Apologies and Starting All Over

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Dualcore

Dualcore

Member
I got on a real tear of updating my plan last week, forgeting about email alerts ppl might have set. OOPS. My Bad.

I had another hard reality check the other night. I was working under the assumption that my new layout room, a 2-car garage, is bigger than it is.

Got a new yard/terminal layed on a new floor plan. 15ft x 12ft on a 12 in grid. 22 in radius curves. A combination of Bachmann EZ track, Peco double slip switches, Atlas Customline #4 switches and odd pieces of straight track.

I promise, no more deleted pages. Sorry guys
 
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I found this little L-shaped plan on Atlas Track site.
I used the switch/cross-over network and the Y in my new plan.
I changed the scope of operations. Decided on a shortline cattle empire, set in central Texas. Route would leave Austin and terminate in Abilene.
I hope the text is legible.
 
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Looks like hours of fun to me, i take it your using old rolling stock of the 40ft variety, this will work out good
 


I forgot to mention the era I am modeling. Early 20th Century. 40' coal hoppers, wood sided cattle cars, no freight cars over 50'. Full length passenger cars will run, but will look odd. Therefore, passenger cars will be limited to 60' or shorter.
I thought about closing the loop, for continous running, but I don't want to install a swing gate.
 
I don't propose to be a model railroad planning guru, but those two freight yards look a little strange on the plans. It appears that there are yard tracks coming off both sides of the yard ladder. How does that work in an operational scheme? The yard tracks also seem a bit short. All this might just be because the trackwork doesn't show up too well when I enlarge the plan.

Ray
 
Right on both counts. It all boils down to space limitations. If I could model in N, I would. The parts are too small for me to work with.
The yard ladder has to be stacked to give me enough room for the freight cars I expect to have. Will have no where off track for storage.
This railroad is decidedly NOT prototypical. A four-bay coal loader should only be used on a layout with enough room to run a unit coal train.
But, what the hay. It's different, and that's a lot of what I am shooting for, is things that will be different from what might be normally seen. there was a large German influence thru that part of Texas at that time. Several of my structures will have some sort of German flavor...half-timbered two story house for the farm. A German-styled ash loader in the service yard. And a santa Fe Walthers Union Terminal http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3094 --not German. A different mix altogether.
 
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I had this long-winded explanation of the rational behind my decision to run a big 4-bunker coal loader on an obvious shortline operation, and realized that like Ford, "I had a better idea!!". Modification time.
Using a 2 bay tower and a covered conveyer coming out of an old, vine-covered rock wall face, I can say that the rest of the coal operation is underground.
It will save on track, open that area a little, and reduce the number of coal cars I will need to carry.
 
Here's what I'm talking about when I say the yard looks a little strange: in the yard in the center of the layout you have a track directly to the left of the word, "Freight Yard." It appears to be part of a switch-back for the track directly below it. The track by my calculations is, at best, 14" long. Assuming that prototypical operations is not an issue the question still remains, how are you going to operate the yard when you can only remove one car at a time from this switch-back? Also, If you figure a 40' car is approximately 5 1/2" long and switching locomotive about 7 1/2" to 8" long, the usefulness of that switch back as a yard track is doubtful. I'm not trying to be critical, but I think these are things you have to consider if you want to operate your railroad, even in an unprototypical manner, and enjoy it.

Ray
 
Understanding dawns. Will have to look at that a little closer...I work on this in the middle of the night--i have insomnia. What looks good at 3AM, doesn't necessarily have much basis in reality. I also have a tendency to get "switch-happy".
 
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Saying that was a caboose track was the short, fast, answer. I made a little modification, and curved it around. Now it's long enoough to be useful.
I also dropped the idea of a 4-bay coal loader. Going for a 2-bay with a siding track.
Put the cattle pens on the same siding, instead of having one on each track.
Added a waterfall and trestle bridge to the right wall. Waterfall will flow into a river, running left of the cattle pens, to the Hydroelectric Power Plant.
 
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A few observations. The wye track in the upper right corner is useless. The tail track is too small to hold more than one or maybe two 40 foot cars as most. Since the idea of wye track is to turn a train, this won't work very well.

The main thing that strikes me is you have way too many tracks and not enough room for scenery. What you are proposing is three yards and two passenger terminals with just enough other track to connect these five features. Trains leaving one yard will travel eight feet or less before they start to enter the next yard. That's not very far in HO. Even then, they will be traveling through a maze of other track and sidings. With your present plan, you will only have a few areas with around two square feet with no track and much less in most areas. You will be able to get very little of the scenery and structures you're now planning into such small areas.

I know you've put a lot of work into this but layouts look much more realistic if less that 50% of the layout has track. If you do a quick calculation on yours, you'll see it's close to 75%. It also looks more realistic if the train leaves one terminal, traverses a countryside where the track is a minor part of the scene, and then arrives at the next terminal. In your case, the train will never have any countryside except maybe the area around the cattle pens, which is still too much railroad related. If this was my layout, I'd really step back and decide just how much yard I really needed and if there was a way to reduce the total trackage.
 
Okay, I guess the old saying that, "You can't see the forest for the trees," is true. In seeing the problem with the yard, I ignored the overall layout. I agree with Jim and although he did not say this I will and I hope you take it the right way-ditch the whole plan. If you are looking at switching operations in a space of this size, consider a transfer operation, that is, moving freight cars between two different railroads terminals in a moderate to large city. Transfer trains would run between two yards and the scenery would mostly be industrial, business and city scenes. This would work best with a fidder/staging yard to serve each railroad to run freight trains in and out of the scenes. But to be practical, you would have to use the entire wall around the room, with one wall devoted exclusively to the staging yard for each railroad.

You could also consider modeling one railroad's passenger and freight operations in this space using the aforementioned fiddle/staging yards to stage both passenger and freight trains on and off the visible parts of the layout.

Or consider modeling a fair sized yard and one major industry. Since you seem to be interested in coal operations, check out this site

http://members.tripod.com/appalachian_railroad/articles.html

There are a lot of good plans on this site for modeling coal operations.

Or what about a fair sized yard and one major industry such as a chemical plant that would use a lot of hoppers and tank cars or maybe a paper industry. You could also include some smaller industries for other freight car destinations.

Wyes take up a lot of space and I'm with Jim that yours is pretty much useless on your plan. Engine service facilities are great but don't use the space for one just because you think you have to have it. If you are not really interested in this (it's a part of operations like anything else), then stage the engine service facilities off line and use the space for something else.

I guess I seem to be rambling but not really. I'm just trying to impress upon you the need to sit down and think about what you really like, what you want in a model railroad, and not just to start laying track to be laying track. If you do the latter, the chances are good that you'll be tearing up track, probably sooner that later.

Ray
 
As I redo this, I have a couple of questions.
After looking at Y, and area around, can cut out that, and the track. Curve the stub end around, make one large cattle pen, cutting out the two in the middle, and all the track with it.

I plan on making a lot of my buildings as flats, or as part of the background. Selective compression is a wonderful thing.

The coal mines only purpose is to supply fuel for the steamers, and the plant. Can eliminate the local coal dealer. Cut out the topmost track that runs between the coal mine and the business district. That will give room for a series of building flats.

How many coal cars would be necessary for realistic operations?

I can cut down on the amount of passenger car tracks. Passenger consist will be no longer than a mail/baggage combine, sleeper, diner, lounge, coach. All 60'. Will have a 60' Harriman business car on a siding, for a "Campaign Train". Might have an election.
Will run two consists.

One freight steamer, maybe a K4. Freight consist is constrained by size of track. Whatever amount of freight cars will look good.

That covers it, i think. Will go make mods to plan.
 
Looks better without so much track on the right side but the yards don't really make sense. The top yard has way too many crossing tracks which will severely limit the amount of cars that can be stored. The freight yard on the left side has the same issues and both yards are stub ended, which means it's going to be difficult to pick out certain cars and make up trains. The double sided stub end yard would never be used by a prototype railroad because you've doubled the problems of picking out certain cars depending on which end of the yard the car is located.

You could easily combine the side freight yard with the bottom passenger terminal so all the tracks are in the same orientation. It would look better and allow you to use the passenger terminal tracks to make up trains when there's no passenger train in the station. Unless you're running a busy commuter railroad, that will be most of the time.

The top yard needs to be simplified and double ended, so trains can easily drop off and pick up cars from the arrival and departure tracks. You can also eliminate that track that's coming up from the roundhouse are to the yard below the mainline by just connecting from the mainline just before the curve.

I really have to agree with Ray. Your plan has so many flaws that you can work on it for a long time and it still won't represent anything like a real railroad. If you want to go ahead with it, it's your layout and I'll give you whatever suggestions I can but I just think you're wasting a lot of space that could hold a really good operating and scenically interesting railroad but now is just a lot of track that doesn't serve any real purpose.
 
Jim, I appreciate your help. Due to circumstances beyond my control, there are several built-in limitations. Since I will be using banquet tables for my benchwork, that severely limits the width of any yard. Multiples of 2ft wide, in 4, 5, 6 or8 ft legnths. The layout size is maxed out. I need 2ft clearance on all sides for access, allthough a swing gate is not out of the question--I thought about closing the loop from the passenger station, back to the terminal.
I am open to any options, maybe I should outline what I want to do, and what structures I want to see, and let the plan form itself from that.
 
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I'm using the same kind of banquet tables for my layout structure so I know what you mean. You should definitely do an outline of what you want your railroad to do and what structures you want to use since this will have a big effect on the track plan. Just as a suggestion, try starting your track plan again but this time, leave out all the yard trackage and only show the passenger terminal track, industrial sidings, and connecting tracks. That will declutter the design and give you a better idea of where to start adding or taking away trackage. I'd certainly try to come up with a loop first since you'll want to sit back and just watch the trains run sometimes.
 
Since my floor plan is so tight, I think I need to close the loop. I never did like the idea of a stub-ended passenger line.
One of my original plans called for a Bascule bridge. But Walthers has discontinued it. That would have made a perfect interior gate.
I have figured a way to scratch build one, with enough strength to span 24 to 30in. The lift arrangement wouldn't be prototypical, but it would fit, give me a continious loop and interior access.

My main industry is still cattle. I have a friend that started a small cattle op. The creek that runs thru one side of his place would be a perfect model for my little river. It even has a cabin that could be shown as a bunkhouse.
His main house is a perfect ranch house. All i need is a small grain silo.

I gave up on using the Walthers Union Station. It's much too large for my small layout. That will let me cut down on the # of passenger tracks. Make the passenger service a local, and concentrate more on freight. And consolidate the yards.

I remember going to a small industrial area on the outskirts of New Orleans, at Jefferson, La. A small bar and grill(now a fast food joint) with a big dirt parking lot(now paved) at the corner and street entrance to the area, US 90 at state hwy 48. 90 turns south, becoming the Hewy P. Long Memorial Bridge, with freight tracks running between the north and south travel lanes. Shakiest damn thing I ever saw. You could see the whole thing sway when a freight came across. I watched a no. bound and so. bound cross at the same time once, I thought sure the whole thing was coming down.

Show the bridge as part of the backdrop. Or use it to hide a pass-thru going under the bridge to a lower level for hidden staging and storage.

So, to consolidate my thoughts. Waterfall against wall, leading to river for coal-fired hydroelectric plant. Wooden trestle bridge over river for mainline, show secondary in a seperate valley. Truss bridge on stub end leading to cattle pen. Hidden staging will be far in the future, so I can't really plan around it.

Given that outline, that was the best plan I could come up with.
 
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