another concept plan

[Wiredup]

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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.