Ideas for a New Layout


Doughless said:
I'll take a stab at this. We seem to be struggling with the yard area. Lets just think outside of the box for a bit. How about losing the tunnel on the NW side and sliding the town and mining branch switch up along the curve. Use a Peco or Walthers curved turnout. The siding and town would sort of flow NW to SE and rework the spurs a bit.

Sliding the branch spur up into the curve gives you space to slide the yard and runaround tracks north and allows for more room in the SW.

You should still have room to have a small river in the NW corner.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea, but it's a pretty major change. I've already build the frames for my benchwork and spaced the frame out based roughly on this plan. I like the tunnel in the NW corner because it breaks the scene up and gives the illusion that the train has traveled farther than it really has. What the plan doesn't show is that the mainline begins to climb 2.5% through the tunnel until it gets to the first bridge and then begins back downhill past the second bridge. I thought that having the mainline higher than the spurs would separate the scene so that there is not too much going on all at once. This is supposed to be a mountain railroad with lots of scenery, so I had to leave quite a bit of open space. The local train show is tomorrow, so I'm going to start buying up some track. I've also made another revision to include more walthers #5's instead of atlas #4's. The Atlas turnouts are cheaper, but are nowhere to be found right now! Even with the changes, I'm still short 1 Atlas 561 L #4.
 
LayoutSCARMEdit3 REV 3.jpg
The latest tweaked plan. I removed the #5 from the mainline and replaced it with a #6 and still kept the radii to the spurs at 20". The yard is short, but I can always build a fold down staging extension.
 
cajon said:
Why do new layout plans ALWAYS have a switchback? Guess Model railroaders think it's neat because the extra movements make it more "interesting". But to the real RRs, those extra move are a waste of time AND money! .
Click to expand...
But model railroaders don't have the space to have sidings that are a mile long such that it takes 30 minutes to switch a single trailing point industry on one. Something needs to happen to stretch the 30 seconds it would take on a model railroad out a bit.
 
Just playing around...I don't think this would require a lot of change to your benchwork. It should offer broader curves and longer spurs. The tree areas and tunnels will give you good scene separation. Basically it moves the mine and organizes the yard area better. You can move the turntable over some too since most of the bottom table is a blank canvas now.

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z219/kieffm/DSCF2447_zpsbca5c307.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top