Switching Layout Design Contest w/ prize!!


CSXPAID

CSXPAID

Member
Hello all,

As some of you may know I have the benchwork done for a 18"x 9' HO scale switching layout. I thought I might have had a decent track plan but Im not sure now if I want to use it. I don't know the first thing about the layout cad programs Ive tried the atlas one but cant get the hang of it. I have also sat down and tried drawing plans but I find I have a case of layout design writers block!!

At this point I will look at anything you have to offer, weather it be full of tracks or just a few I just want to see what your great minds come up with!

I know there are many talented designers on here, because I've looked at alot of your trackplans!!


So here is your chance to use your favorite program to design whatever you can come up with and have a chance at a good prize!!!!

Here is the space I have to work with
100_1167.png


The design specifications:

18" x 9' straight layout. I do not have room for an L or add on cassettes

#6 minimum turnout

26" minimum radius

The contest:

10 day contest ending July 16th 10 pm EST. the winner will be chosen and the winners name posted shortly after contest end, followed by a pm to the winner for your address

The Prize:

100_1179.png


Walthers Work Train set painted MOW gray (the box top shows cars that are not in there nor were they ever) These cars will fit many eras and genres!!

kits are unbuilt and complete

100_1180.png


The set includes:

2-5560 series Work flat cars w/ loads

1-5580 series Blacksmith car

1-5600 series Rail and Tie car

1-5750 series 40' Storage box car


A $45.00 value, and shipped absolutly free!!

Good Luck to everyone looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with

Thank you,

DEVLYN
 
this professional looking shelf with professional lighting deserves no less professional layout. good idea to get help. signing up for email updates mostly, but i might try to put something together just to see how it stacks up. with that, any additional conditions? region? theme? line? good type? setting? or all open?
 
not much other than the specs above, I can adapt plans to the era but for those who care to know it will be C&O/ Pere Marquette at about 1947/48 just after C&O aquirred the PM

Thanks for the kind comments on the benchwork tankist
 
So where do we post the plans? I got some free time tonight, just waiting for the Angels/White Sox game to start (dang rain delay lol) and will be watching the Dodgers/Mariners game at 7 (flipping between both games, ahhh lol) so other then that im not doing anything tonight

Just let me know where you want the plan to be posted and ill get started

Also, what kinda industries you looking to do? Mostly warehouses? A few sidings for some warehouses and a small yard?
 
Trucklover said:
So where do we post the plans? I got some free time tonight, just waiting for the Angels/White Sox game to start (dang rain delay lol) and will be watching the Dodgers/Mariners game at 7 (flipping between both games, ahhh lol) so other then that im not doing anything tonight

Just let me know where you want the plan to be posted and ill get started

Also, what kinda industries you looking to do? Mostly warehouses? A few sidings for some warehouses and a small yard?
Click to expand...

you can either post it or pm me posting it might be fun just to show others what has already been drawn!!!

Im really open to anything, but yeah a few warehouse sidings would make switching a little more challenging

thanks
 
Well, i guess I will start and submit my plan. Its kinda busy, but it will provide you with lots of switching. It includes 7 Warehouses (all of them dont have to be used as warehouses, you could model something else there for example you could take one of them and remove them, make it into a lumber mill siding, model the track with Centerbeams and then have a photo backdrop of a lumber mill.... etc. etc.) a Team Track, and a Tank Car Unloading Station. You could really change any of these and make them whatever you want, these are just suggestions.

The plan pretty much says it all. You had said you are wanting to model the late 40's/early 50's, which means the leads should be plenty of room with shorter cars and small switching locomotives.

Some industries might be complicated to switch out, so you will have to plan in advance and make good use of the layouts run around to either pull or shove cars into industries/sidings.

4 Yard tracks, each tracks length is shown on the plan which will make a decent yard capacity. All cars will have to be backed in, that is the one dis-advantage, but there isnt really much to do as a crossover at the end would eat away the valuable yard space. This again brings in the use of the layouts run around.

So with that said, here is the plan:

Picture6.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi,

First of all you are doing yourself a great disservice calling for #6 turnouts. I can understand why you might want to, but I looked at the C&O roster for PM equipment and what they were running were SW1 and Nw2's and E7s. Now I figure passenger trains are out, and the switchers can handle #4s. So can 2-8-0s. But those aren't the rules.

So I picked an industry to switch: The Arm & Hammer plant at Old Fort OH. Here is a satellite photo of the area. Of course, you will have to extrapolate what the buildings would have looked like in the late 40's. The operations I suspect would have been pretty much the same. Anyway, I can make out covered hoppers, boxcars and tank cars and maybe gondolas off the picture I show. There is a two-track line running east and west into Old Fort.

Here is the area:

a&H01.jpg


Obviously we can't do the entire plant, but we can take two of the more interesting sections and compress them together. The first part is the very end of the track at the bottom of the picture above. The second is the area where a couple tracks diverge off to the west of a big square building near the "top" of the factory buildings.

I rotated the images to match the orientation of the plan. Notice in the first picture there seem to be two types of tipples. The one on the far right for loading tank cars. The one on the left for loading covered hoppers. In the lower picture, you see tank cars on the outside of the square and box cars on the inside of the square, making me think these are raw materials.

a&H02.jpg


a&H03.jpg


As you can see, the two areas are compressed by both location and number of tracks. But you can still get the feel of the operation. Your job will be to find out what they made at the time of your layout and what kind of raw materials you would need to run the operation. They seem to make kitty litter now. :D I would suspect baking soda, industrial bicarbonate of soda, and possibly fire retardants.

a&H04.jpg


Operations would be run from one of the outside tracks probably the one closest to the edge of the layout. This is where you would place outgoing and incoming loads. (fiddle track) You would take box cars from there and set them along the left side of the track closest to the buildings and bring the empties down for returning to the RR. Full tank cars you would spot at the building at the lower right of the layout.

Likewise you take empty tank cars and hoppers to the appropriate tipple, fill them and return them to the RR.

Edit: I finally figured out why every thing in the photo is so white--decades of spilled product. Will be adding grass and roads. "Dirt" roads along the tracks seem to be a reddish brown clay or gravel.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Josh- great plan that could keep me busy for hours!!!

Chip- the reason why I wanted a #6 as a minimum is because I have some pretty large c&o steamers and although I will most likely not switch with them I might want to take em out of thier boxes and stretch thier legs! Nice plan btw I like the prototypical location

looking forward to more!!!

great start guys
 
I have a 20" x 8' HO layout (see http://southplainsdistrict.blogspot.com/) and all I can say is, not enough space in that scale. It's going to be difficult unless you go for something of a switching puzzle type layout.

Personally, if I were to do it over, I'd go with N scale:
View attachment 21064

You can have a very nice layout that supports realistic operation in N scale in this space. And you dont have to have backdrop flats to boot! Of course you lose detail in this small scale.

Just some thoughts...
 
nephthyr said:
I have a 20" x 8' HO layout (see http://southplainsdistrict.blogspot.com/) and all I can say is, not enough space in that scale. It's going to be difficult unless you go for something of a switching puzzle type layout.

Personally, if I were to do it over, I'd go with N scale:
View attachment 21064

You can have a very nice layout that supports realistic operation in N scale in this space. And you dont have to have backdrop flats to boot! Of course you lose detail in this small scale.

Just some thoughts...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice and the nice contribution!!!
 
CSXPAID said:
Chip- the reason why I wanted a #6 as a minimum is because I have some pretty large c&o steamers and although I will most likely not switch with them I might want to take em out of thier boxes and stretch thier legs!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised if the prototype Arm & Hammer complex wasn't switched with a road engine. You could do it on the model as well, just couldn't do as many cars at once.
 
Devlin, I'm currently using my small, elderly, clockwork laptop because my main 'puter is sick and poorly, so I can't redraw this, but I offer it as a suggestion. You have 108" x 18" so add 12" to the right hand end, and 18" to the left end, Put a road across the left with a siding feeding a small freighthouse (siding holds one car), and just lengthen the tracks at the right. You can either make the buildings deeper, or have room for a road/parking area at the front for Foxy Lady Cosmetics, You could also add a further LH turnout into the interchange track, replacing the curve between the diamond at Foxy Lady, and the turnout, and adding another parallel track to the right front, giving more space for interchanging cars eg one siding for westbounds and the other for eastbounds - the junction with the main being assumed to be off layout to the right, beyond a road overbridge disguising the non-existant exit!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Switching Puzzles

If you're not opposed to the idea of switching puzzles here's two classics redrawn for 50' rolling stock and Atlas code 83 #6 super switches.

Despite its simplicity - this incarnation of the classic Inglenook is actually quite versatile - it can be operated both as a classic inglenook puzzle or you can randomly pick 3 cars from the eight and spot them at the industry. If you get tired of seeing the same cars / industry you can always swop those out:
View attachment 21066

Here's John Allen's timesaver puzzle:
View attachment 21067

You can find a wealth of info on these switching puzzles here: http://www.wymann.info/ShuntingPuzzles/index.html
 
Motley said:
LOL Josh already won!! Wow that is a perfect plan.
Click to expand...

Hardly.

Sorry to be blunt, but that plan is rife with switchbacks that require larger industries to be switched one-car-at-a-time (if that) or to have cars removed from other unrelated industries before the desired industry may be switched. IMHO, this is not the best path to operating enjoyment.

The key in designing small switching layouts is to overlap major elements to make best use of limited space and to eliminate tedious one-car-at-a-time moves to large industries.

Note how much better Shortliner Jack's design makes use of the space without excessively short leads and switchbacks.

A design taking its cue from Linn Westcott's classic Switchman's Nightmare would also fit and be a better choice than an inflexible puzzle, in my view.

sw_nghtmre.gif


Peter White's Tenderfoot Industrial is another interesting option. Although it includes one switchback, the rest is designed for more realistic switching. It could be tweaked to fit.

I hope the Original Poster will spend some time studying more realistic and practical options before choosing a plan.
 
I think you've got to have spurs facing both ways, and a runaround to get the switcher round to whichever end it needs to be at. That Inglenook plan is quite well known, but it just doesn't seem to have enough complexity to be fun for long.

Maybe if you're going to have such a small railroad, you've got to build a switching puzzle or you'll find it's dull. People have said that the Timesaver is a thing no railroad would allow to exist, but that's the point--with limited space, the objective would be to introduce problems, not make the whole thing quick and easy.

It's N scale and totals 12 ft long, but Bill Denton's Kingsbury Branch is wonderful:

http://home.comcast.net/~skytop35/Kingsbury/index.html
 
cuyama said:
Hardly.

Sorry to be blunt, but that plan is rife with switchbacks that require larger industries to be switched one-car-at-a-time (if that) or to have cars removed from other unrelated industries before the desired industry may be switched. IMHO, this is not the best path to operating enjoyment.
Click to expand...


Well i guess its just a matter of personal preference. I am in NO way saying my plan is better then any others who have posted in this thread. But I for one like that fact that you have to think and plan the path you will take to get a car to its destination, which is again, a matter of personal preference... Yes most of the industries in my plan will only be able to spot 1-2 cars, but thats part of the fun of pushing/pulling them into their destinations and then switching the others around it. Once industries have been switched and loaded cars have all been put on their appropriate sidings, you can start over and pull empties out and back into the yard and do it all over again with loaded cars. I dont know maybe its just me, but i like to think how im going to get a car from point A to point B and dont want to be able to just simply push a car into a siding and call it done. To me that is boring and I would get bored real quickly with a layout of a relatively small size that isnt very fun to operate and switch.

There is one spot that I over looked, the upper left corner of the layout. The lead to get back to Warehouses 2-4 was not very long, i re-worked it so now you can get a locomotive and 3-4 cars while using the first part of the siding for Warehouse #6 as a extended lead. I have edited my original post with the new plan showing the modification.
 
Trucklover said:
Well, i guess I will start and submit my plan. Its kinda busy, but it will provide you with lots of switching. It includes 6 Warehouses (all of them dont have to be used as warehouses, you could model something else there for example you could take one of them and remove them, make it into a lumber mill siding, model the track with Centerbeams and then have a photo backdrop of a lumber mill.... etc. etc.) a Team Track, and a Tank Car Unloading Station. You could really change any of these and make them whatever you want, these are just suggestions.

The plan pretty much says it all. You had said you are wanting to model the late 40's/early 50's, which means the leads should be plenty of room with shorter cars and small switching locomotives. The 9" lead on the left of the plan would only be enough for a small switcher, it serves the layouts run-around.

Some industries might be complicated to switch out, so you will have to plan in advance and make good use of the layouts run around to either pull or shove cars into industries/sidings.

4 Yard tracks, each tracks length is shown on the plan which will make a decent yard capacity. All cars will have to be backed in, that is the one dis-advantage, but there isnt really much to do as a crossover at the end would eat away the valuable yard space. This again brings in the use of the layouts run around.

So with that said, here is the plan:

Picture4.png
[/QUOTE/]

Just couldn't help it Josh just had to doodle. LOL Extended the lead on left & gave you one more spot upper left.
Click to expand...
 
cajon said:
Just couldn't help it Josh just had to doodle. LOL Extended the lead on left & gave you one more spot upper left.
Click to expand...

Dangit Andy LOL Well i made the changes, and i cant believe how much better it looks simply by moving a few tracks around. The 9" lead is now a 16-1/4" lead that serves the run around and if you use the left most white turnout, that 16 1-/4" lead turns into a 27-3/4" lead which should be plenty of room for a small switcher and 3-4 cars. Also with your change, a angled warehouse was added. Changes have been updated to my original post on the first page.

Technically this isnt 100% my trackplan now, Andy has helped, so does that dis-qualify me? LOL :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top