First Layout advice

[669cpb]

I am planning my first layout and would welcome any comments and suggestions on my plan below.  Layout will be in the loft and is 7.7m long by 3.4m.  Width of baseboard down the long side is 1m.  End sections width 93cm.  Light green/yellow section has the baseboard lower than the other 3 sides.  Red section of track won't be used but is to make it look like the junction is going somewhere.  OO gauge and era is modern circa 2000.

 

I have extended the base on the fiddle yard now so have room for more storage but not got around to adding it to the plan yet.

 

Idea is that 2 outer loops are fast up and down with the 2 inner being slow up and down.  Not sure whether I need to have the option to crossover from each ?

 

Thanks in advance, Chris

 

 

 

 

 

[Schooner]

Lots of interesting things going on there, and what a fantastic space you have available

 

Do you have a part of the country in mind? What kind of services would you like to run? Is that branch line rural or suburban? Referring to the prototype may well help answer some questions and actually simplify the planning work. Also, do you have access around the outside, or would the layout run around the edge of the room?

 

Personally ('tho I'm an absolute novice, so grab your salt cellar), I think I'd be inclined to rotate the features of your layout anti-clockwise and mirror the branchline.

 

Apologies for the lack of diagram, I'll try to describe as best I can: moving your main line station to the bottom right corner would help manage (hide) the tighter radius there, and make the most of that lovely straight run and sweeping curve of your lower and LH boards. Just the thing for a mainline scenic run, especially as you've room for full HST sets if you wanted. 

 

To keep the main line the star bottom and left, one could take the branch around the RH and top boards. Have you considered the well-used technique of having a high-level branch terminus over the top (and hiding) your main line storage roads? It would be quite the reversal of your plan above, but there are some advantages...

 

All the best with your project, I look forward to following its development

 

EDIT: a very rough A5 sketch added below...might help clarify, might not!

Edited August 27, 2019 by Schooner
Will do better when I'm not on the move!

[Nearholmer]

My three concerns with what you've sketched are:

 

- curve radii. Some of it looks rather tight.or at least tighter than is obviously necessary given the generous space available;

 

- the clutch of loops on the RHS look cramped to me, and I wonder whether you will actually get point-work to fit and flow neatly on those corners, and whether the storage track (if that's what they are) lengths will be sufficient - they look shorter than the platforms, which is usually a clue to problems ahead; and,

 

- baseboard width. 1000mm might be too wide to reach across, depending upon your height/arm-length and the height of the baseboards above the floor.

 

Keep at it, though, because there's the germ of a good layout in here.

[DCB]

There doesn't seem to be much storage, 3 trains on each line isn't that many  and the loops are very short.   Fast lines on the outside is very unusual, fasts are more normally in the centre , I think WCML is like that south of Rugby and the ECML north of York or the slow lines are paired and the fast lines paired, as in GWR Main line East of Didcot .     Four tracks is good as the sight of a fast overhauling a slow is always good to watch.  I would put connections between up and down lines to allow trains to reverse and use the bays, but with all that space I would try to fit reversing loops in so I could reverse the trains easily as this greatly increases the variety of movements.  

[The Johnster]

The station is a pretty large and important one (reminds me a bit of Taunton), and my feeling is that connections between the fast/main and slow/relief pairs would be a feature.  I'd be inclined to move the fiddle yard to the top long straight, where the roads can be longer and there is space to include sufficient gap between them to be able to get your hands in there should stock have to be lifted out.  There is scope to ease the radius of some of the curves, which should be taken advantage of and it might be an idea to induce a slight curvature through the station platforms, which will make them look longer than they are.

 

I would want a lot more opportunity for shunting, and there is plenty room to include yards, carriage sidings, engine shed, and one or two private sidings serving industries, but the layout's fine as it is if you are happy to just watch trains running and passing each other.  

 

Nearholmer's comment that there is the germ of a good layout there is apt, and the thing should work well but needs refining, especially in the matter of easing the curves as much as you can.  Metre width baseboards are a long reach especially in the corners and I'd suggest keeping them down to about 65cm; you'll still have plenty of room for scenery!

[Harlequin]

Lots of good points made above. Also:

The lines are all very close to what I assume will be the backscene. That will make it very difficult to show the railway in realistic scenery.

The branch line is a bit twiddly compared to the rest of the design. I’d suggest either abandoning it entirely and focusing on the main line (you can keep the bay platforms and say the branch line diverges off scene somewhere) or developing it further and making it more purposeful.

 

[TonyMay]

4 lines are going to be too much for a home-based project.  (OK for a club layout though).  2 Roads would be much better, and would make the model and the storage yard simpler, save you the cost of track, etc, etc.

 

Also, this doesn't look rationalised enough for the early 2000s.  

 

There is no connection between the up and down lines.  Usually there'd be trailing crossovers at either end of a large station to allow terminating trains to reverse.

 

But the priority should be cutting the running lines down to two, and work from there.

[Julia]

 

Another vote here for the less is more approach. Running 4 lines sounds fun, but in such a small space, it's gonna look cramped. your 7.7m long layout is 585m of real world. Compare that to some real stations for an idea of what fits. (Hint Canterbury west would take 12m to fit end to end).

 

Is there any way you can shift the storage sidings to under top side? have an incline to bring trains up. Would allow you to store sensible sized rakes, as well as giving you more space on the corners for better radii. You can dramatically improve many a layout by using the widest possible radii. 

 

J

[Zomboid]

14 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

 Fast lines on the outside is very unusual, fasts are more normally in the centre 

I think the OP means paired by use, so from the outside UF, DF, US, DS. Which is of course the more common pairing on UK railways.

 

That is a huge space for one person, it'll take most people years and years to get it done. I wouldn't recommend something so vast as a first layout. You need to make your rookie mistakes (and you will) on something a bit more throwaway.

[Tallpaul69]

1 hour ago, Julia said:

 

Another vote here for the less is more approach. Running 4 lines sounds fun, but in such a small space, it's gonna look cramped. your 7.7m long layout is 585m of real world. Compare that to some real stations for an idea of what fits. (Hint Canterbury west would take 12m to fit end to end).

 

Is there any way you can shift the storage sidings to under top side? have an incline to bring trains up. Would allow you to store sensible sized rakes, as well as giving you more space on the corners for better radii. You can dramatically improve many a layout by using the widest possible radii. 

 

J

Sorry Julia and TonyMay, but my vote is stick with the 4 track approach!

 

While Julia is right that in the real world you have the equivalent of 585 metres, provided the advice of other postings re distance from the backscene and particularly the radius of the curves is taken it should look great!

 

Modelling early 2000s you can simplify the trackwork greatly over that of the 1960s. But you do need more fiddle yard! 3 trains per track is not going to allow a realistic timetable, even though, on the face of it, many trains at this time were nearly identical. You can get away with running one train round again soon after its first run if you are short of stock. However you should look at eventually having six trains each track as a minimum for each track, so your loops need to be longer, or you need more of them, or a combination of the two, 

 

The points about the branch are well made though. By the 2000s branch lines were on the whole pretty basic, so not much fun operationally. However you could turn it into a harbour branch and have an interesting mix of freight and through passenger traffic.

I see no point in your red section, either scrap it or take it somewhere where a train can terminate (such as the Bourne End to Marlow run.

 

Keep at it, you have a great space to make a really significant model!

 

Best regards

Paul 

[TonyMay]

One could perhaps wonder why you asked for advice if you're going to ignore it.

 

Let's be clear:  This plan won't work operationally with 4 tracks.  This is train-set mentality rather than model mentality.  It will also look bad because you're filling the baseboard with track.  Reducing the tracks to two will enable it to work much more efficiently, and will look better, not least because you can greatly increase the minimum curve radius.  Maximising the minimum curve radius, particularly of main lines, is absolutely key to realism.

 

There's literally no point in really commenting on anything else in the plan because so much stems from having an appropriate number of running lines, and having the fiddle yard in the right place.

 

By 2000 The branch would probably have closed 35 years earlier and the bay platform would be part of a car park.  The bottommost platform may also have had its track lifted on one side.  A station this size would also have had goods sidings, probably covering 2-3 times the footprint of the platforms themselves.

[Nearholmer]

If someone wants to build a four-track model railway, let ‘em build a four-track model railway.

 

Yes, it’s ambitious, very ambitious for a first go, but what’s wrong with that?

 

No jealousy involved, I trust.

[OhOh]

2 hours ago, TonyMay said:

One could perhaps wonder why you asked for advice if you're going to ignore it.

Have you maybe confused the OP for Tallpaul69 ?

Edited August 27, 2019 by OhOh
69 added

[DCB]

3 hours ago, Zomboid said:

I think the OP means paired by use, so from the outside UF, DF, US, DS. Which is of course the more common pairing on UK railways.

 

That makes sense.  Fasts in the centre looks marginally better as it is the effect of one train overtaking another on parallel tracks which I find fascinating. 

 

Given that the platform loop on the fast lines is perhaps something that would have been taken out of use by the 2000's

I don't see any issue with filling the baseboard with track.    Model Railway News did a series on the Landscape models of George Liffe Stokes back in the 1960s which were beautiful models of buildings with indifferent railway bits sort of fitted in round the buildings, to me it would have been better to leave the railway out completely.  An extreme example perhaps, but I happily model up to the railway boundary wall which is fixed to the side of the shed and it works for me. 

[Zomboid]

The only fasts on the outside railway I can think of in the UK is Finchley Road to Harrow on the Hill on the Underground. It's unusual, but not an illogical arrangement. In fact it offers operational benefits as nothing has to cross the fast lines to either reverse or do a fast to slow move. It would probably be quite common if our major railways were planned to be 4 track back in the 1840s. But I digress...

[669cpb]

Thanks for all the replies and feedback and plenty of useful suggestions.  I was thinking of 4 loops to give plenty of train running and was trying to get as large radius curves as I could. May well rethink this now and aim for 2 to get better curves and could always look to add a third loop.

 

As for area of the country, nothing specific but loosely based mIdlands to north (Stoke, Manchester) and so the 2 lines would suit this.  Layout is edge of the loft with some access to the other side of the long sides with some contortionist moves. 

 

I did make a start with a smaller layout and made the mistake of using hardboard. Luckily I hadn’t got very far and having seen a few videos on YouTube decided to start again and take more time in planning and getting a better baseboard.

 

Will go through these posts again to try and digest it all and take some of your suggestions on board.  Only trouble with taking more time planning is that I keep seeing “bargains” on eBay and so need to stop buying locos as I can’t run them yet!

 

Thanks again and look forward for more ideas.

 

Chris

[Nearholmer]

Another, of the very many, things to consider is that, assuming you intend to create flat baseboards to the dimensions that you suggest, whether you then add four tracks or two, you have condemned your railway forever to exist with no scenery below track level ...... no embankment, no under bridges, no rivers or seasides or lakes. Hills? Yes, cuttings, mountains going up, yes, but nothing going down.

 

Which seems a real pity in such a whopping space.

 

You might be better, if your carpentry skills are up to it, creating baseboards that are only the width of the track-bed, then adding contours later.

 

Also, have you got any books of layout plans? They are seriously, seriously helpful, highly inspirational, and, I'm afraid, addictive. Everyone has their favourites, and I would suggest that if you only get one, it should be the one below.

 

You are unlikely to want to copy anything direct from it, but if it doesn't give you a lot of good ideas, you're not reading it right.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Nearholmer

[669cpb]

On 26/08/2019 at 23:18, Schooner said:

Lots of interesting things going on there, and what a fantastic space you have available

 

Do you have a part of the country in mind? What kind of services would you like to run? Is that branch line rural or suburban? Referring to the prototype may well help answer some questions and actually simplify the planning work. Also, do you have access around the outside, or would the layout run around the edge of the room?

 

Personally ('tho I'm an absolute novice, so grab your salt cellar), I think I'd be inclined to rotate the features of your layout anti-clockwise and mirror the branchline.

 

Apologies for the lack of diagram, I'll try to describe as best I can: moving your main line station to the bottom right corner would help manage (hide) the tighter radius there, and make the most of that lovely straight run and sweeping curve of your lower and LH boards. Just the thing for a mainline scenic run, especially as you've room for full HST sets if you wanted. 

 

To keep the main line the star bottom and left, one could take the branch around the RH and top boards. Have you considered the well-used technique of having a high-level branch terminus over the top (and hiding) your main line storage roads? It would be quite the reversal of your plan above, but there are some advantages...

 

All the best with your project, I look forward to following its development

 

EDIT: a very rough A5 sketch added below...might help clarify, might not!

 

 

Thanks for the sketch, definitely food for thought. A lot of thinking and replanning to do.

 

Chris

[Sir TophamHatt]

But thanks for sharing.

Inspired me!

 

You can always have 4 tracks in the green/yellow bit and see if you can make a fly over / under so it's a continuous loop but means you can ease those curves at the bottom right hand side.  Add this to having only two tracks remember, the US / DS will duck under / fly over!) means it could work.

 

I also thought that if your slow lines will only be used one way, the downhill section could be steeper than the up section if you did provide a dive under / fly over.  I have this on my current layout.

 

But it can be fiddly and hard work for older locos - My Class 68 is fine going up my hill.  Thomas is okay with a good run up but an older Western struggled a little (even as light engine!).

[Tallpaul69]

Chris,

Two bits of advice:-

 

1) You must curb the urge to buy bargains until you have tied down an area for your model. Remember a bargain is only a bargain if you get benefit out of it and the bargains are the ones you don't get much for when you have to sell them as they don't fit with your eventual choice of area for the model!

 

2) You will find it difficult to get to a plan without some sort of close location (maybe just:- somewhere on the line between x and y) because different lines were built or expanded for different reasons and still exist today for different reasons. So some lines started 2 track became 4 track, were rationalized to 2 track , and now are expanded to 3 or 4 track again! But the 4 track traffic now is a lot different in mix (express/local/parcels/freight ) to what it was 50 years ago before the contraction!

 

Hope this helps, but keep at it!!

 

Cheers

Paul