Chimer

I've not commented on this thread before because of your early comment about not wanting to be prototypical, but perhaps I misunderstood what you meant as you're now asking "is this all right?" questions, so I'll dip a toe in ... You asked about bi-directional running on your single main line. Plenty of examples of this, but rarer (for obvious reasons) on lines with long trains and heavy freight traffic. Personally I would go for a double main line because I like to see long trains passing each other - but a single line does make arranging prototypical access to goods yards and motive power depots easier, there are less rules to avoid breaking. If I stuck to a single main line, I would make sure there was a significant differentiation between main and branch lines everywhere, to avoid any chance of the arrangement being perceived as a double track main with 50% wrong-road running on both tracks. One idea you might consider is for the DMU branch to be at high level, rather than the goods line, with lines either side of a single high-level platform at the station. This might also help to hide the storage loops ..... Your only gradient would then be a link from the DMU branch to the main, which I agree with others would be desirable to include (even if nothing ever ran on it). I think you could get what you want from a double track main line, with two platforms in each direction in the main station, and goods lay-by loops off each track out in the country down the right hand side. With a couple of hidden storage lines off each circuit, that would give you lots of options for your "dance sequence". You could, for example, leave one train circulating on the up line while you shuffled trains round on the down, then vice versa. I may be wrong , but your comments about freight ops suggest you envisage a train coming into a goods yard loop line, wagons being loaded and unloaded, and the train going on its merry way, just like a passenger train disembarking and unloading its passengers. This doesn't happen. Back in the day, trip freights went from station goods yard to station goods yard, with wagons for unloading detached from the train and shunted into sidings in the yard, and other wagons (possibly empty, possibly recently loaded) being picked up. Loading and unloading was a slow time operation, not carried out while the train was waiting in the yard. But the types of modern freight trains you are thinking of generally run from point A, where they're loaded, to point B, where they're emptied, without intermediate stops (except perhaps in lay-by loops, to allow passenger trains to overtake). Though I suppose detachment/collection of a cargowagon or two might be a possibility, I'm not familiar with their method of operation (others will be). Whatever, the three curving freight loops behind the station look hugely unprototypical. As does, with all respect to your father, the diamond crossing where the goods line crosses the branch on your latest plan. The railways would see that as an accident waiting to happen, and try to avoid it all costs. You're on an interesting journey here, if you really end up with 6m x 4m then the possibilities in N gauge are enormous and I can't see any reason why you would think train lengths are limited to under a metre. It'll be interesting to see how your ideas develop.

I think I would settle for a Malvern ridgeline with a hedge, stone wall, trees or similar below the point where you would run into the roof. With an inch or two of vertical sky backscene behind if possible .....

Having worried about the gradients on your first plan, it seems a bit perverse to now suggest that if you could get Xenasholme maybe as little as an inch lower than Hellydale the top left corner would look better - but I'll suggest it anyway!

It feels a bit unbalanced somehow - the platform road nearest the camera being much longer than the one on the far left. Could you rearrange things so the platforms fan out two ways from the centre, rather than a single fan from the right? Something like this perhaps ... Done using medium Streamline points and giving platforms just over 3" wide. Hope this helps the thought process!

Can you get the drop you need on the branch through Xenasholme? The thought of putting the whole length (including two removable sections and some complicated pointwork) on a gradient would give me sleepless nights, but if you put Xenasholme on the level, you've not got much plain track left either side of the station to achieve a 3" (minimum) fall. But I do like the idea and the ambition ......

I think the redesigned corner area looks much better. Iirc, the original long carriage sidings were included to allow a variety of coaching stock, given there is no FY where extra rakes could hide. So provided what you've retained gives you enough parking spaces for the coaches you've now decided you need, it's a good move all round. I'm still sure there's got to be a better way of losing the main line in that corner than the tunnel mouth rising out of a flat field, though I'm boogered if I can think of one ......, Happy New Year!!

The obvious difficulty in doing without a FY is that everything has to be in view all the time. So if you want to see a few different locos, you need a proper MPD; if you want to run more than one rake of passenger stock, you need carriage sidings; and if you want freight ops to include anything more than a trip freight, with the train engine in the goods yard when it isn't circulating, you need a marshalling yard. If you want all the above, you do indeed need a decent sized room. I had a hand in the design of @halsey's "Hawkesbury" which went down this route to his reasonable satisfaction, or so he tells me, but it doesn't tick all my own boxes.

But surely you would save space by putting the first points in each fan where you've shown the ST-16s, using flexi for the reverse curves?

We're designing the layout of the parcels depot now Phil ....... not many openings for track planning lately. Whichever thread this winds up in, I think I'd rotate the gatehouse maybe 20 degrees anti-clockwise and bring it forward a bit. But defining the perimeter of the depot with walls or fencing will make things clearer to my mind.

Perhaps I should hold the question until you've defined all the boundaries of the parcels depot, but if that lorry is leaving the depot through the gatehouse, where's it come from? Not the yard, as far as I can see ....... Signage looks good!

I fully agree it's worth the learning curve - if you want to design a layout. But if all the OP wants is a full scale picture of a point, sledgehammers and nuts come to mind

You could certainly do it using XTrackCad (also free and unrestricted), but if all you wanted was to produce full-scale templates for pointwork, the learning curve would be quite an overhead .....

I think that's looking very good. Cramped and industrial, just right for a bit of narrow gauge railway. I guess the next step is to bed all the buildings down into the plywood earth? Cheers, Chris

It would certainly make for some interesting shunting .......

Especially if you've spent a while putting a special together in the fiddle yard, watching and admiring it for a few laps seems entirely reasonable. Count it once for the purposes of the timetable, if you're running to a timetable or a sequence, but you want to have a decent chance to look at it. I remember seeing Grantham at a pre-Covid show, they let most services do two laps for that reason iirc.

I know you said rehanging the door is not an option, but does it need to shut regularly? Assuming ducking under is a reasonable ask (?), if the default position for the door was fully open against the side wall, the removable curved section could sit in front of it and might not have to be removed very often ........

It seems obvious to me that if you build a terminus to terminus setup (as opposed to branch and twig), joining the termini together without a scenic break blows any illusion of reality. Whereas with a break, each can function as a conventional (if not very efficient) fiddle yard for the other on occasions when you want to play it that way, allowing for greater operational variety (but perhaps less amusement) than two operators playing ping-pong. If the two termini are built to represent different regions and/or periods (e.g. Devon between the wars and Lancashire today), you can still play ping-pong, but also have the options of two completely different realistic terminus to FY scenarios, albeit requiring stock substitution between sessions .... If you've the room to include stretches of open main line before the break (which La Cat doesn't), great, but I reckon you really don't want to let the eye follow a train from one terminus to the other. For me, terminus to terminus always brings to mind Sundown and Sprawling ..... though it does what I think it shouldn't ! Railway Modeller - November 1963 (exacteditions.com)

Wharf noted! But now I don't quite see why the siding inside the brewery (?) yard isn't (a) straight and (b) alongside the platforms? Always questions ..... Cheers, Chris

What radius is that then? I reckon you can get very close to 4', and every extra inch is going to make things look better. Try mocking up a platform on the inside of the curve, and see how big a gap you've got to mind ...... The only constraint you've got (apart from the obvious one of space) is having to fit in the curve into the goods yard, passing inside a reasonably wide (3-3.5" maybe) platform

Yes, on reflection I think this flows better altogether .....

One good reason for the divergence (I think) is that it enables a good chunk of the 90 degree curve that gets the main line round in the top left corner to be (a) gentle and (b) visible. Obviously (?!) the the branch line curve has to be totally hidden which probably means a tunnel which means a hill which probably means a tunnel on the main too - if the two lines are close together, the tunnel mouths will need to be close together which will lose a lot of the main line curve from view. I'm sure there are other scenic approaches which could work, like hiding the branch behind buildings, but some countryside in that corner seemed appealing .... And yes, the pointwork at the left-hand end of the loop can and probably should be moved left and up a bit - about a foot should do it, and also yes, I'd take the curve out of the branch platform, I only put it in because someone suggested it and there seemed to be general agreement (apart from Phil!). The inner platform radius is 46" and it will take a 5 coach train. Cheers, Chris

As I can never leave well alone, I've modded my last design to include your fiddle yards, sort of ....... Green tracks are set-track points and curves, blue streamline points and flexi (24" radius streamline points in the FY area). The differences are: a gentler curve bottom right, hence a streamline point where you've used set-track; sidings instead of loops on the nearside of the main line FY (I thought the loops too short to be useful; different arrangement of the curves top left, and therefore position of branch FY. The scenic treatment I offer for consideration is a road bridge providing the scenic break bottom right, and high ground with tunnels top left. I'm not I'd bother with the run-round I've shown in the branch FY, again because of the shortness of the loop. Easier to use a locolift to shift an engine from one end to the other, I reckon. Only thinking aloud, you're doing just fine by yourself!! Cheers, Chris

You could do the same thing at the other end of that loop too .....

That's so obvious, and yet I've never considered it ...... thanks DCB!