Coarse O Gauge in a Spare Room

[Joe61264]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a bit of guidance on design.

I've been following the 'Deliberately Old Fashioned O' and 'Coarse O' threads for some time now, thoroughly enjoying them and want to investigate whether I have space for anything worthwhile in that style having realised (and proven through failed layouts!) that traditional 'scenic/scale' modelling is not for me. 

I'm now living somewhere with a basement which is big but needs a lot of work to be useable, and is unlikely to get done anytime soon. 

My alternatives are the 2 smaller upstairs rooms (approximate dimensions):
Option 1 : 275cm x 205cm

Option 2 : 255cm x 225cm

 

I'm thinking something around the edge of either room, continuous run with operational interest. What I suppose I'd like to have some words of wisdom on is what I could reasonably expect to fit in besides the continuous run itself, and which of the two I'd be better off using. I'm thinking of going with Maldon Track, but yet to press the big 'spend money' button in the event I'm being overambitious! 

 

Thanks in advance for any guidance, it'll all be greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers,

Joe

[DCB]

I believe Maldon Track is 27" Radius.Minimum.     I would get a "60 plans for smal railways," by C.J.Freezer and check out the 6X4 OO layouts, because that's about the space you have when you factor in the 2ft 3" radius Maldon Track whch is measured to the inside of the outside rail so I would reckon 750mm around the outside which means 1500mm of curve and 550 to 1050mm for the straight in your rooms.  

I would A) use both rooms.  B) Use the garden or  C) Sort the basement out and use that.

The old Hornby Track was about 12" radius which makes it a whole different ball game.

[Nearholmer]

Ron Fraser at Maldon Track will make curves to smaller radii than 27”, and all commercially made coarse-0 stock is fit for 24”. In fact, many small locos will happily traverse less than 24”, but the only way to find out how much less is to experiment.

 

The key limitation will be points, in that the smallest radius from Maldon is 38”.

 

Atlas make 27” radius points, which work very well, so you might need to consider their track, which is very good, but rather American, or go to tinplate track, where 24” radius points are common.

 

Your room sizes are very tight, but you could get a very simple layout in, and if you scenified it, it would certainly be better than no layout at all and, IMO, better than 00 in the same space (but then, I’m biased!).

 

Could you give a sketch with the room door and window positions, and clues as to the sort of trains you are into? Six-wheel and four-wheel coaches work very well on these tiny layouts, BTW, not over-powering things, but beware some of the prices being asked for Ace six-wheelers on eBay ..... rather optimistic!

 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Nearholmer

[F-UnitMad]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

better than 00 in the same space (but then, I’m biased!).

Biased?? Perish the thought!!!  

 

I would need the room measurements in Old Money to make sense of them!

My local model shop https://www.tennentstrains.co.uk/  stock various makes of 3-rail O gauge track, if that helps.

[DCB]

1 hour ago, F-UnitMad said:

Biased?? Perish the thought!!!  

 

I would need the room measurements in Old Money to make sense of them!

My local model shop https://www.tennentstrains.co.uk/  stock various makes of 3-rail O gauge track, if that helps.

 

I'm with you there. I had to change the French 205cm "Centermeters" into 2050 Engish Mil then divide by about 300 to get feet or 25 to get inches. Then to add insult I had to do a multiply by 4 and divide by 7 so I could relate O to OO. 

Stick to (New Zealand/ Aussie) English I say. 1000 Mil is a Meter, 1000 Meters is a Klick. 1.6 Klicks is a mile.   It avoids all the hassle, I know there's Centermeters, Degametres and Hectormeters but I'm not French so I really don't care even if they were based on Napoleon's inside leg measurement.

[Nearholmer]

Here we go - even with no idea of where your doors and windows are, I couldn’t resist!

 

This is your squarer room, and the points are Maldon 38” radius. The blob in the middle is me on my office chair.

 

I’d operate this with the inner line as a goods yard/siding, so a goods train on that road, going clockwise, and a passenger train (2x bogie or 3x 6-wheeler), going anti-clockwise on the outer.

 

The coaches will fit in the siding at lower left, and the passenger engine in the loco shed when playing goods shunting.

 

By the time this has a bit of scenery and a back-scene, you’ll be a happy boy!

 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

If you aren’t sure, this is what 27” radius looks like with scale 50ft coaches (known as 35cm coaches to coarse-ologists).

 

 

 

Personally, I don’t find it offensive, although it looks weird if you put a 9F round there.

 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Nearholmer

[F-UnitMad]

The thing to do with tight curves is to view them from inside the corner, and close to eye level. Fortunately in a small room this is usually the only view possible anyway.

As an example here's some of my US O stock on a 36" rad. curve. Looks totally daft from above, but rather better from eye level....

 

[Joe61264]

On 31/03/2021 at 14:04, Nearholmer said:

Here we go - even with no idea of where your doors and windows are, I couldn’t resist!

 

This is your squarer room, and the points are Maldon 38” radius. The blob in the middle is me on my office chair.

 

I’d operate this with the inner line as a goods yard/siding, so a goods train on that road, going clockwise, and a passenger train (2x bogie or 3x 6-wheeler), going anti-clockwise on the outer.

 

The coaches will fit in the siding at lower left, and the passenger engine in the loco shed when playing goods shunting.

 

By the time this has a bit of scenery and a back-scene, you’ll be a happy boy!

 

 

This is fantastic, thanks so much for taking the time to do it. I’m a big fan of it, and already have ideas forming in my head of how to break it up into scenes. The R27 curves don’t look at all out of place in your photo, no worse certainly than the radii that would end up being used in that space for 4mm! 

In terms of trains, I had in my mind exactly the kind of trains that you mention with perhaps the very occasional 3 coach set purely for ‘playing’ and a bit of chance for shunting.
Having a bit more time to measure the room properly gives the following drawing with the main notable difference from estimates of 217cm across vice 225 and the inclusion of the door. The window has (despite my artistic addition) only got a toplight that can actually be opened.

Your sketch’s chair looks to be similar in size to my currently unused IKEA one and I hadn’t thought to use it for this, instead thinking of standing for most of the sessions.

 

Thanks to all for your wisdom and guidance, it’s allowed leaps and bounds in ideas and planning instead of just mulling over it all for many many months and still getting it wrong!

 

Joe
 

[Nearholmer]

Joe

 

Glad its get the old cogs whirring - I've thought of a few ways to play trains with it since drawing it, and given the same space, I think I might actually build it.

 

Knowing now where the door is, I think I'd mirror-image it, but the door is a problem IMO. It wouldn't need very clever carpentry to create a lifting flap, although they get more awkward in corners, but the question is: do you feel happy with the idea of being in there on your own, with the door effectively barred by the layout? 

 

You could, of course, simply dispense with the door, not have one at all, but is there any possibility of re-hanging it to open outwards, or to become a sliding door?

 

Kevin

Edited April 1, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

PS: mirrored, the siding now at bottom RH corner tempts me to think of a fiddle-yard on an ironing-board, erected on the landing (or wherever else is outside the door).

Edited April 1, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Flying Pig]

Would cutting the corner off the layout leave enough room for the door to open without alteration?

 

[Nearholmer]

It might work, I'd have to draw it to check properly, but there was an operational logic in the apparently over-long passing loop, and the length of that siding is crucial to being able to stable a passenger train (it needs 800mm clear to accept three six-wheelers or two bogie coaches), plus getting the geometry right with the points needs a bit of care.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Flying Pig]

It might posibly work like this.  I'm guessing you want a headshunt for the goods clear of the outer circuit, so another way might be to shorten the loop, but include a dead end headshunt on the goods side.  The carriage siding still needs to be worked in somehow of course.

 

[Nearholmer]

I’ll have a look later, but the key constraint is the points - they only come in R38.

[Nearholmer]

Stole ten minutes.

 

Well, it probably could be made to work, although I don’t like it.

 

The plan so far is only a 1:20 dimensioned sketch, and I haven’t shortened the short walk from 2250 to 2170. To do a proper job, I would measure the room really carefully, because things like door-frame width can become crucial with these ‘hand in glove’ things, then draw it carefully at 1:10.

[Joe61264]

On 02/04/2021 at 14:38, Nearholmer said:

Stole ten minutes.

 

Well, it probably could be made to work, although I don’t like it.

 

The plan so far is only a 1:20 dimensioned sketch, and I haven’t shortened the short walk from 2250 to 2170. To do a proper job, I would measure the room really carefully, because things like door-frame width can become crucial with these ‘hand in glove’ things, then draw it carefully at 1:10.

Lots of good points made, I’ll do a proper drawing of the room, try some of the suggestions and reply in full once those have been done!

 

cheers,

Joe

[Joe61264]

Some time sketching and checking my measurements has given two versions of @Nearholmer’s original suggestion with a couple of tweaks

I checked the numbers I had, which have been done from the skirting boards and these were still correct. That should give a (small!) amount of wiggle room in design and making sure I’ve not overdone it.

I’ve used 24” on a couple of sidings but the running line is a 27” minimum radius. 

Version one just adds a crossover in the station area. This doesn’t seem to compromise on space and gives a little more flexibility.

Version two I like but am not sure about how the end result would look. Two roads on the Loco Shed provide a stabling point for the passenger and freight locos, and a yard has been added in bottom left (kickback off the Carriage Sdg/FY Rd) for the goods to start and finish its day at, or simply to store stock not being run.

My concern is whether I’ve fallen down the hole of cramming things in, but as it does fit the space it may work with clever view blockers.

 

Re-hanging the door is not an option. I could take it off completely but as it stands I don’t see a huge issue with the sections across its travel being removable.

 

The idea of the portable Fiddle Yard into the hallway is a good one, and would make it more engaging for when guests visit but I see that for the time being as a ‘bolt-on’ project for later down the line.

 

Its been fun getting the pencils and paper out again after several years of AnyRail! 
 

Cheers all,

Joe

Edited April 3, 2021 by Joe61264

[F-UnitMad]

I like plan 1 best; a few longer sidings are more realistic than several short ones, and can be just as much fun to shunt if there are multiple 'car spots' on one siding, and the wagons have to be shunted into the siding in the right order.

For example there could be a coal dock, crane, and cattle dock, so the three wagons need shunting in that order to be loaded or unloaded at the right 'spot'.

On Plan one, though, I would change the bottom part of the plan (as we look at it). I would reverse the direction of the siding, to go to the bottom left corner, move the points to the right as far as practical (i.e. before any lift-out bridge or whatever for the doorway) and use a simple left-hand and right-hand points to start the loop and siding.

[F-UnitMad]

Like this.

[Nearholmer]

I personally don't favour the "lots of short sidings" one, especially given the price of points!  Seriously though, that approach often yields less space for wagons, once you subtract the space taken by points and clearing distances.

 

I'm also unclear about the utility of the crossover in the middle of the long loop. £200+ of points, and I wonder whether the resulting "half loops" become too short to hold useful-length trains.

 

One thing you could do is lengthen the inner siding a bit by continuing that R24 curve for another 18 degrees (BTW, can't it be R27, given that it "springs" further back than the main R27 curve?).

 

Overall, less is more IMO, if you want it to look railwaylike. The more you add, the more "tinplate" it looks. Which is all simply a matter of taste, its just that for my own layout I'm trying to get a "Bassett-Lowke" look, rather than a "Hornby No.2" look.

[PatB]

If one is worried about (I assume) emergency access from outside the room with a lifting flap/removable section in place, there's always the option of a farmhouse door arrangement of upper and lower sections. If the lower section is made to open below baseboard level, if you keel over in there, there is access for help. 

[Joe61264]

I suspected I was going a bit more ‘train set’ with the extra sidings. 

 

In emergency access terms I’ve designed it with the idea that the door is open for when I’m running trains, so any assistance need only lift the bottom RH curve out to get in although the stable door is a clever solution!

 

I got round to measuring the hallway which comes out at 119cm from the inside wall of the bedroom to the skirting board across from the door. Is this enough space to do something with or not really worth bothering (thinking about the Ironing Board style FY mentioned earlier on)?

 

On the new sketch I’ve kept a few of the ‘extras’ but hopefully nothing too excessive. The main one for me being the ability to stable both the freight and passenger locos in the Depot for the start of operating sessions. The other one that was kept is the bottom LH kickback; either curved or straight which I don’t think would look too crowded? Provision for the LH crossover has been kept as a ‘just in case’ should I decide it worthwhile at a later stage and the ‘Bottom Yard’ and its’ Headshunt are dashed-in both to show the changes and that the option for future installation is there.

 

I’ve re-drawn in light pencil the Station Goods Siding/Yard and wondered if it would again be too much to split that into two sidings and keep it going round to the straight section at the top. It fits the space certainly.

 

V3 below:

[PatB]

Just shy of 4 feet is probably not enough for a real fiddle yard, but might allow the use of some sort of combined cassettes/stock storage boxes to move stock on and off the layout. Possibly useful given that it will be fairly easy for a stock and loco collection to outstrip the available on-layout storage. 

[Flying Pig]

2 hours ago, Joe61264 said:

The other one that was kept is the bottom LH kickback; either curved or straight which I don’t think would look too crowded?

 

Do you gain anything by this siding?  The headshunt needs to be clear to access it, so you stiĺ only have one siding but at the cost of an extra point.

 

Edit - got it now: you can remove the headshunt to close the door with the siding occupied.

 

 

2 hours ago, Joe61264 said:

I’ve re-drawn in light pencil the Station Goods Siding/Yard and wondered if it would again be too much to split that into two sidings and keep it going round to the straight section at the top. It fits the space certainly.

 

I'm not convinced that there is enough space between the sidings and the loop with the additional point inserted.  A single siding curving round to the straight might look good though.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Flying Pig
aha moment.