I like your plan. You can serve the industries by your yard without interfering with yard operations. You can assemble trains in the yard. You have a bit of a yard lead going to the main. You can call locos from your service area and have them hook up with a train ready to depart in a clockwise direction around the layout. When the train reaches the other side the loco can pull a couple of cars at a time from the train and use that spur in the lower right as a switchback to serve the industry and interchange on the upper right part of the layout. Those are so called "trailing" spurs that let you back into them w/o having to run your locomotive around any cars. You may want to make that spur a little longer to accommodate more cars and the loco if you can. You have a passing siding nearby so the loco could also serve the pier track heading in the opposite direction, a so called "facing" spur that will require your loco to get behind a car to serve this track. The same is true of the spur in the lower right. Once you have finished using it as a switchback for the loco and cars headed to the interchange you can do a runaround move and push cars into that spur for whatever industry you have there. Looks pretty good and full of operations potential to me.

Holy cow, you're editting it faster than I can keep up! I think there are still some issues here though, but your changes are on the right track.

I think the most important thing you have to remember, is that these track plan programs rarely let you see just how big the trains really are. Some of these tracks and spurs on your track plan probably could not support the kinds of locomotives and cars you want to use. You also need to give your trains, industries and other stuff some "breathing room".

When a layout becomes to cramped with tracks and buildings, it no longer looks realisitic. Here is a quick edit I did.

If you're doing a "smaller" operation, You probably don't need all those shops and maitenence tracks. Your original engine house tracks were also too small to hold anything bigger than maybe an SW. You would to better to just make the "shop" the new engine house, and line up a few Geeps in there. This lets you have the realestate around it to add scenery, such as fuel trucks, MoW vehicles, roads, and other equipment.

On the lower right side, you already noticed your need to connect those tracks, rather than trying to use the switch back. I did not include the corner industry, but you might be able to fit a small one in there. On the other hand, you might also be better off filling that land with more "town" or other scenery.

It looks like you definitely got the pier right, and all you need here is a run around track, which I added.

On the upper right, you might be a little cramped still (particularly with the left most spur closest to the farm), but this isn't too bad.





Before you started posting these revised plans, I also did this edit... which i'll post anyways. The one thing I did silly here, is put two industries too close together on the lower right... but you can slide the one industry up. I left the upper left open.

What scale is this layout?

GEC,I would keep the 2 stall engine house for light running repairs and besides that it looks good.

railohio Wrote:What scale is this layout?

The first post said HO, which is why I suspect he needs to space things out a little more. If this were N scale, I could see stuffing it with more tracks.

Brakie Wrote:GEC,I would keep the 2 stall engine house for light running repairs and besides that it looks good.

I forgot to relabel the "shop" building as an engine house on the first plan, and wasn't sure if it would fit well on the second plan due to the flow of tracks.


The original one he had looked a bit small. If the grid is a 1' grid, then the original engine house was less than a foot long. If we're modeling UP/CSX, and we're using modern road switch power (GP40-2s, GP38-2s, etc), those engines are just slightly over 8". If my powers of estimation are worth their salt, it seems that you would barely be able to fit a single one of these engines per track, and they potentially wouldn't fit all the way in the engine house. by using the former shop tracks as engine house tracks, you can put a longer engine house more appropriate for a GP sized diesel.

The shop is approx to scale, its the Walters Railroad shop and I have already mostly put it together, so its going somewhere. Thanks for the help. Am seriously thinking about getting rid of the bott right industry as well as clearing up some space in the yard. perhaps just the shop, with some small maintenance( sanding etc) on the spur to the shop, and then a small engine house somewhere, perhaps the pikestuff model.

So, I have made a couple tweeks to the layout per suggestions and I think I am happy with the way things look overall. Mainly, deciding that the walthers engine shop (which im going to use b/c it was $ and time consuming) is going to being bashed a little in order to make it smaller into just two stalls for the purpose of making more space as it is huge and sticking the smaller engine house in front of it as it is smaller. Smaller loco maintenance on the 'spurs" to these houses (sanding, fueling etc.) I think that this works, of course as building commences(which I cant wait for!) im sure things will evolve. Not sure exactly what industries I will have yet.
Any good ideas?????? thanks!

[attachment=16033]

I'd like mention as I find it funny and certainly stereotypical of myself that this is where I started (a 4x8) when first thinking up this plan for a layout....

[attachment=16032]

..........and you can see where i ended up

What is the purpose of the track connecting between the "small gulf side town" and the brown passing track? Is this the mainline? It seems redundant, but I'm sure I'm nitpicking at this point.

I liked it better the way it was since you could drop cars at industries instead of just running loops..

Brakie Wrote:I liked it better the way it was since you could drop cars at industries instead of just running loops..

Are you referring to the last image of a track plan Brakie? That's his early plan that later developed into the one he's tweaking now.

As for the extra passing siding it seems to me that this enhances operations, making it easier to switch cars on the right side of the layout.

What kind of industries to create? I guess it comes down to your preferences, whether you want to reflect the main industries of any particular area you are modeling, and perhaps what kind of rolling stock you have now.

Actually its Green Elite Cab's idea..
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and perhaps what kind of rolling stock you have now.
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Yes its better to plan your industries around the cars you owned and if a person just happens to be starting afresh or backdating he/she can choose cars that fits the industries they wish to model.

Brackie,this is not green elite cabs layout plan, its mine, and ive been visualizing and working on it for awhile. Certainly borrowed ideas from others, and tweeked and altered it as people more knowledgeable than me (including GEC) have made suggestions on how to make things better, as this was the point of posting my plan on this forum in the first place. the smaller 4x8 track plan was the first layout i created a long time ago, the other is where i have currently ended up.

GCE, the brown( or red) track is the main. the tracks coming off of the main are a small "lead" if you will, to the industry spurs. Did not want to have to back out onto the main so much and wanted to be able to pull forward off the spurs onto the main in either direction , and I am not sure how I would access those industry spurs without those tracks connecting to the main. If you think its wrong or have an idea on hoe i could do it better, would love to hear it!


I have tried to do some research on the area(north florida) to find out main industries in the region. florida typically I have read is alot of limestone, and intermodal, which works for the port/wharf area. Also, tropicana orange juice lol. check out this youtube video, its neat. florida to newjersey in 156 seconds (GE juice train) <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8mk2HSJUc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8mk2HSJUc</a><!-- m --> Rolling stock I have currently are mostly box cars, and come covered hoppers. which i guess serves the farm area well as I want to have a stock yard and some big grain elevators, silos etc. Just have to think of some others I guess, but thats the fun part of it!

I'm thinking some type of forestry/loggin operation would be cool, as we have a lot of planted pine plantations in the area.

Brackie,this is not green elite cabs layout plan, its mine, and ive been visualizing and working on it for awhile.
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Oh! my bad short memory span..Apologizes sir.

I like the industrial switching since it will add to the operation of the layout and if I was building that layout that would be the master plan.

No problem man!

I just put up the two layout in comparison with one another because I thought it was funny how things evolved. Also, to point out how much more you can do than a standard 4x8 layout that many people build, in just about the same amount of space! Much more interesting opportunities are afforded to you when you stay away from the 4x8.

FlaRailFan Wrote:GCE, the brown( or red) track is the main. the tracks coming off of the main are a small "lead" if you will, to the industry spurs. Did not want to have to back out onto the main so much and wanted to be able to pull forward off the spurs onto the main in either direction , and I am not sure how I would access those industry spurs without those tracks connecting to the main. If you think its wrong or have an idea on hoe i could do it better, would love to hear it!

Nah, the plan is pretty good, I would tweak it as shown below. I'd remove the long crossover on the middle right, and add a crossover (in orange), on the lower right. Your original idea isn't necessarily wrong, but railroads typically tried to avoid any unnecessary track or turnouts, since they cost money to maintain and require extra attention.

I removed the one redundant crossover, and added another in orange near the bottom right.



In reality, you could also just run your locals with a locomotive on each end. This is fairly common practice on the industrial tracks around here in NJ, and I don't see why things would be done differently in florida. If you are using a DCC system and similar engines, you should be able to run the consist fairly easily.

Quote:I have tried to do some research on the area(north florida) to find out main industries in the region. florida typically I have read is alot of limestone, and intermodal, which works for the port/wharf area. Also, tropicana orange juice lol. check out this youtube video, its neat. florida to newjersey in 156 seconds (GE juice train) <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8mk2HSJUc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8mk2HSJUc</a><!-- m --> Rolling stock I have currently are mostly box cars, and come covered hoppers. which i guess serves the farm area well as I want to have a stock yard and some big grain elevators, silos etc. Just have to think of some others I guess, but thats the fun part of it!

I'm thinking some type of forestry/loggin operation would be cool, as we have a lot of planted pine plantations in the area.

What you want to run is very important to the track plan. The trackplan must revolve around what you want to run. The intermodal and Orange Juice trains are probably to large to use them as an industry using the plan as it is now.

A grain elevator is fine, but I don't think there are many modern stock yards served by rail anymore, and even if there are, I don't know of any "modern" stock car offerings.