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The final design of my soon to be new layout - feedback welcomed.

Started by Russell, November 23, 2020, 06:58:39 AM

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Russell

My wife and I moved into a larger home last year and I now have a spare room (or part of a spare room) in which to construct myself a model railroad. I went through many different designs starting with the old tried and true 4x8 foot layout, then expanding to a 4x8 with various extensions for a yard and industry area. But after dozens of variations of those, I decided I wanted a quasi around the room plan only with it taking up just a corner of the 20' x 15' room which will be shared as office space for the wife and a TV/video game area for the kids.

I wanted to be able to run a train continuously around the layout from time to time, but also have some operational switching and a yard with an engine facility. and to have the scenes more broken up than the 4x8 format allows.

This is what I came up with.

BTW this will be a late transition era layout

I am interested on what your thoughts are on this layout design.

David

It looks very nice! There might be problem with the yard though. If you want to couple and uncouple cars there, it might be a bit of a challenge as that often doesn't work very well in a curve.
David Hoogvorst. Founder and Owner of DRail Software. Creator of AnyRail.

Russell

As a transition era layout all of the rolling stock will be 50' or less with the bulk of it being 40' cars and 34' hoppers. But I will do some testing with sectional track that I have before I begin construction, to see if this will indeed be a problem.

Thanks for the insight, I had not thought of that when building this track plan.


PRuges

I really like this plan Russell, and the extensive thought and planning details you have put in.The use of backdrops will give nice options for creating viewing blocks and scene transitions. I think you also will have lots of switching options and flexibility. I concur with David about uncoupling on curves, but you could investigate the use of Rare Earth Magnets (Neodymium) for installation on straight section of tracks. Check out this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrekYDIQKU&t=769s
Anyhow, I think you've done a top job.
Kind regards and thanks for sharing.

mrsax2000


Russell

It is a Terrain texture file from a MSTS train simulator route.

Russell

Update -  due to come changes in the household, I negotiated with the boss to move her office downstairs and with the last kid off to collage now I have more space in the room so I re designed the layout by rotating the 90 deg and moving to the other end of the room allowing me to expand it a few feet in both dimensions. this allowed me to stretch out the yard tracks a bit so there is some straight on each end with just the curve in the middle, the new placement in the room allows better accessibility to some areas as well.

I have all of the structures except the farm and church have begun building and painting some of them. and have about 50% of the required track as well. I plan on beginning construction of the bench work in May this year. I will post some pictures as construction progresses.