Paper mill track plan

[Rico]

Well the first official train finally crested the summit of the helix last night. (yay!!)
Thanx again for all the previous help!
Now the task of giving the railway some purpose for being begins.
The old "looked good on paper" scenario came into play when I realized that the 19.5" by 8' alloted for the mill really isn't as big a space as it first appeared when dealing with the massive Walthers building! (I cut it down somewhat already)
Here's a rough (very) sketch of the trackplan so far, hope it resized allright...
The two spurs off the main will hold about five cars each. The trains will approach the mill as a facing spur move so while they are busy shuffling cars around the mill switcher (played by a Bachman 70 tonner) will be running around trying to line everything up.
Should keep an operator on his toes!
Any suggestions or comments guys?
BTW: the 9.5" by 8' is pretty much carved in stone.

 

[Maljunulo]

You can avoid the "looked good on paper" problem by making scale drawings of your track plan or by getting full sized switch templates and laying it out on brown paper in 1:1 size.

This will sort out the worst cases of "Gee, I thought that would fit, look, here is my drawing." In the long run, I think you save time, and you certainly save aggravation and disappointment.

Good luck.

 

[HaggisKennedy]

You're probably going to be going to the building flats route, or maybe even backdrop/forced perspective aspect, depending on how the visual aspects are. The good thing about the building flats is that you get at least two halves of the building to work with (front and back). Carve up the rear wall to make it look like a side or front wall of a different building.

This is one of the reasons why I have a good supply of DPM and Walthers Modular pieces hanging around. I look to use them to cobble them together with excess pieces leftover from kits to get another building out of it.

Kennedy