Introduction, ideas


R

Rigby

Member
Good morning. I have been lurking here awhile reading but I'm ready to start building so I figure its time to step up. My other love is sailing and I participate in a bulletin board for sailors that I thought was unique in its usefulness. I was very happy to discover this forum.

I am going to be working with n-gauge due to space constraints. I plan to do a small, self contained layout first. In a couple of years when the kids go off to school, I will take over one of their bedrooms and do a full layout.

My interest is in doing the Boston and Maine, Maine Central, and Portland Terminal Railroads. In my someday layout, the center of action will be the Rigby Yard in South Portland. South of Rigby, the tracks are Boston and Maine. North and west of Rigby, the tracks are Maine Central. East of Rigby B&M and MEC ran the shortline PTR together.

In terms of era it would be just after the war, call it 1949 or so. Portland was a shipbuilding hub during the war and there was lots of track laid for that enterprise.

In the short term, I am going to build a 6x4 layout. It will live in a table in a corner on casters so that it can be pulled into the center of our play room for use. The table will covered when not in use. I am interested in ideas for track plans. The youngest kids, and the two most interested in this project, are 11 and 9. My inclination is to build a layout that will allow each to run a train continuously. I would also like to see some ability to play switcher.

Left to my own devices I would build http://www.nscalesupply.com/ATL/ATL-11018.html because with two independent systems the boys won't crash into each other and they can learn to operate the layout gradually, while the little yard at the bottom gives me something to do. I would start collecting and building structures that would work on the big railroad and would learn some about doing scenery while I was at it. On the other hand, you all have a whole lot of collective wisdom and I'm open to your suggestions.
 
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Howdy and welcome.

Atlas tends to make designs that use a lot of track because guess what, they sell track. On the other hand, you have two kids who are just at the point where they just want to run trains and see the layout as a toy rather than a model of a functioning railroad. They want a layout in which their trains can go a lot of different routes. All well and good if...

..you build the trackwork so that there are zero derails. If they have to spend their time re-railing trains they will be out of there pronto.

Which brings me to my second point. Chances are they will tire of the layout anyway. This happened with my kids (although my son might be on his way back.)

So you have to have a design that will transform entirely to your interests if they duck out. I can guarantee you, you will get tired of running laps no matter how many different ways you can do it. You are going to want scenery that works, buildings and road to them that make sense. Spaghetti bowl layouts, although they are good for selling track, don't do anything else well.

Take your time and think it through. If you haven't done so, read my beginner's guide in my signature.
 
Welcome to the forum!

How old are your kids? If they're too young, I'd be concerned with the small size of N, but then again, when I was little, I tons of Micro Machines...
 
Welcome to the forum!
I can't offer any N-scale advise(I'm in HO), but I do recommend Chip's beginners guide. It's very good.
 
I was 10 when I got my first layout and a set of Marklin trains. I treated them well and respectfully because I was head-over-heels in love with them by the time I was 2 years old. I can recall being bored after a while with the large loop and a crescent shaped elevated segment. There were two tunnels, and it was a nice enough layout (built by a kind neighbour), but the layout posed no interesting problems for me.

I am not your children, and I have no way of comparing personalities and intelligence, but I hope you understand me when I tell you that I was good for perhaps a total of 10 hours on that layout. I'd run it for 5-10 minutes, and that was all I needed to get my fix. Had the layout been more involved, had it presented some switching and "work" for revenue, I think I would have had a better experience.

All this to say that a layout should, for most of us, comprise a runnable loop on it, no matter how convoluted. Sometimes, we want to chat with a bud and let the train run around the layout safely with no intervention. Other times, though, especially when we are by ourselves, we want to to use the brain and make the trains behave prototypically. So, my caution, added to those above, is to consider doing some serious planning and make the track plan reasonably robust in terms of its intended longevity. The engines must move forward, couple, move back and decouple, or vice-versa, and make up and break consists. They need to move around, to places that pay, with purpose, so even the tiniest of layouts should have some work to do if the layout will be used 6 months after it is first able to shunt trains.
 
Welcome aboard, Rigby. I too am an HO guy but the only real difference is in how much track you can squeeze in a given area. As Chip pointed out, the layout you linked to has the absolute maximum amount of track you can squeeze into a space, including using two levels to do so. It's a lot of track to lay and actually pretty complex for kids your age. I would keep looking for a line that's a little less complex, has more room for scenery, and has more opportunities for industry switching. I like http://www.trainplayer.com/Site2/User Track Plans.html as a place to start since there is a lot of variety in trackpans and users explain what they like and don't like about their plans.
 
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Welcome to the forum Rigby!

I'll concur with what the others have said, that sample Atlas track plan is a major spaghetti bowl; very little room for structures or scenery.

Do you subscribe to Model Railroader? If so, you can go to their website and access their Track Plan Database that shows color diagrams of every layout they've ever featured in their mag. But definitely also read Chip's Beginners Guide - that'll point you in the right direction.
 
Ok, you're all correct. I will slow down and get with the program. (I will also read all the other newbie threads that follow precisely the same development cycle - <grin>).
 
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