Trackplan - new addition (comments welcome!)


rhoward

S.L.O.&W. Trainman
Howdy, howdy, howdy. The new room is finally ready (with the addition of a new gas heater, yesterday) to start the addition to the Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western RR. The good news is that I can now start building. The bad news is that the heater takes up twice as much space as I thought it would. The good news is that it will easily bring the temp up to a comfortable level and is much cheaper to operate than an electric type. The bad news is that it was a bit more expensive than I originally hoped. Anyway, I decided to do it right the first time and spent the money to have it installed. A sample trackplan is shown below. The Main Room is already in place with the exception of the yard by the Enamelware Factory. That and the yard at the bottom of Room2 are modeled on the small complex at Canadaigua, NY in 1925 (with a lot of compression - the roundhouses have been left out and several miles of track have been eliminated). These can be modified, but will most likely be left "as is". I wanted to add staging to the layout and it has been placed in the island under the layout.

Dotted lines indicate trackage that is "hidden" in tunnels, or behind the backdrop. Yes, there is easy access for all tunnels.

SLOW%20Main%20Rm~a.jpg


In Room2, the blue track is the lower trackage leading to and including the "hidden" staging, and the green trackage is the upper track leading to a small staion, yard and service factility over the staging. The staging will be "open" in back of the backdrop on the upper level. All grades are 1.6% or less. Hope this makes sense!

SLOWRoom2~a.jpg


Anything you see that might be problematic or if you have any suggestions, let me know.

Thanks!
 
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Ray,

Looks like quite an empire, I see there are lots of lineside industries to keep the way freights busy! So the trackwork shown in the top part of the main room has already been laid?

I'm guessing that the outer boundaries of your track plan are against a wall or covered by a backdrop. The first thing that I noticed is, some of those areas seem pretty 'deep' (i.e. beyond arm's reach) so I guess that means you need to go underneath the layout to rescue disabled/derailed trains?

I am kind of curious as to how the first room and the 2nd room 'connect' - is there any chance you might shrink each image and combine the two? That way I can trace the movement of a train from point A (class yard in main room) to point B (staging yard in 2nd room).
 
NZRMac said:
Ray where do the rooms fit together? Just trying to see the whole picture.

Ken.

If you turn Room2 90° clockwise in your mind, you will see that room 2 connects to the old layout at the curve on the lower part of the original layout where the tracks leave the layout. The two rooms are in slightly different scales in the two jpg's so they don't exactly match when put together. (the layout does......... )

CSX_road_slug, The old part of the layout was built over 20 years ago. There are some places where you climb on the layout or remove a drop in piece of scenery, etc. to get access to the track. I made sure the track was....... perfect there! ;) Somew day in the future, maybe, I will rebuild that part of the layout to be a bit more "old age" friendly....... But for now it is what I've got. I was very careful to make the addition easy to access without climbing under, over, or through the layout. The deepest reach will be about 30 inches, and that only in one spot, I think.

I will try to come up with a merged document to show the entire layout plan tonight.

Thanks!
 
Here is a rough composite of the two rooms. Hope this makes it easier to understand. The track going from room to room does not quite match up but will when I actually start laying the track. Some ajustment of where the curved switches are placed will undoubtedly have to happen. The Canandaigua yards do pose a bottleneck, and they did in real life..........
 
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Interesting double use of the "blue" lines in section #1. I would think that would be the bottle neck. It might be relieved to some extent if the track (black) coming from the bottom was kept as double all the way up to where it meets the blue.
 
I think it looks pretty good. Normally I can offer suggestions to ANY trackplan, but this one is good. Maybe if I study it a little I can find something wrong;)
 



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