Switching layout - building selection


A

adamsdp

New Member
I am planning to build a switching layout and wanted to post here for any thoughts before purchasing the buildings. This will be my first layout and want to avoid rookie mistakes. The first image is going to be the more industrial/town area with the following kits along the back of the layout from left to right -

Walthers Heritage Furniture Background Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3164
Walthers Commissary/Freight Transfer Background Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3173
Walthers River City Textiles Background Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3178

The two mid layout buildings are from left to right

Walthers Railway Express Agency (REA) Transfer Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3095
Woodland Clyde/Dale's Barrel Factory HO Scale Model Railroad Building #br5026

The two building more toward the front would be

Freight Depot - Kit - Woodland Scenics DPM Landmark Structures(R) -- 100 Series - 5-3/4 x 4-3/4" 14.5 x 12cm
Walthers-Trainline United Trucking Assembled Model Railroad Building HO Scale #804

554877



The other half of the layout is planned to have a more rural look to it

554879



With a saw mill in the back part of layout - Sawmill Outbuildings -- Kit
and a lumber yard in front of layout - Walton and Sons Lumber Company -- Kit - Main Building: 9 x 9 x 4-1/2"; Office: 3 x 4-1/2 x 2-1/2" - built in the seperated building option.

It took more planning to get this far then I thought. Tried to put taller buildings in back on the city side of layout with shorter buildings toward the front. Any thoughts/advice will be appreciated!
 
adamsdp said:
I am planning to build a switching layout and wanted to post here for any thoughts before purchasing the buildings. This will be my first layout and want to avoid rookie mistakes. The first image is going to be the more industrial/town area with the following kits along the back of the layout from left to right -

Walthers Heritage Furniture Background Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3164
Walthers Commissary/Freight Transfer Background Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3173
Walthers River City Textiles Background Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3178

The two mid layout buildings are from left to right

Walthers Railway Express Agency (REA) Transfer Building - Kit HO Scale Model Railroad Building #3095
Woodland Clyde/Dale's Barrel Factory HO Scale Model Railroad Building #br5026

The two building more toward the front would be

Freight Depot - Kit - Woodland Scenics DPM Landmark Structures(R) -- 100 Series - 5-3/4 x 4-3/4" 14.5 x 12cm
Walthers-Trainline United Trucking Assembled Model Railroad Building HO Scale #804

554877



The other half of the layout is planned to have a more rural look to it

554879



With a saw mill in the back part of layout - Sawmill Outbuildings -- Kit
and a lumber yard in front of layout - Walton and Sons Lumber Company -- Kit - Main Building: 9 x 9 x 4-1/2"; Office: 3 x 4-1/2 x 2-1/2" - built in the seperated building option.

It took more planning to get this far then I thought. Tried to put taller buildings in back on the city side of layout with shorter buildings toward the front. Any thoughts/advice will be appreciated!
Click to expand...

I am not a good one to talk about trackage planning. Don’t add too many buildings at once as I guarantee you will be making changes. You got some good choices that you are showing the foot prints of. Having fun is the main thing.

Tom
 
Thanks for
TLOC said:
I am not a good one to talk about trackage planning. Don’t add too many buildings at once as I guarantee you will be making changes. You got some good choices that you are showing the foot prints of. Having fun is the main thing.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply and agree about having fun. I wanted to lay out and buy the buildings before laying the track. Maybe be overly cautious, but don't want to lay the track and then find out the building I want to use don't fit.
 
Looks like you have the planning aspect down. A couple of things to watch for though. Assuming that you got the building footprints correctly from the web, allow yourself another inch in each direction for clearances and scenery. Note that the Walther's Commissary background structure #3173 is just half of the Walther's REA structure #3095. I believe that the first floor has a choice of doors/wall inserts, but the upper floors will look the same. This may not matter to you. That appears to be a stray piece of flex track along the front of the layout which, if not, may interfere with the truck loading doors of the United trucking building.
 
Exciting! I wish I had started small as you can complete a switching layout quicker than a 4x8. Quicker to the fun! A couple of general thoughts.
1. I didn't see a run around track, maybe just below the crossing in the lower photo?
2. Really like the choice of Heritage Furniture, the cars being loaded/unloaded under the overhang is visually interesting.
3. Backdrop will help make the urban scene 'pop'.
4. EBay. I know that many folks are not fans of EBay but there are plenty of unopened Walthers structures listed. Bide your time, bid what you are willing to pay because the structure will come along again eventually. The Pola/AHM Bascule bridge comes up about 3x per year an normally goes for $60-$75 . Have been outbid multiple times but finally purchased one for $15 + $5 shipping. Yesterday scored a Valley Cement facility still in cellophane for $35. Just be patient.
5. Have fun. Looks exciting to see something new. My grandson's 4x8 in my garage has stalled with 2/3rds scenery completed. Time to finish that up and get my module projects completed.
 
santafewillie said:
Looks like you have the planning aspect down. A couple of things to watch for though. Assuming that you got the building footprints correctly from the web, allow yourself another inch in each direction for clearances and scenery. Note that the Walther's Commissary background structure #3173 is just half of the Walther's REA structure #3095. I believe that the first floor has a choice of doors/wall inserts, but the upper floors will look the same. This may not matter to you. That appears to be a stray piece of flex track along the front of the layout which, if not, may interfere with the truck loading doors of the United trucking building.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help and wanted to ask about the 1" of clearance. I was planning to have the 3 building along the back of the right side of the layout butting up against each other but maybe not the best idea? Another reason is that the buildings are in the 11.5-12.5" range so if I want more than one spot per building do I need to spread them out to accommodate typical length box cars?

I didn't know the Commissary structure is half the of REA structure and probable going to switch out one of the them for something else. The track in front of the layout is the spur to the two buldings and thinking of dropping the United trucking building to allow more space around the freight depot. Thanks!
 
boatwrench said:
Exciting! I wish I had started small as you can complete a switching layout quicker than a 4x8. Quicker to the fun! A couple of general thoughts.
1. I didn't see a run around track, maybe just below the crossing in the lower photo?
2. Really like the choice of Heritage Furniture, the cars being loaded/unloaded under the overhang is visually interesting.
3. Backdrop will help make the urban scene 'pop'.
4. EBay. I know that many folks are not fans of EBay but there are plenty of unopened Walthers structures listed. Bide your time, bid what you are willing to pay because the structure will come along again eventually. The Pola/AHM Bascule bridge comes up about 3x per year an normally goes for $60-$75 . Have been outbid multiple times but finally purchased one for $15 + $5 shipping. Yesterday scored a Valley Cement facility still in cellophane for $35. Just be patient.
5. Have fun. Looks exciting to see something new. My grandson's 4x8 in my garage has stalled with 2/3rds scenery completed. Time to finish that up and get my module projects completed.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help and the track got to be a bit moved around. The runaround is just below the crossing. Thanks for the encouragement and will keep in mind a backdrop and check out ebay.
 
This looks very promising! As it happens, I have recently started work on a switching layout myself (I started a thread here). You definitely seem to be a bit further along than me!

This is a subjective point but I wonder whether your layout might be a bit crowded with buildings. Consider that you will need to be uncoupling cars a lot and reaching carefully between buildings may get tiring after a while. How wide is the ;layout, can you reach all of the sidings from the front comfortably?
 
adamsdp said:
The other half of the layout is planned to have a more rural look to it
With a saw mill in the back part of layout -
and a lumber yard in front of layout -
Click to expand...
My first thought here was that normally material moves from a saw mill to a lumber yard. In this case it seems odd to me a lumber business would need rail service to move their product 100 feet to the yard. A fork lift would be more efficient. I know they could supply other lumber yards off layout, and the lumber yard could get supply from another mill off layout, but having them so close just seems umm umm not right to me.

It took more planning to get this far then I thought.
Click to expand...
As I looked closer I noticed something else. Don't know if you planned this or not but from the industries indicated it seems this layout is set in the 1920s to 1960s. Consider the type of cars that serve each of these:
Heritage Furniture - IN box cars for wood, tools, equipment, maybe an occasional flat car (once every few years) for a really big new machine. OUT box cars for furniture
Commissary/Freight - IN box cars/empty diners, OUT box cars, full diners
River City Textiles - IN box cars cotton, maybe infrequent flat car for really big new machine. OUT box cars for fabrics
Railway Express Agency (REA): IN box cars, OUT box cars
Clyde/Dale's Barrel Factory: IN box cars raw materials (wood, metal parts), tools, infrequently a flat car
Freight Depot: IN box cars. Out box cars.
United Trucking: IN box cars. Out box cars.
saw mill: IN flat for logs? & empty box. infrequent flat for equipment. OUT - box cars lumber.
lumber yard: IN box for lumber (don't know when lumber went to covered . OUT empty box.

Don't know if you want your freight roster to be 95% box cars, 5% flat, and a dining car or not? If it were mine, I would look for an industry or two that has a better mix of frieght cars. Ice house, cold storage, icing station for reefers; fuel yard, power plant for open hoppers and tanks; chemical plant tanks; in the late 1950s covered hoppers started appearing for cement, sulfur, salt. A packing house has it all - stock, reefer, box, coal (for the boilers), infrequent flat. etc.
 
kleiner said:
This looks very promising! As it happens, I have recently started work on a switching layout myself (I started a thread here). You definitely seem to be a bit further along than me!

This is a subjective point but I wonder whether your layout might be a bit crowded with buildings. Consider that you will need to be uncoupling cars a lot and reaching carefully between buildings may get tiring after a while. How wide is the ;layout, can you reach all of the sidings from the front comfortably?
Click to expand...
Your layout room looks great! Wish I had a space like that in my home for a bigger layout such as what you are planning. Thanks for the thought about the buildings maybe being a bit overcrowded. I don't have a good feel for operations yet and trying to error on the side of more operational capability, but at the same time don't want to cram more in then the space deserves. The layout is 24" wide so don't think that reaching across will be a problem. I didn't think about the Heritage structure I was planning to use and if that overhand will interfere with a coupling skewer?
 
Iron Horseman said:
My first thought here was that normally material moves from a saw mill to a lumber yard. In this case it seems odd to me a lumber business would need rail service to move their product 100 feet to the yard. A fork lift would be more efficient. I know they could supply other lumber yards off layout, and the lumber yard could get supply from another mill off layout, but having them so close just seems umm umm not right to me.

As I looked closer I noticed something else. Don't know if you planned this or not but from the industries indicated it seems this layout is set in the 1920s to 1960s. Consider the type of cars that serve each of these:
Heritage Furniture - IN box cars for wood, tools, equipment, maybe an occasional flat car (once every few years) for a really big new machine. OUT box cars for furniture
Commissary/Freight - IN box cars/empty diners, OUT box cars, full diners
River City Textiles - IN box cars cotton, maybe infrequent flat car for really big new machine. OUT box cars for fabrics
Railway Express Agency (REA): IN box cars, OUT box cars
Clyde/Dale's Barrel Factory: IN box cars raw materials (wood, metal parts), tools, infrequently a flat car
Freight Depot: IN box cars. Out box cars.
United Trucking: IN box cars. Out box cars.
saw mill: IN flat for logs? & empty box. infrequent flat for equipment. OUT - box cars lumber.
lumber yard: IN box for lumber (don't know when lumber went to covered . OUT empty box.

Don't know if you want your freight roster to be 95% box cars, 5% flat, and a dining car or not? If it were mine, I would look for an industry or two that has a better mix of frieght cars. Ice house, cold storage, icing station for reefers; fuel yard, power plant for open hoppers and tanks; chemical plant tanks; in the late 1950s covered hoppers started appearing for cement, sulfur, salt. A packing house has it all - stock, reefer, box, coal (for the boilers), infrequent flat. etc.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the detailed information! Point taken about the lumber yard and sawmill locations. I was thinking of them as further apart then the scale distance on the layout. Not having a good feel for operations, any thoughts on how to select industries/structures based on a realistic flow will be appreciated. I am open to changing out the structures and have had thoughts about adding a propane tank somewhere on left side of the layout so a tank car could serve it, so your detailed description gives me a lot of food for thought. I would prefer to have industries that need a variety of cars.
 
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