another concept plan

[TrainNut]

Simply looking at it by how many switches you have had and have now, there's not much difference. In the very first plan at the beginning of this thread, you had 37 switches of which 8 of those appeared to be a double crossover. The yard consisted of 7 tracks with a couple of runarounds.
This latest plan has 32 switches of which 12 of those appear to be double crossovers. However, this yard has 9 tracks, also with a couple of runarounds.
I have to wonder... what will be the primary function of the yard? Will you actually be making up/breaking down trains OR using it as a parking lot for staging?
I think the biggest breakthrough you've had on simplicity is forgetting about trying to build this as two levels and making it work all on one.
Let's see the rest of your thoughts and how the bottom half ties into the top half.

[Wiredup]

Well.... we got the insight... lets see how this concept looks completed:







Its hard to tell from the profile... but there is some elevations going on here.


I'm getting three scenes here...and I'll admit, the two seem a lil cramped, I'll probably extend one of the of the "levels" into the town area... depending on how it looks when I lay it out with sectional (the beauty of unitrack!)

By the time the tracks cross over the station platform tracks (the pair that get crossed) the elevation is at 4 inches. Once the train overlaps itself again... its at 6 inches max elevation. The max grade is surprisingly only 2% (I know, I was shocked too...but thats what Winrail says!!!) with 2" clearances minimum whenever tracks cross.

This puts ALL the switching in the terminal, and just lets the train manouver through the layout on its own where I can focus on scenery...

I got a few other ideas to modify the plan a bit, but keep the basics in there... (ie, put the town on the 4" height... and the 0" height would be a tunnel that just comes out for abit. kinda like this.....




As for the yard... I do plan on building and dispersing trains from it.

[steinjr]

Pretty similar to your first plan.

You claimed that your main goal was to watch trains run through mountain scenery. Is your true main goal really to build a layout that basically just is one big yard ?

This layout shows no track of attempts to build sincere/believable railroad scenes (ie scenes where the track pass just once through each scene). What you have here seems to be a basic toy train type layout - where the point is to cram in as much track as possible, and where the layout is intended to be watched from above.

If those are your true design goals, then it's fine. If your goal is still to watch trains pass through realistic looking mountain scenes, you need to make your layout higher and concentrate on "less is more".

My advice, your choice.

well it's not done yet I still got the whole left and lower side of the room to work with, which is where I'd put the scenes you speak of. I guess I should complete the plan first.

I do wanna watch trains go through mountain scenes, but I still wanna play in the yard. I got enough room to do both...as you showed.

I just don't wanna outright and copy thats all.

It is your layout, and your plan should of course reflect your priorities. I am not expecting you to copy the track plan I suggested. But what I am hoping that you will do is to think about (and explain) why you add some features, and not others.

One of the things I am pointing out is that when you redrew and presented your plan for comments, the thing that seems most important for you to fit in, since it is the first (and only) thing you draw is a http://big yard and engine terminal.

MR author David Popp, who has an N scale layout where he does operationg sessions with a crew of several other people at times, has a layout that looks pretty much like this when I draw something based on it in a 2 x 14 foot space in H0 scale :



In N scale, a yard area that is 14 feet long in H0 scale would be about 7 feet 8 inches. That is from the far left end (yard ladder) to the far right. Body tracks is contained within an 8 foot long box in H0 scale (about 4 feet 6 inches in N scale).

The shortest of the three yard classification tracks in the Popp-inspired plan here are long enough for eight cars. The primary A/D track is long enough for an arriving train of eight cars, an engine and a caboose.

In contrast, you have 9 body tracks or AD tracks, plus a ladder bypass/caboose track in your the yard and four tracks, a turntable and a five-track roundhouse for the engine terminal.

That is a http://big yard for a room your size. How are you planning to use that big yard ? The rest of your layout is not big enough to generate a huge amount of traffic for a yard that size.

Also, you have seemingly not considered (or at least not said anything about) staging, ie where trains will come from and go to.

Which makes me wonder whether you perhaps may be planning a big (for your room) yard because you think of a yard more as a big "parking lot" where hundreds of cars will be "stored" more than as a sorting machine for cars which come from somewhere and shortly will go on to somewhere else ?

If you want to "play in the yard", sorting cars can be done in just a couple of tracks. Adding more tracks than you need to make up your trains doesn't really add more variety or more challenges - it just adds more of the same.

Also, scenically, judged from the track plan exclusively (no scenery included in drawing), I don't get a feel of "yard in mountain area".

The look of your yard area does not say local yard in a town along the track, where a through train will drop off a cut of cars to be distributed to local industries by a local switcher, or picks up a cut of cars to take onwards to the east or to the west.

It doesn't not say "helper base", where engines to help push heavy trains up across the mountains are added to a train and engines are serviced, or "engine terminal/crew change point", where train stop to swap engines before going on.

The impression I am left with from the combination of a largish classification yard and a large engine terminal is more "big city at the end of the line, where trains (both freight and passenger trains) originate and terminate".

As I started by saying - it is your layout, and you are the only one it has to fit. So if you want it this way, then of course the way it will be.

I am just trying to force you to consider (and spell out clearly) what your goals really are.

Because the first step in building your dream layout lies in figuring out what your dreams really are. Once you know clearly where you want to end up, it becomes a lot more easier to figure out in what direction you want to head, and to figure out whether you are getting closer to your goal or further away from your goal as you go.

Smile,
Stein

[steinjr]

Well.... we got the insight... lets see how this concept looks completed:







Its hard to tell from the profile... but there is some elevations going on here.

Okay - the profile view and the drawing of the lower corner makes your concept quite a bit clearer.

Forget pretty much everything I have said - your design goal seemingly isn't about realistic looking scenes or realistic operations for the CN and CP in the Canadian Rockies, which is what I was assuming.

What you are going for seems to be more of a toy store window display style layout where one (or possibly two) trains on autopilot will be crisscrossing it's own track multiple times at multiple heights through what you call "the mountain twisties", probably ducking out of tunnels and crossing bridges and viaducts. Kinda like a Disneyland version of a Swiss Alpine railroad - very fun, but has little to do with realism.

Cool - I bet it will be a lot of fun to build, and to show to visitors, who very likely will ooh and aah about it !

Is it all one big loop (so only one train at a time can run on autopilot), or is it two independent loops (so two trains can run on autopilot at the same time) ?

Smile,
Stein

[Wiredup]

the yard is actually made up of 3/6 combo....

3 tracks (the southern most tracks) are for passenger trains... two terminal tracks and a coach storage track.

the other 6 tracks are for switching/building freight.

I have no idea how to build scenery in winrail otherwise I would do so. but it is something I would like to.

I was thinking something along the lines of Jasper AB for the inspiration for my layout... it's got a large yard, a Y, and a roundhouse (or did at sometime according to googlemaps satellite view)

[steinjr]

the yard is actually made up of 3/6 combo....

3 tracks (the southern most tracks) are for passenger trains... two terminal tracks and a coach storage track.

the other 6 tracks are for switching/building freight.

I have no idea how to build scenery in winrail otherwise I would do so. but it is something I would like to.

I was thinking something along the lines of Jasper AB for the inspiration for my layout... it's got a large yard, a Y, and a roundhouse (or did at sometime according to googlemaps satellite view)

Oh sure - compared with a model railroad layout, even a yard in a smallish town (Jasper seems to have a population of about 4000 these days) will look pretty huge. Even smaller yards often have half a dozen or a dozen tracks a mile long.

On the map it looks like Jasper, AB, is between Banff, AB and Prince George, BC. Map/satelite picture link: http://tinyurl.com/yjxkglj

But is Jasper the endpoint on the line, where you have a large single ended yard fed by a turning wye for whole trains ? If you look at the yard again, it is oriented more or less like the one I drew - mainline seems to pass through the yard, with double ended sidings branching off on both sides of the main. It seems to be a town along the way, not a town where trains originate and terminate.

The wye you have at the southern/western end of the yard in the satelite pictures seems to be a fairly short turning wye - probably more for turning helper engines than for turning entire passenger or freight trains.

Is the railroad into or out of Jasper pretzel shaped, looping up and around itself ? Nope - it seems to pretty much follow Canadian route 16 east/west, along the north bank of the river.

By all means - if you want to have a big terminal and call it Jasper, AB, then do that. But what you have in your plan does not come across as a town along the way with a handful of long double ended sidings where trains can meet and an engine change location/helper base, it comes across as a stub ended terminal classification yard, a coach yard and an engine terminal at the end of the track.

(Edit) Btw - there is a pretty cool John Armstrong designed layout plan based on running trains along the Athabaska river in Model Railroad Planning 1998, pages 32-38.

(Edit2) - read up some more on Jasper. These days there are tourist trains that run from Vancouver to Jasper, Banff or Calgary, after which the engine is run around the train and the train heads back, with an overnight stay in Kamloops or Prince George.

You could model something like that, I suppose, transplanted back to the transition era, turning a passenger train using a simple double ended siding at Jasper (and a turntable for the engine), and then maybe backing the passenger cars into a an available single ended track for an "overnight stay for the passengers", while you run a freight train on your main line.


Smile,
Stein

[Wiredup]

yea, I realize the single ended way I presented it... instead of a through track like it should be...

hummmm.... I don't want it to be toy like... I want it to be more like the layouts at the train shows... but I still wanna see the trains get around and cut through. I think I need to research the line more and get more in touch with the sat views and use them to their full effectiveness.... now thats a run on sentence!


You've been so much help, and I'd like to think I'm getting closer to what will work the more I peg at it.

As for staging, I think I understand it better now. I'm going with these big yards because I got a pretty good collection. I'm going with these larger engine facilities because I have a pretty decent collection of steam power.

[steinjr]

As for staging, I think I understand it better now. I'm going with these big yards because I got a pretty good collection. I'm going with these larger engine facilities because I have a pretty decent collection of steam power.

Mmmm, that makes sense - but big steam and cars might look even better when they are moving through the landscape

Think about it this way - if your hidden staging has a "mainline" through it (for continuous run) and two long double ended sidings, and you have a station town (could be right where you come up from staging) that also has a mainline and two double ended sidings, and then a double ended siding in a third place, you could be watching about five or six trains pass through your mountain landscape in a long parade which it would take a long time before anything repeated.

Imagine this scenario - let us assume clockwise is eastwards, counterclockwise is westwards.

Turn 1:
- Hidden staging holds two longish trains - e.g. one eastbound passenger and one westbound freight train
- In town, a westbound passenger train is waiting on the main for the eastbound passenger train to arrive from the west
- In town, an eastbound freight is holding on a siding, to let the higher priority eastbound passenger train go ahead of him
- In the mountain siding a westbound freight train is waiting to let the westbound passenger train go ahead of him

You are seeing three of your trains (two freight and one passenger), a couple of more engines can be at the roundhouse.

One train is moving - the eastbound passenger train that came out of staging and is moving through the mountain landscape, passing the mountain siding with the westbound freight train and heading for the town near staging on the other end of the layout.

Turn 2:
- In town Eastbound passenger train arrives from staging, pulls in at depot, passengers starts disembarking
- In town Westbound passenger train departs, eastbound freight is still holding
- At the mountain siding, the westbound freight is still holding
You are seeing four of your trains (two freight and two passenger)

Turn 3:
- Westbound passenger train passes mountain siding and moves into staging

Turn 4 (any of a number of things, e.g.)
- Eastbound freight moves out from staging and into mountain siding, freeing up one track in staging.
- Westbound freight moves from mountain siding to staging
- Eastbound passenger train departs towards the east, or is turned at the station

And so on and so forth.

Nothing to prevent you from having the bridges and tunnels passing above and below each other in the part of the layout that is not the town/station area. I was way rude when I called that a toy store window display layout. It will add run length, and be more interesting to watch than a totally prototypical line up along the valley - too prototypical mainlines are often boring to watch ;-)

When you feel for continuous run, you just set the turnouts to take one train around and around and let her rip.

If you add maybe one or two single ended sidings at the town, you can let a through bound freight drop of a cut of cars or pick up a cut of cars, so you get a little switching done.

Lots of ways to play this - it all depends on what you want the most - to display your engines and cars, or to do a lot of switching.

Smile,
Stein

[TrainNut]

Yours and my layout share a lot of the same goals... and they are actually quite similar.
I wanted a large yard because I like that whole industrial scene and I love watching trains sneak their way through a well laid out yard. Like Stein said, you don't want your yard to dominate your layout UNLESS that is one of your goals... which for me, it was. I don't like linearity however, and so I wrapped my whole industrial yard area around a corner putting a big bend in the middle. Like you, I also have several passenger trains and quite a few locomotives that I'd like to put on display. BUT, I don't want one giant parking lot... besides, everything just gets all dusty that way. If I just wanted to put everything on display, I could build a display case to mount on the wall. I figure I'll rotate my roster and rolling stock out from time to time. Not only will that keep things from getting dusty, it will also change things out every so often instead of having everything on my layout all the time. Four of my yard tracks are double ended. That's because some days I'm really into proto operations and others, I will use the yard for staging (a parking lot). If you will notice, I've got one long siding running up past my passenger station. I designed that siding to accomodate my longest passenger train. Not real proto but it does allow to me to clear the main to allow other traffic the right of way while loading and unloading passengers.
My engine maintenance facility still needs some work but I think I'm nearly there. I wanted a turntable, a roundhouse, an some sort of a car repair facility. I still need to figure out where to put some steam support facilities (water tower, coal tower, sand tower, etc.) as well as some diesel fueling spots (I'm doing my best to model the transition era).
Down towards the right where the three stub ended tracks are is shaping up to be an industrial area with a refinery and some other industries. Currently, I'm toying with putting a wharf right on the edge but I've got a lot of other things to do first before I get to that point.
My purpose in sharing these thoughts with you, is in the hope that they might give you some ideas for your own layout.

[Triplex]

Is it all one big loop (so only one train at a time can run on autopilot), or is it two independent loops (so two trains can run on autopilot at the same time) ?

It's one loop, a dogbone folded to make a double-track main. Note how the end loops in the mountain area are single track.

I believe this layout is an example of what John Armstrong called "the riata". Dogbone folded into a double-track main, large yard on a wye. In fact, it might be the first example I've seen of someone actually planning one.

[steinjr]

Is it all one big loop (so only one train at a time can run on autopilot), or is it two independent loops (so two trains can run on autopilot at the same time) ?

It's one loop, a dogbone folded to make a double-track main. Note how the end loops in the mountain area are single track.

I believe this layout is an example of what John Armstrong called "the riata". Dogbone folded into a double-track main, large yard on a wye. In fact, it might be the first example I've seen of someone actually planning one.

"The lasso" ? LOL - one learns something new about layout design every day

Trainnut's yard looks cool, too.

Big grin,
Stein

[Wiredup]

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'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.

[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

[Wiredup]

Thanks again for the insight, its helping me a lot on my quest for layout design.

I've done some more "Reconfiguring" of my objectives. And I think it'll be simpler...

I'm currently designing a track plan that takes elements from a few MRR articles...

So currently, I'm building in 3 scenes with one transition scene... call it what you will.

Scene one, which will be the south and south west corner of the room will contain my depot. (notice I say depot and not terminal! ) Which will have my 130' turntable, and 3 roundhouse stalls, water tower, and a coaling tower. But I will probably find a new coaling tower kit, s the tower kit I have looks silly if it's not servicing at least 4 tracks... which is too big.

It will have a stub ended passenger terminal track, and the mainline will loop around it. The total yard tracks will be 4-5 here.

The transition scene will just be a double track truss going over water... the double track though is the northbound and southbound tracks face to face. So it will look like a doulbe track main, but it wont' really be!

The other main scene will be a long loop to create my operating oval (as boring as that is, it gives me a lot of space to scenic my area) with one 1m long siding. There will be a a pair of turnouts that send trains out down to a wye in the third scene.

the Third scene will be a small mountain town with a double tracked section (for a mainline train to run past, and a passenger train to sit) and two service tracks for the logging industry setup in the town.


My minimums for sidings is taken from a 4 car long passenger train with a 4-8-2 for power. The main depots passenger stub track will be large enough to take my second largest train, an 8 car smoothside UP set from Kato and the Challenger for power.

Actual concept stage to come soon!

[TrainNut]

The transition scene will just be a double track truss going over water... the double track though is the northbound and southbound tracks face to face. So it will look like a doulbe track main, but it wont' really be!

Unless your running two trains at a time!
Sounds interesting. I'm happy to see that your trying to simplify a bit and I look foward to scrutinizing the next concept plan!