another concept plan

[steinjr]

humm... I"ve been playing all week, I think I'm upto concept 9 now in my save files...but nothing is really jumping out at me.

I know the feeling - I took me four major changes of focus to arrive at what I really wanted to model, and the plan I am building is version 61 of that plan :-)

Maybe the problem is that you haven't found your vision yet - maybe you need to look at more pictures of other layouts and prototype pictures to get a really clear image of what you want to model.

I've also, at the recommendation of my wife, planned out a couple of HO plans.... I'm using 22" radius minimum curves for those, and have designed a folded dogbone style layout, but find that in a 10x10 room its kinda tricky to have a full run and still get in some switching... is 22" radius large enough?

In HO i'd be running a Bachmann 2-10-2, a 4-8-2 U1f 6060 that I got in a Presidents Choice train set, Bachmann 2-8-0, and a True Lines Trains FP9. (I actually own all but the FP9 right now... ) And rolling stock would be a pair of Rapido coaches, a Rapido steam genny, a cut of box cars, and some hoppers. So not a whole lot of stuff in comparison.

22" radius is plenty for small engines (e.g. 4-axle diesels or 2-8-0 steam engines and say 40-foot cars). And a 10 x 10 room. Not sure about the 2-10-2 and the passenger cars.

Of course - it is fairly easy to make curves a lot more generous and get room for more scenes - just put a plank across the opening by the door, and you can have 30"+ radius curves - for continuous running you run across the plank to complete the loop.

E.g. like this:



Not ideal to have a duck-under/lift-out in front of the door, but model railroading is often a question of trade-offs and compromises.

Anyways - if you are going to do dog-bone shaped layouts with turnback curves at the end, I would definitely recommend staying in N scale - going to H0 scale just makes it worse - you can reach in across 30" of table to reach the innermost end of a N scale 14-15" radius turnback loop, even at a fairly high shelf, but it is pretty hard to reach across 44-46" of table to reach the innermost end of a H0 scale 22-23" radius turnback loop.

Smile,
Stein