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I have changed my plan just a bit. I will be leaving the platform two feet off the back wall to allow for a walkway around the layout. I am still going with a 12' X 4' X 12' "L," but I am adding a additional 8' X 4' piece 90* on one end. It will basically be a three-sided square, if that makes sense. I am doing this to have room for a northern route to Abingdon, VA and a southern route to Bluff City, TN. The center piece of my railroad will be the Bristol, VA Norfolk Southern rail yard. This will be on the center 12' section of the layout. I plan on scratch building as many of the structures as I can. I spent some time today taking pics of the prototype structures and trackwork. Here are a few of them, and there are several more in my Photobucket album. If you have any tips on scratch-building these types of structures, I'd appreciate them.
My Photobucket Album
And just for grins, here is a pic of the engines that were leaving the yard as I was snapping pics. I'm so new at this, I don't even know what the heck they are...
You say your new. Do you mean new at railfanning or model railroading?
You say your new. Do you mean new at railfanning or model railroading?
I'm so new to both that I had to look up the word railfanning
Welcome to the forums. Model railroading and railfanning are both quite enjoyable, you should have a good time with both. Many of the details will come with time such as the locomotives in the last picture, they are both EMD SD40-2 high nose units. A year ago, I was in your shoes and this forum has been a tremendous help in increasing my knowledge base about both subjects.
Some of those buildings look hard. Try assembling a small kit first and then try scratchbuilding.
those engines are both EMD SD40-2s, i googled them lol
they seem to work together often
The brick industrial building could be modified from a kit but that station will take a whole lot of work. This is not what I'd recommend for your first scratchbuilding effort. As has been suggested, get some kits that are close to some of the buildings you want to model and practice on them first. You may find out you have a real talent for this and progress to scratchbuilding rapidly or decide "close enough" kits are a better choice.
I'm not even kitbashing yet lol
im just using standard buildings for my layout as of right now
The only reason I am willing to attempt it is because I have some model building experience, and I am a trained draftsman. I like to take a structure, determine the measurements, and draft a scale drawing of it. I'm old-school, too. None of that fancy CAD stuff on my computer. I say this, as I am banging my head on the wall trying to use design software for my layout. Can anyone tell me the trick to using a turnout to make parallel tracks, as in a rail yard? I've tried just about every combo available on the Atlas software, and can't get it right.
Change in plans:
I worked out all the dimensions of the train station, and was ready to start a drawing, when I realized it's just too darn big for my space. It worked out to be 31" long. I thought about shortening the structure, but that kills the theme I had hoped for. So, it looks like I'll just have a completely fictitious line and stick with mostly kits instead of scratch-built stuff.
Selective compression is a given with this hobby. As you've seen, even structures that aren't all that large take up lots of space on a layout. In looking at that station, the three design elements that stand out are the large tower on the right, the smaller peak in the middle, and the larger peak on the left. I'll bet you could take out a fair bit of structure between these three elements and still come out with a recognizable station. Since you're a draftsman, I wouldn't give up on it yet.
well, i did consider taking out the center of the structure. I guess I could look into that again. Or take out some between the towers and peaks. Thanks for the encouragement.
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