Track plan help?

[iis612]

Andrew,

All encumbrances on the room are indicated by the dimension lines. The area on the bottom is all open (however, marital politics says that I can not have rights to that real estate), except where the lines are. The north side of the layout appears to sit only 18" from a wall, but in reality it is closer to 26".
The yard is important to operations. The time period is the early to mid 40's, and one of the many hearts of the US WWII war effort was just a few miles south of, and directly connceted to the yard. I know that I can not model the factories, but I can show the products moving through the yard.

My operational goals are hard to define. I am looking for a balance between switching and scenic mainline running, as well as modeling the town I grew up in, and the line I used to work on. I have seen the layout you posted the link to. It is ingenius. I don't know how I would be able to use it. That requires bulletproof tracks and turnouts. I need to be able to easily reach those risky areas.
Mine is to be operated as a p2p with a continuous run option (sometimes I just want to see the trains go).
I am probably going to revert to the staging that Squidbait had designed, and move the current yard down along the west side, and shorten it up. My longest train will be a through passenger consist of 5 cars being pulled by an AB lashup. The freight will be short consists of 6/7 40-50 footers behind a berkshire, or a mikado.
At this point, I think I need to work on some other aspect for a bit while I mull it over.

Matt

[Squidbait]

Matt,

Have you done a Givens and Druthers form for the layout? I find that can help solidify sometimes nebulous ideas about what we want from a track plan.

[iis612]

Pere Marquette
Scale: HO
Gauge: Std

Prototype: Pere Marquette with some appearances from GTW, PRR and NYC

Era: 1940-1945
Region: Central Michigan, Specifically Mt. Morris through Kearsley
Railroad: This has been covered

Space: Looking at the planning pics, all of the obstructions are shown in scale using dimension lines. The west side of the plan is against a solid wall. The north side is appx 26" from a concrete wall.

Describe Space e.g. basement. Provide diagram showing Overhead clearances and any obstructions or limitations.

Governing Rolling Stock: 85' passenger, otherwise 40-50' freight

Relative Emphasis: (move the V)

|______________________V_____________|
Track/Operation .................................................. ..Scenic realism
|____________________V____________________|
Mainline Running .................................................. ........ Switching

Operation Priorities: (rearrange as required)

5. Passenger Train Switching
N/A. Helper District Operations
2. Main-Line Passenger Train Operation
3. Long Freight Train Operations
4. Engine Terminal Movements
1. Local Freight Operations

Typical operating Crew: 1-3

Eye Level (Owner) 69 In. (However the layout will sit at 48")



Add to this any features required or intolerable: none

[iis612]

I am going to use the staging area that Squidbait designed for me as McGrew yard. I will add a few stub tracks to it, a drill track and call it good. I will also use this yard as the staging yard.

Matt

[iis612]

Here is the latest incarnation.


And the file is attached as well.

[MasonJar]

So the walls are where I have drawn the red lines?

Andrew

[iis612]

Andrew,
My description of the room was as clear as mud. The pic shows, in red, the location of the walls and the location of my workbench.

Directly to the south of the workbench is the stairs.

Matt

[MasonJar]

Thanks Matt... I'm working on something (a little messy, as I do not have xtrkCAD) that would rearrange the yard and take advantage of the aisle along the right side instead of at the top.

I assume that you can expand anywhere in the room except out the bottom...?

Andrew

[LynnB]

Ok I was wandering where walls were and now that I see I can tell you that with the yard in the top being in the back this may cause you some headaches, with the number of rails back there, if there's a derailment chances are it will be back there's and if you have several trains staged and your going to run into issues IMHO.
Have you considered having a helix an putting the staging below on a lower level?

[iis612]

Here is an updated picture showing some more important features about the room. The green box is an area that I have permission to use. Areas inside the blue lines are structures (benchwork, workbench) that are already in place.

Andrew, Thank you for your input. It is a huge help. And I apologize for my horrible communication skills. Pain killers can cause one to gloss over important information.

Lynn, I have thought about putting the staging on a lower level, and using the lower level to increase the mainline run as well. However, for the most part, I am the operating crew. I am also building it without help (that is not entirely true, I didn't build the benchwork), and I will be the one cleaning and maintaining it. I would love to add at least another level, but I don't want to spend more time cleaning and maintaining than running trains. That doesn't rule out placing staging on a lower level entirely though. I wouldn't have a clue where to put the helix so the layout is still operated as a p2p.

Matt

[MasonJar]

So my ideas are this... and they are based on the premise that you can redo some of the benchwork if needed...

Numbers refer to the numbers written on the pic below. Sorry for crude drawing, but I run a Mac and do not yet have the OSX compatible version of xtrkCAD...

1. Move the bencchwork against the wall, and narrow it considerably. This will give you a bigger operators' pit, which is always nice. It also increases the runs along the long sides of your room, which is also nice... A scenic divider could be used to hide a couple of staging tracks (and the ability for continuous run). This divider could be extended around to the right, and down between 3 & 4. Reason for this in a minute...

2. Large "active" (i.e. non-staging) yard.

3. If the divider mentioned in #1 is in place, this side could be your staging yard. However you could operate it as another operational yard, with the crew standing outide the "pit".

4. Other side - scenic or switching possibilities... operated from within the pit.

5. Viewable from the rest of the room. Space would be nice for one large "showcase" industry to show off your talents!

6. Narrowest point - best for duckunder or lift/swing gate.

Just some alternate ideas - I hope they spark something. Even if not - it's always interesting to plan...

[LynnB]

Just curious , call me dumb but , if the top side of #1 is a diver and there is a wall on the top side of the plan lets say east of the divider, how do you get to the staging yard? Or is that a walk around top?

[iis612]

Lynn,

Andrew's idea has the top of the layout up against the wall, and the staging has been moved to the right side of the layout, workable from the outside of the pit.
Andrew,
I like your idea alot. The only part of it that is not really doable is moving the benchwork to the wall at the top of the layout. There is a circuit panel and a window sitting too low to make that doable. I am working on 2 new designs. 1 has the staging in the area that you moved it to, which is a great idea. The other has the staging running down a 2.5% grade to 2 staging yards beneath the main level. I am also mulling over the helix to a universal staging yard. I really don't want to build and maintain a helix though. So that will probably never be more than conceptual.
Can anyone tell me the formula for figuring grades so I know how long the staging lead needs to be? Better yet (since I am old, lazy and not the brightest tool on the cake) a grade calculator?


Matt

[Russ Bellinis]

I am not even sure that I am posting this in the right place...
Here is the track plan that I am working on so far...

The red lines indicate a scenic divider (i.e. backdrop) On the top is the staging area. On the left side you can see the turntable sitting, all alone, that is where my yard will be. Obviously more needs to be done to make this a workable plan. I need to add some crossovers, a yard, ad infinitum.
If the resident planning gurus could take a peak at this and give me their thoughts, it would be most appreciated.
Crud, the dimensions don't show on the picture. The grid is in 3" increments.

Thanks,
Matt

Here is a slightly more useful pic

I just used the quote from your first post to get the picture of your room with dimensions. I got a figure of 17 feet on the left side of the drawing and 6 feet across the bottom of the drawing. Adding 17 and 6 I get 23 feet which multiplied by 12 to get inches gives me 276 inches. If you start a 3% double tracked down grade just before or just after the curve in the lower right corner of the layout (if you are doing a duck under, lift out, or swing bridge there, start the down grade just past the duck under, etc.)you will be at 8-10 inches below grade by the time the grade gets to the turntable in the upper left corner. If you install some gentle "S" bends in the 17 foot long side you could probably get it to 12 inches below grade when you get under the turntable. You could then locate your staging yard under the yard at the top of the layout. If you have the November 2008 issue of Model Railroader, there is an article on making an inexpensive manual staging yard turntable. If you make one long enough to hold a complete locomotive consist, you could uncouple your locomotives from the train after it was in the staging yard, run them onto the turntable, reverse them and hook up to the other end of a train to leave. If you are running diesel era, just do a run around track. If you want to be able to come out of staging in either direction, put a switch back in the center of the 17 foot side. to reverse direction coming onto the layout, you would back the train out of staging past the switch back and then throw the switch and climb out of staging to rejoin the mainline somewhere along the diagonal straight section on the lower right side of the layout. They call such a design a "no-lix" since it essentially turns the entire layout into a huge helix. My local hobby shop used to have a demonstration layout in the front of the store. Because of the restricted size of the layout, they used a 4.5% grade up and down to staging. They had to put an extra engine on the train to get up the grade, and they did tend to buck and surge a bit going down, but it was a workable solution. 4%-4.5% would put the staging yard about 14-15 inches below the yard on the top end of the layout. Since you are doing a thread on building a Bowser Mikado, I presume you are running steam. From what I've heard those Bowser steam engines are very heavy and really pull. You could make your no-lix a "helper district" and put a stub siding that would allow the helper to cut off at the top of the grade and then drift back down to staging after the train passed by. If you opt for the turn table I mentioned earlier, you could locate it off to the side under the peninsula at the top of the layout drawing. It wouldn't need to any longer than your longest steam engine & tender. If you are double heading steam up the grade, just turn each locomotive separately. One more thing, you want access to your staging yard from the operators pit on the inside, so run your entrance and exit tracks to and from the no-lix on the outside of the staging yard. Leave an access window on the outside of the layout at the top in case you need to re-rail something without reaching over a staging yard full of trains.

[Russ Bellinis]

You asked for the formula for figuring grades. Rather than edit my last post again, I'll do a new reply. If you divide the length of your run into the elevation change, you will get the %, but I use an easier method. A 1% grade drops 1 foot in 100 feet of linear running, 2% drops 2 ', 3% drops 3', etc. Multiply your linear feet of the run by 12 to get the number of inches. A 1% grade will drop 1 inch in 100 inches of run, 2% 2", 3% 3", etc. I don't worry about computing the number of inches in a particular radius curve. In the previous post I took 17 feet plus 6 feet for a total of 23 feet multiplied by 12 = 276 inches. To make things easier, I rounded up to 300 inches. Thus a 3% drop over 300 inches = 3 inches per 100 inches = 9 inches.