably still need to duck under at this point ?

Yard ladder is branching away from you, rather than towards you, so whatever is on the closest (long) tracks will tend to hide from view (and make harder to access) what is on the shorter tracks further back. Doesn't help that the yard is as far from the aisle as you can get.

I can't really comment on the balance and planned traffic flow of your track plan as a whole. I am having trouble visualizing your planned traffic flow from your plan.

This level seems yard heavy, but that may even out for the layout as a whole - you seem to maybe indicate that you will have a staging level below and an industry/destination branch above.

Might be a good idea to describe the vision/goal you have for your layout - the concept behind the plan as a whole:

If you were to describe the layout (rather than track plan) to a stranger - where/what type of area is this supposed to be ? When/what era is this supposed to be ? What kind(s) of trains will you run? How long trains ? How many trains ? How often ? Where will trains come from, what will you do with them, where will they go to ? How many operators will you have ?

I think I would have held off a little on starting to build the benchwork just yet, and work a little longer on first figuring out what your layout vision/goal is. It is often easier to figure out a track plan once you have clearly formulated what you design goal is.

Stein

steinjr Wrote:

Wiredup Wrote:

<...>

The orange section is the benchwork as its constructed currently. I can squeeze the north section to a 30" depth if I need too... but right now I'm pretty happy with the reaches.

Couple of comments:

I assume layout is up against the walls on all sides ?

If I assume that your squares are 1 foot squares (and not 6" squares or some such thing), you seem to have too long reaches in all three corners and along the entire north wall.

Remember that the diagonal across a 12"x12" foot square is about 17" long (follows from Pythagoras theorem about length of sides of right angle triangles - longest side is square root of sum of squares of sides). So the reach in e.g the lower left hand corner is about 51" (3 x 17").

Very narrow walk-in passage in the lower right corner - looks like about 15" or so ? So you probably still need to duck under at this point ?

Yard ladder is branching away from you, rather than towards you, so whatever is on the closest (long) tracks will tend to hide from view (and make harder to access) what is on the shorter tracks further back. Doesn't help that the yard is as far from the aisle as you can get.

I can't really comment on the balance and planned traffic flow of your track plan as a whole. I am having trouble visualizing your planned traffic flow from your plan.

This level seems yard heavy, but that may even out for the layout as a whole - you seem to maybe indicate that you will have a staging level below and an industry/destination branch above.

Might be a good idea to describe the vision/goal you have for your layout - the concept behind the plan as a whole:

If you were to describe the layout (rather than track plan) to a stranger - where/what type of area is this supposed to be ? When/what era is this supposed to be ? What kind(s) of trains will you run? How long trains ? How many trains ? How often ? Where will trains come from, what will you do with them, where will they go to ? How many operators will you have ?

I think I would have held off a little on starting to build the benchwork just yet, and work a little longer on first figuring out what your layout vision/goal is. It is often easier to figure out a track plan once you have clearly formulated what you design goal is.

Stein

Hey, thanks for the comments.

The benchwork has been built for a year as this is my third attempt at a track plan. So I'm just working with the benchwork I have already constructed, I can still add or remove, thats the beautify of lattice frame.

Anyways:

Transition era in the rocky mountains
Canadian National and Canadian Pacific are the two roads featured here
Passenger traffic is a big focus point for me. I love watching passenger trains wind their way through the scenery... but I also wanna do some switch work.

So my goal is just to have a layout can have at least one train, two perfered of course) doing their buissiness along the rails, while I can do some switching at the yard or an industry. I also wanna have a town... but I'm starting to accept more and more that I won't get it all in.

I've attatched some visionary photos of things I would like to get into the layout:












I'm gonna take some ideas from that plan that Trainnut shared.


The entrance to the room according to my measure is 19" and I can walk through with no problems, with room to spare. ... aside from 2 other guys I hang out with often, I'm the biggest guy I know. I'm not "fit" but I'm not "fat" either. Just a beer shelf.

There still is a duckunder to get into the closet which is in the north west corner, thankfuly I don't need access there often.

Wiredup Wrote:Transition era in the rocky mountains. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific are the two roads featured here. Passenger traffic is a big focus point for me. I love watching passenger trains wind their way through the scenery... but I also wanna do some switch work.

So my goal is just to have a layout can have at least one train, two perfered of course) doing their buissiness along the rails, while I can do some switching at the yard or an industry. I also wanna have a town... but I'm starting to accept more and more that I won't get it all in.

Okay - watching a passenger train winding it's way through the mountains is one main goal.

What is your desired viewing perspective - helicopter pilot view or trackside railfan view ? The helicopter pilot view (seeing the train from above for miles and miles) is hard to carry off in a sensible way on a small layout. The trackside railfan view, watching the train pass in front of you through a scene, before you turn around (and move your viewpoint to another scene) is fairly easy to create, even in a small room.

Trick to making it believable is to have benchwork fairly high and having the tracks pass once through each scene. In a regular sized bedroom, you have room for 3-5 (max) scenes, preferably three scenes spaced about 120 degrees apart, so you only see one scene at a time.

Is a closed loop a must so you can see the same train running through the same scene again and again, or do you want to simulate staying at the scene for a while and seeing several trains pass in that time (ie having some kind of staging on both sides of the scene you are watching, so there is room to keep a procession of eastbound and westbound trains waiting in the wings to make their appearance on stage, one after the other ?

Do you want to have a passenger railroad station as one of your scenes ? What kind of station - end of the line or somewhere in the middle of some line ? Small town depot along the line or a big city terminal with a coach yard ?

Do you really need a full freight yard, coach yard and engine service facilities, or could your desire for switching and engine service e.g. be covered by having one of your scenes be a passenger station where a switcher will take off some sleeper cars or a buffet car that will go on another (later) train in the opposite direction, and adding e.g. a mail car to your passenger train consist, while your road engine takes on water and coal (if a steam engine), or refuels diesel (if a diesel engine) ?

There are probably quite a few other questions that could be asked, but you probably get my drift - if you focus your design effort on thinking about e.g. three scenes you want, it becomes easier to consider what should be seen in those scenes and how they should be operated, and thus easier to come up with a track plan.

Smile,
Stein

This is my update from tonight. I laid out the kato unitrack in sections to see how scenes would work together... and winrail9 makes it look a LOT squishier than it really is! Especially in the lower section.

The reversing loop on the lower level and the return loop on the upper level are 3" height apart. The darker the mainline/blue track the higher in elevation. They are also not as close to the coaling tower/mtc tracks in yellow as you see in the plan... the skinniest part before the turnouts between the yellow and blue track is actually 4".... much larger than the .5" gap shown in the plan I laid out this whole section physicallly with the unitrack, so I know what it'll look like, I'll post a pic later.


The area where the helix used to be will now be a small industry of some kind.... lumber probably

The upper area concept is thus:
West of center the raised tracks when they cross over will be Via-duct/girder style bridges. Other wise they will be raised up. This west section will be my "mountain scene"
East of center the raised tracks will actually be more of a plateau than anything, and another small town will be here with the walther stanta fe freight/passenger station here. however, I will probaby have to be @ max elevation by this location prior to where the track darkens...

I shrunk the yard a bit. It should still serve all my needs, but I shrunk it to fit in the upper main a bit more.

the lower reverse section will be completley "under ground" I'll be making the upper section removeable in case of derailments.


Contrary to popular belief, the reaches are just fine for how I have it setup. in fact I can reach all four corners where there is track without getting up on my stool or anything.

I'm gonna do another plan based on Trainnuts full concept. I'll probably copy the mainline and expand on it, and see which one I like better and is in need of less help.

steinjr Wrote:

Wiredup Wrote:Transition era in the rocky mountains. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific are the two roads featured here. Passenger traffic is a big focus point for me. I love watching passenger trains wind their way through the scenery... but I also wanna do some switch work.

So my goal is just to have a layout can have at least one train, two perfered of course) doing their buissiness along the rails, while I can do some switching at the yard or an industry. I also wanna have a town... but I'm starting to accept more and more that I won't get it all in.

Okay - watching a passenger train winding it's way through the mountains is one main goal.

What is your desired viewing perspective - helicopter pilot view or trackside railfan view ? The helicopter pilot view (seeing the train from above for miles and miles) is hard to carry off in a sensible way on a small layout. The trackside railfan view, watching the train pass in front of you through a scene, before you turn around (and move your viewpoint to another scene) is fairly easy to create, even in a small room.

Trick to making it believable is to have benchwork fairly high and having the tracks pass once through each scene. In a regular sized bedroom, you have room for 3-5 (max) scenes, preferably three scenes spaced about 120 degrees apart, so you only see one scene at a time.

Is a closed loop a must so you can see the same train running through the same scene again and again, or do you want to simulate staying at the scene for a while and seeing several trains pass in that time (ie having some kind of staging on both sides of the scene you are watching, so there is room to keep a procession of eastbound and westbound trains waiting in the wings to make their appearance on stage, one after the other ?

Do you want to have a passenger railroad station as one of your scenes ? What kind of station - end of the line or somewhere in the middle of some line ? Small town depot along the line or a big city terminal with a coach yard ?

Do you really need a full freight yard, coach yard and engine service facilities, or could your desire for switching and engine service e.g. be covered by having one of your scenes be a passenger station where a switcher will take off some sleeper cars or a buffet car that will go on another (later) train in the opposite direction, and adding e.g. a mail car to your passenger train consist, while your road engine takes on water and coal (if a steam engine), or refuels diesel (if a diesel engine) ?

There are probably quite a few other questions that could be asked, but you probably get my drift - if you focus your design effort on thinking about e.g. three scenes you want, it becomes easier to consider what should be seen in those scenes and how they should be operated, and thus easier to come up with a track plan.

Smile,
Stein

I love the insight here! You caught me posting while you were posting, so I'll address this post in addition to my last revision:

A) The viewing perspective is currently "helicopter" I guess. bench work has ground level 3 feet off the ground. So it is fairly low (I had it at 4 feet before, but found it too hard to reach farther than 20" at this point. I gained an additional 16" of reach by lowering it a foot.) I can always lower myself, in fact my foot stool that I sit on puts me @ "railfan" level.

B) For scenes, yes I want a passenger station. In fact, a medium sized terminal is one of the things I'm focusing on. I don't need a huge freight yard. I only got about 20-30 pieces of freight at the moment...mostly CN box cars. I got more passenger cars than anything! (8 CN Rapido cars, 4 CN Walthers, 4 CP Rapido on order, 10 CN/CP Concor, Daylight starter set, 8 UP Kato set.... you get the idea). Hence that whole lower/side section... which is my terminal currently. I need a long station section (48" minimum for an 8 car train alone) which takes upa stupid amount of space. The engine mtc. facility gets compacted in every revision, but will not disappear. I need a roundhouse/turntable on my layout, this is something just as important as the passenger terminal. Right now it fits into two small squares (3ft x 1ft, 1 ft by 6")

I have a few other scenes in the revision... the north west provides a mountain scene, 90% scenery. The south west provides room for small indsutry scene, and the north east is currently a mess.... but I'd like it to be a town.

So far my revision comes closest to my original plan without going overboard. But I'd still like to get another industry in somewhere.... I could extend the benchwork to 3 ft on the norther section make it a two tiered scene (ie, in the lower part of the mountains I could put in a small mine or something...) and I'd still have the reach...but getting in and behind would be a bit more bothersome.

Just a quick sketch of one possible conceptual way to get fit in three reasonably sized scenes and double ended staging (representing both east and west staging) in the area you have:



Scene B (which would be the station scene) could be about 18-24" deep and 12 feet long, from about 1/3rd of the way up the left wall to about 2/3rds of the way across the the top wall, while scene A and B each could be about 24" deep and 7 feet long, with about 2 feet for a transition area between each scene.

Should be possible to fit in a passenger depot w/platform for an 8 car trains (about 4 1/2 feet long, including the engine), a couple of station sidings, including perhaps a team track where freight cars of any kind could be dropped off (and unloaded into the customer's truck in some way), and some basic en route engine service facilities - like a coaling tower & water.

Even though I have drawn staging as being "behind" the mainline (ie closer to the walls), it obviously should be as far out towards the aisle as you can make it, so you can see and reach okay. 6" from track level to track level may seem a lot, but once you figure in the thickness of the layout above (at least 2"), it is not a lot of space. Might be that a using a couple of helixes at the ends instead of a nolix (continuous grade) would work better here, to allow you a full 4" between the top of the trains in staging and the bottom of the shelf above, to comfortably see and reach in.

I probably also would have put the main level at 48-52" off the floor, which would put the tracks at the staging level at about 42-46" off the floor. That should be a decent height for operating the layout sitting on an office chair with wheels under, and standing up to fix things or work on the layout. As I mentioned before, the helicopter viewing perspective is hard to carry off in a convincing way.

To get an idea about what kind of stuff could potensially fit into a 12 foot station scene in N scale, I tried to work up a medium sized RR station with engine change/engine service tracks, a couple of passing sidings, a passenger depot, some storage/yard tracks and two/three industries:



I used Peco code 80 medium turnouts and flextrack, so it would not be a drop-in design using sectional track, but it may still give you some rough ideas about things you potentially could do with such a station.

I am not familiar with Canadian Railroading in the Rockies, so it may very well be that the elevator scene is severely misplaced - feel free to replace it with a lumber mill or some kind of mine related industry or whatever seems appropriate for the type of scene you are trying to create.

Smile,
Stein

This is an interesting experience for me. I learned "layout planning" before "the day of software". Quite honestly, I'm very happy I didn't have Computer Aided Design, as a layout planning tool. Too frustrating for my tired old brain.
That said though, how about printing out your plan (just the track) full size and then lay the paper trackwork down. Any places where it looks like there's going to be a problem, you can adjust the paper track to make the correction, and then go back to the program and make the required changes, re-print, and re-lay those changes. Once everything fits and flows, you can glue the paper down, and then fasten the real track down on the paper, and hide the paper under the ballast.
The beauty of that process, is that when later on you want to make a change in the layout to compensate for a new industry, or change of scene, you can use the process for the new track/area track plan.
I choose not to use CAD ( I can and do for some things, as in my "new modules" thread ), but I can see where someone else could use it to great advantage. CAD is a tool, that must be wielded with skill, it's not an answer.
Just a thought.

Sumpter250 Wrote:This is an interesting experience for me. I learned "layout planning" before "the day of software". Quite honestly, I'm very happy I didn't have Computer Aided Design, as a layout planning tool. Too frustrating for my tired old brain.
That said though, how about printing out your plan (just the track) full size and then lay the paper trackwork down. Any places where it looks like there's going to be a problem, you can adjust the paper track to make the correction, and then go back to the program and make the required changes, re-print, and re-lay those changes. Once everything fits and flows, you can glue the paper down, and then fasten the real track down on the paper, and hide the paper under the ballast.
The beauty of that process, is that when later on you want to make a change in the layout to compensate for a new industry, or change of scene, you can use the process for the new track/area track plan.
I choose not to use CAD ( I can and do for some things, as in my "new modules" thread ), but I can see where someone else could use it to great advantage. CAD is a tool, that must be wielded with skill, it's not an answer.
Just a thought.

yup, thats how I came up with my two plans I posted here. I actually laid them out physically with the unitrack and looked at how it all works together.





Thanks for the help steinjr. I'll be seeing what I can do with those concepts.

I've been playing with translating both your concepts into winrail9 and not liking what I'm coming up with...

I'm gonna lay out some sections physically with unitrack and see if I can visualize it a bit better.... I seem to not actually have enough room with your medium sized terminal design to put it onto the layout... but might be also trying to expand on it too much (ie: double ladder stub ended freight track with team track and caboose tracks. 5-6 stall roundhouse instead of 3...)

Wiredup Wrote:I've been playing with translating both your concepts into winrail9 and not liking what I'm coming up with...

I'm gonna lay out some sections physically with unitrack and see if I can visualize it a bit better.... I seem to not actually have enough room with your medium sized terminal design to put it onto the layout... but might be also trying to expand on it too much (ie: double ladder stub ended freight track with team track and caboose tracks. 5-6 stall roundhouse instead of 3...)

Both - you can't fit in as much when you use sectional track as when you use flextrack.

And you (like all of us, including me) need to work on learning that "less is more".

Look at Dr Wayne's layout - not so many tracks in each town, but excellent operations and realism.

If you want sectional track - go for fewer tracks than in my sketch. And you will be forced to use the given radii etc.

Here is an attempt to draw out the main part of the yard in my plan using Kato sectional N scale track, medium turnouts, mostly 19" radius curve sections, and a selection of various length straight track - I have a couple of fudge connections at the lower end of the sidings in front of the RR station - I ran out of patience coming up with the totally correct track sections for a perfect fit.



Here is the plan using Peco N scale flextrack:



I think it would be pretty hard to fit anything more into the yard area using sectional track.

Grin,
Stein

"If you want sectional track - go for fewer tracks than in my sketch. And you will be forced to use the given radii etc."

This is the one true "monkey wrench in the works" of sectional track.....fixed radii track. My first layout....[attachment=3059] Built in 195.....8? I believe, used flex track(straight), and sectional turnouts, and curves.
The one thing I really like about flex track is.......flex! The typical, simpler trackplanning software, seems to be designed around sectional/limited radii choice/track. There are programs that allow for variable radius curves.

oh I know all about flextrack, and have attempted 3 layouts with it. My first nscale layout actually kinda worked too. but I was using sectional for my curves.

My last two have just been terrible! I've even tried some of them tips like soldering while the rail straight, then forming the curve and caulking it down to let it drive overnight.

My reason for going to unitrack is the reliability and because it's more resuable than flex. If I screw up, I can just pull it up without blowing what feels like hundreds of dollars on flextrack....