First Layout - Opinions Required!

[TrinityJayOne]

I've been using SCARM to build my first layout over the last few days and have ended up with this- (click to view full screen)



The geometry is a very, very rough idea of what I want to have.




With geometry hidden.




The layout flattened.


As you can see the layout is in an L-shape, spread across four 1m² tables. I need the thing to be modular because we're renting so it will inevitably need to be dismantled then put back together elsewhere. This is also the reason for an L-shape, as it means it'll slot into a corner quite nicely without taking up an entire room. With these dimensions I am of course modelling in N!

Now, the track. There are two loops running on different routes, with some crossovers to make things interesting. The turnout + crossover design at the front was specifically chosen so that I can have a train (or with a bit of care, trains) alternating loops without having to flip switches every lap. The two mountains hide a pair of helixes to get a bit of height on the larger loop (hidden under each mountain there'll be a hole in the baseboard for access incase of accidents). The smaller loop peaks at a 1.7% grade (on relatively straight sections), while the bigger loop hits 2%. I'm fully expecting a long consist to struggle on the helixes, but the bigger loop is intended to be limited to MUs so that's ok. The left yard will be an industry loading area, either lumber or coal/ore if I can work a mine into the side of the mountain or something. The center yard is loco storage and also staging, seeing as I just don't have the space for a dedicated area. My brother is making a layout using a mirrored version of this table setup, and the turnouts at the bottom are so that we can occasionally bring our layouts together and connect them with bridges for railroading nirvana.

As for the setting, it will be all coniferous/alpine geography during 1930-1950s America. I was originally going to emulate Chesapeake & Ohio, but the USRA H4 2-6-6-2 model I bought turned out to be a bit of a turd and I swapped it for a Dash-8. Great train but it hardly fits the setting. I wouldn't mind picking up a C&O F7A & B set, but if I can't find anything then I might go with a setting that's closer to the present.

So far I have 2 concerns with the layout- A. the helixes might not be steep enough to clear the lower loops, and B. it looks a bit busy. There is going to be a lot of vegetation and scenery and that will help (the tree-laying process in SCARM is not great yet, I grew tired of it quickly), but I need some opinions on this regardless.

Finally, the layout is intended for flying solo but I think it could hold the attention of a 2nd person (brother) should they be over. Plenty of opportunity to have a train on each loop plus a switcher in the yards.

Discuss and critique away.

 

[cajon]

Guess all you want to do is run trains. In that case make the middle yard double ended & a little longer. There's really no need for the second yard. If you want to do some switching do it there. Is this HO or N scale? In either case it would have to be walk around as it would be very hard to reach across. Good luck

 

[AllenB]

Love it! The lake on top of the mountain is a little misplaced...but certainly a cool set up!

 

[steinjr]

If you want to do something in a corner, I would suggest exploring a waterwing footprint - wider lobes on the sides, narrow in the corner, possibly with an under/over crossing in the corner - gives you one scene on the left, one on the right and one in the narrower section in the middle.

A illustration of that type of layout shape from an old track plan of mine:

Smile,
Stein

 

[TrinityJayOne]

Thanks guys.

I thought about making it thinner to have a walkaround area, but decided against it in favour of having more baseboard. I'm quite tall and my arms are long so I can easily reach the far corners of this layout with very little effort.

Regarding the yards, I do think they're a little plain, but I'm not sure how to make them more interesting.

 

[steinjr]

Thanks guys.

I thought about making it thinner to have a walkaround area, but decided against it in favour of having more baseboard. I'm quite tall and my arms are long so I can easily reach the far corners of this layout with very little effort.

I thjink you are making a classical mistake in trying to maximize baseboard area instead of going for ease of access and operating interest.

I would suggest instead spending some more time on defining your goals clearly first, including the goals of what you wants to be able to _do_ on the layout.

But in the end, it is your layout. Best of luck to you.

Smile,
Stein

 

[TrinityJayOne]

I made a few revisions to clear up some board space, definitely looks better now. The pass through the middle yard is gone, and I've tried to make said yard a bit more interesting to use. The other yard I changed to a design I remember from the Murchison 2 layout for Trainz, with one line for loading and two sidings to hold the rest of the train. The large blank area will be a town, and I'd like to have a train running through it but I'd need a good reason to do so first.

 

[Espeefan]

Since you're running diesels, lose the turntable and substitute a two stall engine house and a couple of sidings beside it. Engine facilities are huge in reality, with only a few exceptions. These photos show a small prototypical engine facility (Port Costa on the SP). Note: Photos are by Harry Wong. Nice work! The roundhouse kit is available, though this one was scratchbuilt, and the basis for the kit. The turntable is a 75 footer. This facility in real life serviced nothing larger than 2-8-0's. Larger locos would not fit on the turntable (no 4-8-4's or articulateds ) This is a real space eater!

I'd also make those mountains tall enough so that the railroad would have actually tunneled through them and not blasted a cut. Your land forms should make sense. it will enhance the realism of the layout and not look toylike.

As Cajon says, this is a good plan for watching them roll. If you want the railroad to have something to do, maybe a couple of industries so you can do some switching? Just my thoughts FWIW!

 

[TwrOpr 87]

I made a few revisions to clear up some board space, definitely looks better now. The pass through the middle yard is gone, and I've tried to make said yard a bit more interesting to use. The other yard I changed to a design I remember from the Murchison 2 layout for Trainz, with one line for loading and two sidings to hold the rest of the train. The large blank area will be a town, and I'd like to have a train running through it but I'd need a good reason to do so first.

I dont mean to sound rude but Id get rid of the turn table in favor of a engine facility and in the lower left corner of the pic have your town and a few places to switch. That means you can still have a small town, depot, and a few little companies. Where you have the wye looking thing, Id eliminate that all together since it looks pointless. Where your yard and turntable are currently sitting Id have more scenery and no tracks, maybe a random trailer home or something to look at?! And have a passing track/siding somewhere as storage if need be. This way your layout is simple and still has things to keep the viewer or operator interested. Also not everyone is probably as tall as you, may wanna keep that in mind incase you plan on having anyone else over to operate your layout... Again I dont mean to sound like an ass but its my 2 cents. Ive learned a lot thru experience.

 

[steinjr]

Hmmm - you could do something similar to what you have there in a configuraton that would fit better into a corner. How about something roughly along these lines:

Haven't bothered to flesh out much details of the town along the aisle from the upper left hand corner and leftwards - just illustrated a bent dogbone with a narrow waist and an over/underpass on the ends, with three sidings long enough for a train of 12 40-foot cars, caboose and engine (or alternatively a train of engine and 6 passenger cars).

Minimum curve radius is 13" - which is plenty for 40' cars and 4 axle switchers, but a bit too sharp for cars longer than 70' (about 5" in N scale).

Anyways - the core point I wanted to make is that you should try to put the tracks you will be switching along the aisle, and try to avoid having a spiral track in the upper left hand corner, where it will be the most inaccessible.

Smile,
Stein

 

[OCN Guy]

I think Steinjr should make a living designing layouts... We could all chip in! All of his designs are great!

 

[OCN Guy]

I like the "Tehachapi loop" and evelated track ideas!

 

[Trussrod]

Hi Jay,
First I'd like to address two things you need to be concerned about, as mentioned before, the width of your tables and the reach over. Yes, I read that your tall but that also means that more than likely you'll be building your layout much higher from the floor to get a more pleasing perspective of everything at about at least waist level is not a bit higher, so your not looking down on the trains operating to too great an extent, to give a much greater and more pleasing semblance of realism to the layout.

As an example, I'm 5' 9" tall and my mainline on the lower level of my layout is at 45.5
inches which is above my waist height but still offers, with a reasonable stoop or sitting in a chair nice viewing. The upper level of the main is at 54" and offers a more pleasing view of the trains when standing. So the point I'm making here is that height is relative only to the height your table work will be at which will more than likely still present the the same reach over problems for you as with everyone else.
Also don't forget all the trees your planning on having will also present a problem as to reach over too especially if the tracks are behind a group of trees and you need to reach the tracks for one reason or another. Even though I limited my layout, a folded dog bone made into an elongated U that almost adjoins itself, to a 32" depth in most areas I still need a small step stool with hand hand hold for easy reach over to the back areas and will have four corners that are going to certainly require this same step stool with hand hold, to be able to reach these back corners which are of course more like 48"s! Just some food for thought.


As far as the turn table, I myself don't really see a problem but would move itd a bit more to the Left to give yourself more space behind it and possibly turn the two tracks coming toward it into a run around opening up the space for the engine house to be placed more easily in the now open area. The run-around could also be extended if you desired as you have more than enough length on the Left.

As far as the two connecting tracks at the Left end why not have them come off the main line considerably closer to the mid-point of the loop there by giving you a place for two other industries when the two layouts aren't connected?

Having some operation in the form of a delivery/pick-up schedule, even a loose one can offer some nice variation to trains that are running and add to the realism of transporting good from one place to another.

You may well need to check your clearances of under passes.

Over all it looks i nteresting

 

[TrinityJayOne]

*dusts off thread*

I've given my layout design a freshening up based on all of your input. Here's some pics first-

As you can see I've kept the deep baseboard design, but I will probably end up having a walkaround area for convenience. The main reason for the redesign is that I wanted a staging area of some kind even if it's small. To help with this I've extended the middle table by 50cm, and I've removed the turnouts at the bottom of the L. These will come back, but probably right at the start of the corners so that they're not taking up space. Other changes-

-The industry yard has been expanded, and a wye has been added.
-The crossroad that was previously in the middle of the layout has been moved to the bottom of the L. I used curved turnouts so that wider radius curves can be maintained immediately before & after the crossroad section. It also makes for a much smoother transition from one loop to the other.
-The inner loop has had the front tracks shifted to the rear to allow for the staging yard. I chose not to have them directly connected because (to me) the layout feels bigger if you have to travel further to get between the two yards.
-The center yard is now the staging yard at the front. Easier access there and with the larger baseboard I can have the sidings on both ends. I may still add another track or two if needed.

With the center yard moved there's tonnes of space in the middle for the town, and perhaps a railway crossing on the inner loop. I'd like to have a wye on the outer loop too so that a train can turn around twice without having to reverse, but I'm not left with many options of placement because of all the gradients. I thought perhaps have one start from the left side of the staging yard and then loop around in the inside space, but I'll see.

Now, a question. How would you wire the wye I currently have on the layout? I know how an autoswitcher works with a simple wye design, but what happens when there's two turnouts connecting it back to the main and a yard there too? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking I could isolate the track immediately after it diverges from the main at both turnouts, then have the wye and all the sidings connected from the autoswitcher? I've run it through my head and I think this would work a long as one train doesn't enter the wye precisely as another exits it. I'm assuming that if I do put in the 2nd wye as described above it would not make things any more complicated, I'd just need a 2nd autoswitcher.

Thoughts and constructive critisism welcome as always!

 

[OCN Guy]

quick question... the numbers showing the depth of the benchwork are too small for me to read. How deep is the benchwork planned?

 

[TrinityJayOne]

1m, so roughly 3'.

 

[Selector]

It is my style of design, some parking space, lots of scenery and vistas if you will take photos, and some room for switching or industries if you get tired of just watching trains snake around the layout. Definitely build in some variety, even one industry with a run-around track.

One thing I note, or fear, is that your overpass track, where you come out from around and behind the far hill and then cross over the yard...it seems to be you'll need about a 3-4% grade there. I know this is a rough sketch, and that you may have the height at the overpass looking higher than it will be when completed, but right now you must ensure all your arithmetic is bang on. Remember you will need vertical transition curves...if you eat into the available grade length with transitions, it necessarily means what is left between them will have to be that much steeper in order to achieve the necessary height at overpass for clearances.

 

[TrinityJayOne]

The grade on the outer loop peaks at 3.5% and will only be serviced my MU or with helpers. That said, the whole rear bridge section is flat so I could easily dial it down a bit by stretching the grade out over the bridge, or just making the bridge lower.

 

[Doughless]

You basically have two helix's that build elevation to get the high bridge vista scene. Nice bridge, but I think the loops will be difficult to scenic, and they will likely look unrealistic and toy-like, possibly spoiling the look of the entire layout. Too many tracks too close together. Since you're not concerned about having hidden tracks, hide more of them in the mountain and only make one track of each mountain visible.

I think Stein's plan gives you almost the same amount of visible track with less complication. Maybe figure a way to add a high bridge scene in to the back of his plan and you'll have a nice combination of your plan and his.

 

[OCN Guy]

You'll want also to narrow the depth down. keep it under 76 cm (30 inches). Unless you have 1m long arms! the back will be out of reach, and that guarantees that's where the derail will be, or the stubborn dirty track that prevents electrical contact.