You're welcome, of course, Preston. May I suggest you get hold of a copy of John Armstrong's 'Track Planning for Realistic Operation'. I haven't read the new second edition, but I trust in the people doing the job, so buy whichever you can find. Reading that book from cover to cover will teach you more about American railroads than we could without writing a book just like it for you to read
.
In any case, I will try to reply to each of your questions. First off, the accepted minimum for radius in N is 247.65mm. Even that is pretty much only used these days in industrial trackage. When dealing with American 50-60 foot cars and larger, you really don't want to push the limits. And yours is set to 10mm, which is just plain balmy (as you might call it
). As in any other scale, the bigger the curve, the better.
Now we'll talk about the track design. You understand the concept of 'railroad usual practices'. You've seen plenty of railroads in operation. That means you can look at what you've designed and see if any part of it looks anything like real railroads. If you're just in the hobby to have something to do in your twilight years [
]. then you can build as you like and ignore the snickers of people who come to see what the heck you're doing in the back bedroom. However, it looks like you've become infected with a love of railroading, so you really have to consider your design. Reading that book will do you a world of good. It discusses what real railroads do, WHY they do it, and how they do it. It's a master class in design written by the most successful layout designer in history. Your layout does connect up, but it is rather far from looking like a railroad. That's harsh, but as long as I'm wearing holes in my keyboard, I might as well be perfectly honest. There are certain compromises that we, as modelers have come to accept, but we do our level best not to do so any more than necessary, so I hope you won't get all fluffed up and toss it as a bad idea. The only reason I mention this is that you seem to be willing to do the work involved in looking at how the prototype does things.
It's ok that you want to use a helix, but we seldom see them with only 1 loop. I'm not sure what the purpose is behind the entire layout. For further inspiration, look at my posts under Large layout in this forum. What I wrote about what to do BEFORE opening AR should do you a world of good. The main target is deciding what it is you really want. Once you know that, actually doing it is a lot easier!
