09-18-2011, 09:31 AM
Justinmiller171 Wrote:So here are the two track-plans I am deciding between for the Rahway Valley Industrial Railroad(RVI)
1.
Pros:
It is an entire short-line
Lots of room for scenery
interesting operation
Cons:
Stuck with modeling a short-line
Doesn't use some of my favorite rolling stock
2.
Pros:
Uses all of my rolling stock
Includes some of my favorite industries
Able to model almost any railroad I want(Including a shortline)
Includes staging area
Cons:
Compressed
No interchange
Not as much room for scenery
Jason, maybe some of theses suggestions will help with your decision process.
Since the first one is a short line and you want a class 1 and you can't run your favorite equipment, that one might be eliminated.
Looking at the cons for the second one, Compressed-most of your modeling will require compression somewhere. The La Mesa Club layout at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum is HUGE. The operators aisle is 260 feet long, but they are trying to model Tehachapi, and had to compress everything to 1/3 of the scale space! Even with that compression, they had to invent some novel ways to make scenery and trackage accessible for maintenance. The San Diego Model Railroad Club in the same building is modeling Carriso Gorge. I don't know the details, but I'm sure that they compressed that layout as well to fit the space, and it is so big that the visitor's view of the Carriso Gorge and trestle is looking up at the trestle over head and there isn't room in the building to actually view the trestle from the very bottom of the gorge!
2. No interchange-Not a problem, your interchange is off the modeled portion of the layout. In effect your interchange is in the boxes, drawers, or where ever you store your trains when they are not on the layout. Even if you had an interchange on a plan, 99% or whatever class 1 you were modeling would be off of the modeled portion of the layout.
3. Lack of room for scenery-Not a big deal on a layout designed to be used in a small dorm room. You will graduate from college one day and embark on a career, get a house, and hopefully have room for the "dream layout." At that time, you can salvage parts of this layout, and build the new layout with space for scenery, interchange tracks, less compression, and whatever else you want. You can't fit a layout like Gary has built in Texas in a dorm room, so don't try. Just build what you have room for, and enjoy it until you are in a position to build something bigger.