Layout Help Please

[Ed Winterbury]

I currently have 6 boards, two 4'x2' and four 6'x2'. I have spent the summer moving my very lightweight, 18mm MDF boards around, but to no avail. I have more or less given up on a workable layout. Any help? I work in 00 gauge and would like the opportunity to run an interesting service. A small branch with very little happening doesn't appeal. Thanks!

[Clive Mortimore]

I currently have 6 boards, two 4'x2' and four 6'x2'. I have spent the summer moving my very lightweight, 18mm MDF boards around, but to no avail. I have more or less given up on a workable layout. Any help? I work in 00 gauge and would like the opportunity to run an interesting service. A small branch with very little happening doesn't appeal. Thanks!

Hi Ed

 

What is your railway interest?

 

Time period?

 

Railway/region/franchise/country?

 

Prototype location or fictional place?

 

Do you enjoy shunting? Watching trains run by? Terminus operation? Something else?

 

End to end layout? Roundy-roundy?

 

What size of room do you have for the boards to be set up in?

 

With some of these questions answered you should begin to formulate what type of layout you want.

[The Johnster]

You sound a bit lost, mate. I'm assuming you're a newbie; we all were once!  Let's see if we can't give you some pointers...

 

What sort of space are you trying to fit them into?  The obvious solution if you want something with lots of movement is to arrange the boards in a sort of rectangle around the room, so that they would form a box; this could be of varying sizes according to how you arrange the boards, with the operator (you) in the middle, and a single or double track continuous run roughly oval shaped track plan with a 'scenic' side, with the station, goods yard, engine shed, loops, sidings, all that sort of thing on one side and the other side having as many loops as you can fit in as hidden 'off stage' storage, the 'fiddle yard'. This is a fairly standard way of arranging things, and there are almost as many variations on the theme as there are continuous run layouts.  

 

That would give you plenty of scope for running trains without needing too many people to have to turn up for an operating session.  You could, for example, leave 2 trains running continually round it in opposite directions until you got fed up with one or both of them when you would replace it with another one out of the fiddle yard.  While this is going on, you could also be moving locos around in the shed, shunting in the goods yard, or making trains up in carriage sidings.  

 

But you may not have a suitable space for this.  If this is the case, your layout probably needs to be more linear, which most real railways are with the exception of the Circle Line.  Again, depending on the space you can use, it can be, according to how you arrange your boards a straight along the wall setup, or L shaped, or U shaped, or T shaped, or Z shaped; you have anything up to 20 feet available, but the layout would be unlikely to be able to be configured in a continuous run, and you would lose the ability to leave trains to their own devices while you shunt.  We are getting closer to your objected to branch line, but nil desperandum, Padawan Ed, all is not lost.  There is still plenty of action to be had out of such a layout, only it will be less continual, more a case of, this happens, then this, followed by this, and so on.

 

You could arrange it as a terminus to fiddle yard, or a terminus to terminus, terminus to junction and fiddle yard either end, fiddle yard to fiddle yard with a through station between them, or any permutation of the above.  Run it to any sort of timetable and you'd be plenty busy enough, especially if it is a double track up and down, although a single track with a passing loop can challenge you as well.  This approach needs a bit more concentration, and you will only be able to do one thing at a time, but if you have family or chums that want to operate it with you, you can have massive enjoyment out of sending trains to each other and trying to catch each other out!  You can easily do more than the 'small branch with a train running in and out' scenario.

 

There are no end of plans to give you inspiration, in print and on line.  My advice would be to fit the boards to their allocated space first (send us a plan of the space and you'll have enough suggestions to last 'til xmas, next year), and then decide on a type of operation and track plan.  Then, have a think about what sort of trains you'd like; steam, modern image, period, company, BR, a mix of anything goes.  Next stage is to decide how long they are going to be, and this is where reality will hit with some force.  A ten coach long passenger train in 00 is about 10 feet long by the time you include the loco, half your total available length, and that equates to about 30 old fashioned wagons; you should ideally be aiming for this sort of train if you want to model big main line expresses and long goods trains, but there are alternatives; trains were shorter on secondary main lines and many modern passenger trains are much shorter than this (though they make up for it with longer coaches).  This affects how long your platforms are going to be, and your sidings, and your all important hidden loops.  That will eat very quickly into the space you have at the ends of the platforms for the pointwork to get trains into and out of your sheds and yards, and you may well have to compromise; very few of us don't.

 

While you are doing all this, and before you have laid a foot of track, you will be looking at plans, other people's layouts, and real railways, absorbing more and more ideas about how you want it to be laid out and how you want it to look.  Now you are ready to start drawing plans and a good idea is to either make up or buy templates of track pieces to lay out on your boards so that you can physically see and assess what will work and what won't.  You will have a pretty good mental picture of the final result by now, and that will make matters much easier as you will have a defined thing to work towards.  Computer apps are available that do this but IMHO there is no substitute for visualising it directly on the boards.  Make sure your headshunts and loops are long enough to take your longest planned trains with some margin for clearance at the ends; easy to get caught out with this.

 

I am mildly worried by your MDF boards, by the way.  If they are just the boards as the shop supplied them, you will need to brace and strengthen them with 2 x 2 or similar.  This will make them much heavier, and if you are planning on putting the layout away after every session might be a lot of work.  It is infinitely preferable to have a permanent or at least semi-permanent home for your layout unless it is a very small one, and then we are back to the simple 'train comes in train goes out' branch you want to avoid.  Taking down and setting up, laying out all the stock, putting it away afterwards; trust me, you will become tired of that very quickly if it is something that takes more than a very few minutes.  Baseboards that are firm and level, especially at the joins, and that do not flex are vital to good reliable running, and nothing is more frustrating on a layout than running that is anything but good and reliable.  Your trains need to stay on the track and stay coupled!

 

Keep in touch and let us know how you are getting on, ask as many questions as you like because the only daft ones are the ones you didn't ask, and welcome to the madness!

Edited September 6, 2017 by The Johnster

[MarcD]

 

Oh for the space. My 7mm standard gauge layout "Scratchy Bottom". Have a look at some of the books by Iain Rice. There should be something you can use. For realism less is more. With the space you have you could model a large chunk of branch line or a inner-city industrial area. We had a working 7mm exhibition layout in 8ft by 2ft and it just had 2 points. Our current 7mm layout is 14ft long with 4ft of traverser at each end.

 

   

[Ed Winterbury]

Well, a summary to answer the above questions. I currently have quite a mixed bag of stock- LNER A4, Hunt, Pendolino, Javelin, MML HST Loco, Jouef TGV New White/Black Livery, Caledonian 272 0-4-0ST, Autorail (SNCF Region Aquitaine) as well as some DC BR stock (7 locos, 60s) which I bought together with a layout. I'm happy to focus purchases in the future, but I'd like to be able to run most of it, save for the French Autorail. I work in DCC because I'm not too keen on wiring from Land's End to John o' Groats! I only have a Hornby DC starter set controller (2 of them) and for DCC, there's a trusty Gaugemaster Prodigy.

[MarcD]

An interesting mix of stock. With this in mind you could go any where in time and space. 

 

What do you want to model? You have the opportunity start from scratch. With the space you have you could build 2 layouts.

 

What is the weight of the base boards that you have? Do you want your layout to be portable?

 

Marc 

[Ed Winterbury]

Well, I don't care where just somewhere. Each of the boards is able to be lifted by one adult or teenager alone. My car will only fit one or two 4'x2' boards together with the needed supports, so it's probably not going to be an exhibition layout. That said, the boards only take five minutes to assemble/disassemble.

[Pete the Elaner]

2 4x2 & 4 6x2 boards...

What space do you have available to put these together? If you want a continuous run, then arranging them in 12x8 with a centre operating well would be best if you can do it, if you have the space available to do so.

A continuous layout is the only configuration which will allow you to run trains at speed.

 

An end-to-end layout is more interesting if you want to have an operating session run to a sequence. This is great at an exhibition but less interesting at home on your own. I get the feeling this will not appeal to you very much.

[Ed Winterbury]

Yeah, I tried the loop idea, but it started getting difficult to crawl in, so I'm stuck. With end-to-end, what shape do you recommend? Also, the stumbling block for me is the fiddle yard and no carpentry or soldering skills, the classic space-savers (Sector plate/turntable) are out of bounds. Thanks for your help so far, please keep them coming!

[MarcD]

On the gauge o guild website there is a pdf booklet on small 7mm layouts these could be easily scaled down to 4mm and might give you an idea of what you can get away with in a small space.

Don't worry about wiring come up with your plan then work out the wires later. Wood work isn't that hard so again don't worry.

 

http://www.gauge0guildarchive.com/gazette_archive/other%20publications/Small-layouts-1/files/1.html

 

Marc 

[Ed Winterbury]

Thanks

[The Johnster]

Ok, so end to end, then.  You have a total of 20 x 2 feet with your existing boards, and can arrange them in more or less any shape you like according to the space avaialable.  A very common setup is to have an 'L' along 2 walls of a room, with the long arm containing the scenic part and the shorter arm the fiddle yard, perhaps behind a siding or two at the front serving a small factory or something with the fiddle behind the backscene.

 

Fiddle yard is simply a 'hidden sidings' are, and you can think of it as 'off stage', where the actors, trains, hide until their cue, the shuffle off their mortal coils and all that stuff.  It does not need to be anything complex, or demand anything in the way of clever woodwork, although there are certainly solutions that do; sector plates, lifts, cassettes, all with the same aim of saving space and increasing storage.  But yours does not need to be anything more than a plain baseboard with a fan of sidings on it accessed by ordinary points.  If it were on one of your 6 x 2 boards you could probably have 8 to 10 sidings, with the longest ones coming of the first points and the others off those, and perhaps a couple of kickbacks off the outside sidings which will be the shortest ones.  This would be ok for 4 coaches/12 older style wagons on the long sidings, half that (dmus, autos) on the short ones.  The limiting factors are the clearance points of the diverging sidings in terms of length of trains, and enough room for you to get at the stock without derailing the stock on the next siding in terms of width.

 

Now, you need to be thinking about making some decisions.  Rule 1 is the one which trumps all rules and states 'It's my railway and I'll run what I want on it'.  Your stock is a bit, er, eclectic, though, and it might be time to have a think about where you want to go with future purchases.  Your biggest single compatible 'block' of locos is the BR 60s DC one you got with a layout (you do not mention rolling stock but I imagine they are proportionally similar, so the first suggestion might be to convert all those locos to DCC if possible and concentrate on that as your period, running the other stock occasionally when you feel like it.  But it might not be possible to convert them and will be expensive even if it is. 

 

So, you have a blank sheet as Furness points out.  A question to ask yourself before committing money to more stock might be 'what sort of operating do I want to do'; this may have a bearing on the period or area/company you settle on, if you settle on one at all.  As a general principle, 'steam age', which to my mind includes the 'green diesel' era and well into the 70s with 'traditional' goods trains and loco hauled passengers, offers more 'operating potential'; brake vans have to be put on the rear of goods trains, there were more mixed goods that had to be shunted out in depots, and locos had to be kept in sheds not just left coupled to their trains in sidings overnight.  On the other hand, the modern scene is more colourful, and nearly all freight stock is private owner in their own livery, a situation more akin to a century ago!

 

The RTR trade provides a pretty fair coverage of the stock you will need for 'Big Four' from 1923 onwards and the BR steam period; coverage is more or less complete once you get into blue diesels from the late 60s. Some items are available for pre-grouping layouts, but we are getting a bit thin on the ground now, with many major companies not represented at all.  But main line expresses and long goods trains are probably going to need more space than you can provide, and it may be better to set your sights a little lower to secondary main lines or busy suburban branches with a lot of freight traffic.  Single or double track?  Double gives a more 'main line' feel to things, but single arguably offers more operational interest as the trains have to run in a more strict sequence, and has the advantage that it saves vital space in the entrance 'throat' area of your fiddle yard; all trains from all roads can access one line.

 

We can't really advise you on what stock or period to go for, Ed, it is a very personal choice and up to you.  

 

General advice when it comes to the track plan is not to try to cram too much in and keep it simple, but we haven't reached that stage yet

Edited September 7, 2017 by The Johnster

[Pete the Elaner]

I agree with all of the above, particularly the last line about keeping it simple. Real railways usually take up lots of space.

Getting something running will give your enthusiasm a huge lift. If you take too long to get to this point, you will lose interest.

Wiring a larger layout gets complicated too. Faults become easy to create & hard to correct.

[The Johnster]

Ed's into that new fangled DCC stuff, Pete, he doesn't have to worry about wiring.  He has to worry about chip compatibility and stuff like that instead.

[Pete the Elaner]

Ed's into that new fangled DCC stuff, Pete, he doesn't have to worry about wiring.  He has to worry about chip compatibility and stuff like that instead.

There will still be frogs switching away, potentially causing shorts. Assuming DCC makes it dead easy to wire up is a trap. I am happy to work with DC or DCC but don't find wiring any easier with DCC, just different.

[Ed Winterbury]

Wiring is if find, easier to do on DCC- you don't have to wire things up before starting the trains. Yes, CV programming is all sorts of complicated, but at least basic running can be achieved with electrofrog points and the 'hand of God'.

 

After carefully reading this, I've come to a decision as to where I want this to go. My boards will be laid out in an L shape, but some way of opening a sliding window (with a normal access blocked) will have to be 'invented'. The line will probably be a terminus and cover the BR period. The scene set will most likely assume that steam trains ran for much longer than they did and also reduce the impact of Beeching. The only prohibiting factor for me up until now has been the usual grimy trains- not my fancy! Nonetheless, these ideas are helping thanks and please keep the rolling!

[The Johnster]

Personally I like a bit of grime, but there is no compulsion to have your trains, buildings, or scenery grimy; remember Rule 1!

[ejstubbs]

You have a total of 20 x 2 feet with your existing boards

 

I make it 32' x 2' - he's got 4 of the 6ft boards, remember.

[Siberian Snooper]

The boards could also be set up in a U shape or almost the full rectangle and leave out the board at the doorway, it just depends on the set up of the room.

There is also the possibility of a through station with a fiddle yard either end.

[Ed Winterbury]

This is the shape of the room in which my railway is housed, which must also allow for cooking and eating space. The length from top to bottom on the left-hand side is 13', give or take. I hope this gives you an idea of scale. It is possible to use the size of an average kitchen unit as well. I am somewhat constrained by this. Sorry for failing to tell you this! Thanks for the posts and please keep them coming:)

[Ed Winterbury]

Looking good!

[The Johnster]

I make it 32' x 2' - he's got 4 of the 6ft boards, remember.

 

This is why I did not have a career in accounting.

[The Johnster]

That would give you an L shape with the short arm along what is the left hand wall in your diagram, and the long arm along the bottom wall with the window.  If the plan is to scale, that makes the length along the bottom near 20 feet, the remaining 12 feet (you have, as ej correctly pointed out, 32 feet in all) of board more than covering the 11 feet you've got left (13 minus 2 for the width of the board at the bottom).  The 90 degree bend can be of a fairly generous radius, and you still have plenty of room for the kitchen activities.  

 

Might I make a suggestion?  Kitchens are notorious for never having enough worktop space, so it might be an idea to mount shelving as worktops above the layout so as to discourage the putting of utensils, crockery, and other kitchen paraphenalia on your delicate railway.  Good intentions rarely survive a hot plate that you have to put down immediately!

[Ed Winterbury]

Oh yes, definitely a good idea, but what about the floor to ceiling window at the bottom of the photo? Thanks for the help and please keep it coming! I'm just starting out and need a lot of help! Sorry!

[Pete the Elaner]

If you need to access the window, can you make a section removable?

The more questions you ask & get answered, the more likely it is that you will have a layout you like.