Hi all,
My father and I are are getting ready to move into a new home with plenty of room for a model railroad of decent size. As the header says this is only our second layout. We model in HO scale. The first one was in a 11' by 14' basement room and was primarily a double track loop with a small yard, a wye and not much more. It was built on table top style bench work with enough area inside to accommodate two people to run trains. We got as far as getting the track work in wired for DC and basic scenery started, then had to tear it down to move. For the last five years we have been armchair modelers, dreaming of the day we would have another place big enough for a layout.
Right now neither of us really has experience as far as operating a layout in any manner. I can not speak for my father but that is an aspect I would like to get into eventually, but have not gotten out there and met other modelers in the area that hold Op. sessions. With the new layout, if it were up to me I would be designing it more operation oriented, but being as I will only be living with my Father for another year or so this is mainly his layout. I am however in the planning stages of some Free-Mo based Modules, as I have learned of a group here in South East Michigan that does so. Hopefully with that connection it will open our eyes to operation a little more.
As of the moment we are planning to use this layout as a learning point, and to hone our skills as modelers. We plan on initially getting the main line up and some of the yard tracks up and running so we can run trains by Christmas this year. Our main goal of this layout is to just work on our scenery skills and learn the ins and outs of DCC.
Our layout room is 35' long 9' wide in the middle and 12 feet wide at the ends. Our plan for bench work is L-girder. We would like to keep our Min. turnouts to number 6s, and Min. Mainline radii to 36"and keep it single level. We want to use code 83 flex track be it Atlas or Micro Engineering, and use Fast Tracks Turnouts throughout. We are setting the layout in the "Modern Era", by that I mean late 80s to present day. We want to include a decent sized yard(basically a division point yard), with full Loco Service Facilities, an Intermodal facility, Small passenger Facility(more than likely Walthers City Station kit-bashed to our likings), Double track mainline, a few industries, a small city scene, residential areas and a wye to turn trains. We don't really plan on designing this layout for a true operating scheme, but are open to it. Mainly we plan more of a rail fanning design but not in the sense of wide open scenery more based on our locale here in the metro Detroit area, double track mainline running, with some industrial switching, yard switching, and some passenger service(Mainly Amtrak and Excursion trains as we have collected quite a few passenger cars and Locos from multiple Railroads).
With that said I have been working on designs on Xtrack Cad, but these are just Ideas right now nothing is truly set in stone. Once we get into the house we plan on getting a few rolls of construction paper and laying a few designs out in the space and seeing what we like. The current design incorporates most of what we would like to include on the layout. and has the ability for operation as using the wye to head off to temporary Staging and running as a point to point. As you can see by the design I have attached I have not designed any industries in as those will be added as we progress. Mainly I have added the Yard and service facility, the intermodal facility and area where the Passenger terminal will be which is on the lead for the intermodal yard, and blocked in the areas that would become a City scene, and a Residential area based on a suburb of Detroit on the GTW Holly Sub. Theoretically with this design we could run an operating session bringing trains in out of staging through the wye and run them around the layout doing their duties either run through freights or through Amtrak trains and then back to staging through the other leg of the Wye, and then run a local or two out of the yard and switch the industries, end and originate a train or two out of the yard to staging and Excursions also out of the yard and around the layout a few times or just onto staging.
As I have said our main goal is not operation as we do not have that much experience with that, mainly we just want to run trains and enjoy that aspect, and just get acclimated to DCC and practice building Scenery, get our buildings and rollingstock out of the boxes build and detail them and just Hone our skills, as this is mainly just a stepping stone to future layouts on both of our parts, and to boot this house is just a rental. Sorry for being so long winded and thanks ahead of time for any advice and ideas.
David R. Gustafson
My father and I are are getting ready to move into a new home with plenty of room for a model railroad of decent size. As the header says this is only our second layout. We model in HO scale. The first one was in a 11' by 14' basement room and was primarily a double track loop with a small yard, a wye and not much more. It was built on table top style bench work with enough area inside to accommodate two people to run trains. We got as far as getting the track work in wired for DC and basic scenery started, then had to tear it down to move. For the last five years we have been armchair modelers, dreaming of the day we would have another place big enough for a layout.
Right now neither of us really has experience as far as operating a layout in any manner. I can not speak for my father but that is an aspect I would like to get into eventually, but have not gotten out there and met other modelers in the area that hold Op. sessions. With the new layout, if it were up to me I would be designing it more operation oriented, but being as I will only be living with my Father for another year or so this is mainly his layout. I am however in the planning stages of some Free-Mo based Modules, as I have learned of a group here in South East Michigan that does so. Hopefully with that connection it will open our eyes to operation a little more.
As of the moment we are planning to use this layout as a learning point, and to hone our skills as modelers. We plan on initially getting the main line up and some of the yard tracks up and running so we can run trains by Christmas this year. Our main goal of this layout is to just work on our scenery skills and learn the ins and outs of DCC.
Our layout room is 35' long 9' wide in the middle and 12 feet wide at the ends. Our plan for bench work is L-girder. We would like to keep our Min. turnouts to number 6s, and Min. Mainline radii to 36"and keep it single level. We want to use code 83 flex track be it Atlas or Micro Engineering, and use Fast Tracks Turnouts throughout. We are setting the layout in the "Modern Era", by that I mean late 80s to present day. We want to include a decent sized yard(basically a division point yard), with full Loco Service Facilities, an Intermodal facility, Small passenger Facility(more than likely Walthers City Station kit-bashed to our likings), Double track mainline, a few industries, a small city scene, residential areas and a wye to turn trains. We don't really plan on designing this layout for a true operating scheme, but are open to it. Mainly we plan more of a rail fanning design but not in the sense of wide open scenery more based on our locale here in the metro Detroit area, double track mainline running, with some industrial switching, yard switching, and some passenger service(Mainly Amtrak and Excursion trains as we have collected quite a few passenger cars and Locos from multiple Railroads).
With that said I have been working on designs on Xtrack Cad, but these are just Ideas right now nothing is truly set in stone. Once we get into the house we plan on getting a few rolls of construction paper and laying a few designs out in the space and seeing what we like. The current design incorporates most of what we would like to include on the layout. and has the ability for operation as using the wye to head off to temporary Staging and running as a point to point. As you can see by the design I have attached I have not designed any industries in as those will be added as we progress. Mainly I have added the Yard and service facility, the intermodal facility and area where the Passenger terminal will be which is on the lead for the intermodal yard, and blocked in the areas that would become a City scene, and a Residential area based on a suburb of Detroit on the GTW Holly Sub. Theoretically with this design we could run an operating session bringing trains in out of staging through the wye and run them around the layout doing their duties either run through freights or through Amtrak trains and then back to staging through the other leg of the Wye, and then run a local or two out of the yard and switch the industries, end and originate a train or two out of the yard to staging and Excursions also out of the yard and around the layout a few times or just onto staging.
As I have said our main goal is not operation as we do not have that much experience with that, mainly we just want to run trains and enjoy that aspect, and just get acclimated to DCC and practice building Scenery, get our buildings and rollingstock out of the boxes build and detail them and just Hone our skills, as this is mainly just a stepping stone to future layouts on both of our parts, and to boot this house is just a rental. Sorry for being so long winded and thanks ahead of time for any advice and ideas.
David R. Gustafson
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