Dan's new layout thread.

[danielb]

Mountain man - nothing greater than 2% all the way, with lots of sections of level track throughout the gradient to allow the locos to have a break every now and again.

Cheers for all the feedback chaps. Perhaps hand built track on the ENTIRE layout might be a bit... overly ambitious. To be honest there are areas where I am going to need to hand build crossovers and such, so figured I might as well go the whole hog!

The more I study the plan the more I feel that perhaps PECO track would be wiser. Maybe I could go for hand build track on the switching areas? We'll see what I settle on in the end.

Still, everything is in a bit of a state of flux at the moment - everything is subject to change! I've not even started building it yet and I've already tweaked the plan!

For the setting, Georgia is possibly the setting for the upper deck at least. Not sure about the lower deck, mind you. I'm definitely open to suggestions. I do like the idea of the Appalachian mountains as a setting, as I've always been fond of layouts set there. Help and advice would be most welcome.

I have been sitting and studying the plan and it seemed a little one sided, so to speak - all the action (hidden staging, classification yard, etc) was all on the bottom deck.

I figured it's probably wiser to have a reason for the main line trains to be running whilst the operators of the switching districts on the two decks are doing their thing.

As such, I've removed the passing loop on the top deck before the transition from main layout to the switching district and have replaced it with a slightly smaller interchange yard. This will give 3 visible staging tracks on the top deck and 4 on the bottom deck, allowing for the main line operator to run a sequence of 7 trains over time.

Start one train from the bottom deck and one from the top deck heading toward each other. Hold the train from the bottom deck in the passing loop part way along the main line, and allow the descending train to pass it before proceeding.

When the trains reach the other yards they will be broken down and switched to the various industries, whilst the switchers set out another train for the locos to take back in the opposite direction.

To give the main line operator something a little more interesting to do, there will be industries and depots along the main line route, allowing for a local train to be sent out and switched should the switching district crews need more time to finish switching out the cars from the arriving trains to form the departing ones.

In addition, it will allow for a more challenging schedule to run from having to weave the local train in and out of the mainline run whilst the through trains are moving directly from yard to yard.

Due to this new plan, I have also removed the hidden storage altogether as it is no longer required, and have filled the space on the lower deck with more industries and a depot.

As for the line at 3. on the initial plan that fed into the hidden staging, I have turned that into a reversing loop for storage of the local train.

Except for these two changes, the rest of the plan remains the same.

New 3D rendering of the main layout, as well as a new trackplan for the lower deck industrial district are below. As always, feedback is most appreciated.





Also, here are a couple more images to help with seeing where everything is. First the track plan for the main layout:



Plus another view of the 3D rendering, this time from the location of the upper level staging: