N Scale noob needs layout advice

[nikoniko74]

Hello everyone. I'm Nick from Iowa. I am new here. As a kid, I had a bunch of HO scale trains, but I'm not sure what happened to them.

I now have a little boy who's into trains as much as I was when I was a kid. A few weeks ago we went into our local hobby shop together. I was looking at the airplanes/helicopters, and he found the trains. I figured what the heck, it'd be fun, and that we could buy a small n scale train set. I had no idea what these things cost. All that the hobby store had in stock was a small 24 x 36 oval for $150. I thought that was to much, and told him that we could get on the internet and buy something thinking it would be much cheaper. Well, turns out that was a bad decision, and I should have just went with it, because after reading a bunch of stuff on the internet, I became addicted, and now I am many many many times more $$$ into it than the original $150, and we still don't have a track set up to run on. Though I do have most of the track. The track will be DCC.

I need some advice on our layout. We want a busy layout, but I am now thinking it might have gone overboard. We have a 5 ft x 10 ft with three separate tracks. It looks very messy, but is really only 2 ovals, and an oval eight with a complicated reverse loop, and a bunch of bridges/tunnels/overpasses. Our minimum track radius is 16".

#1 goal is just to get the track up and running, but we do want to have room for scenery eventually. We are trying to fit a town a lake/river, a grain coop in there somewhere. A coal factory, and if there is any room left, maybe an ethanol plant with many tankers. (There are a bunch of those in Iowa now)

I'm not sure if we will add this in the initial build, or do it after we get the first part running, but we are adding an 4x8 to the bottom right. On there will be our big switchyard, and engine houses. We will probably put container yard, and an auto loading zone for our autoracks.

Questions....
1. I had this great vision in my head that had the trains going places, but when looking at the layout on paper, it just looks like a bunch of ovals with a lot of straights. Any suggestions on spicing this up, or do you think I will be much happier when I actually see it in person? It's hard to see in the layout, but hopefully there are enough bridges, tunnels, and overpasses to keep it interesting.

2. Our minimum radius on the inside curve with parrallel tracks is 16 or 17 inches. I liked the look of close trains, so we chose 1.25 track center spacing. Would you predict any issues with long passenger cars, or autoracks on this tracK?

What am I forgetting, and what else should we plan for?

Any advice would be apprecitated.

 

[RW&C]

Welcome back to the hobby.

You have what is known as a spaghetti bowl, the inevitably huge number of tracks laid down on the first attempt at a track plan. We've all been there.

Sounds like you want an operations-based layout, where you're actually shuttling stuff around. Part of that is knowing what you want to shuttle around, where you want to get it from, and where you want to put it. You'll need spurs off of the main line to pick up and drop off cars, and each track should have a reason to exist (or when you get it all together, you'll get tired of it really fast).

Another thing to consider is that the rectangle you have is very limiting. Much has, and can, be done with a rectangle, but it usually ends up as an oval. Make a few cuts, put it along a wall, and you've got an L, C, or G shaped layout, which can be a lot more interesting to operate, and a lot easier to work on (not as wide, easier to reach across).

The layout I'm designing has two square-ish sections with an L in between, and it takes up most of 3 walls of a small room. (It's a very small room.) The nice thing with an arrangement like that is that you can have two towns, or a town and an industrial area, or an iron ore mine and a loading dock, or whatever you want, on the two ends, with a decent mainline run between them, and still fold a loop in there to run a continuous train. The best layouts imo have room to just run a train around when that's what you want, and room to do switching when you get bored of just watching it run.

Think about how it'll run, looking at the track plan. For instance: a freight drag comes in, goes to the yard, and breaks up a cut of cars depending on destination. Then the engine (or another engine) takes the inbound cars around to their destinations on the layout, picks up the outbound cars, and puts them into the freight. Then the freight train leaves for the next town. (The "next town" can be staging, a long tunnel, or just looping around again.) Each business needs cars in and cars out; your job as an operator is to keep them happy. Throw in a passenger station and you've got that train to coordinate as well.

There are some very good books of track plans. You don't have to use one of theirs, but you may find elements you like. You can also find plans in modeling magazines and, of course, here. There's also John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation, which has pretty much everything you need to design a good setup. (Your local hobby store probably has it, as does Amazon.)

Designing a good layout can take a while, but keep at it and you'll have a setup that's still fun to operate years after you finish the track. (I say finish the track... because the rest is never really done. )

 

[nikoniko74]

I appreciate the reply. I think I'll try to change it up to a 10' by 10' C that will fit in a small spare bedroom. Back to the drawing board.