I have been designing my 'dream' OO layout based on a distilled essence of the south end of York station and, being extremely greedy, have packed in my ideas of a loco shed, a complex junction and 14 tracks of storage into the usable area of my double garage (5.5m by 3.8m). Other than operational flaws, which certainly abound, my question is how best to arrange the access to the storage area.
Aside from the ECML, York had trains from Scarborough from the north-east, and routes south-west to Leeds and the Midlands which would have crossed over the East Coast mainline. My plan shows the real-life arrangement of a Doncaster pair and a Leeds pair of lines south of the station but a single set of 'up' and 'down' storage sidings. Consequently, if I run according to real life, this results in tricky arrangements to get access to the storage, but having reviewed the contributions on this forum I am considering having two up and two down areas. The designs done by Phil and Bryant McG with your help also suggest that I should consider some bi-directional storage. Would I be better off even further compromising the prototype and having all 'up' traffic on lines 1 & 2, rather than 1 & 3 as now ?
I would be really grateful for your thoughts on the conundrum I have set myself.
Other factors:
· I intend to run trains Eastern / North Eastern region dating from 1958 - 1972, so steam transitioning into diesel and the blue era.
· I consciously sacrificed the visible running lines at the top to have more space for storage/loco shed area.
· Minimum design curves at 762mm radius in scenic area, 650mm in storage.
· There is access across the bottom and top of the layout as well as the operating well.
· I have already built the baseboards, so am pretty committed to the overall design.
· The grid on the plan is at 50cm.
BTW: many thanks to Phil for his earlier advice - I hope he can see some of it in here, but the mess is all my responsibility.
Many thanks.
Paul
York 11 RM.pdf