Chimer

Better, with the terminal roads below the through lines. Still need to ditch the redundant line from top left back to the station throat, and the crossover between the circuits top left hasn't any useful function either. All you need up there is the one turnout from the outer circuit into the storage loops.

I'll keep working on it then, incorporating some good thoughts / ideas from @Harlequin, @ISW and @Nick Holliday. Just give me a couple of days ..... I'm more than happy to send you the source file if you PM me with your email address, but as it's drawn in XTrackCad with 00 track it might not be a lot of use to you! Cheers, Chris

Supplementary questions (having looked at Google Earth) - is the 4 track main line paired by speed or direction? And what is the function of the middle line without a platform face? I just can't work out what's going on here!

Does this get anywhere near what you're after? I can do some more work on it and explain my thinking if you're interested. I've drawn it using Streamline 00 but the squares are 12" in N .....

I think there's a 2' walkway above and to the right of the plan ...

Exactly. I redrew it as a block diagram to try to identify where the main lines went - and couldn't find a double track circuit anywhere. The first thing to do (imho) is to reduce that stretch of triple track to double, and establish a conventional double track circuit as your starting point. But the plus point is that everything's in reach!

No experience of 7mm (since circa 1960 😀) but the cassette/hoists in the bottom left corner look well out of reach, whatever the scale - or is there a cunning plan?

..... but assuming they do (they did in an earlier iteration), so we have a station with two through platforms and two terminal roads, this is entirely operable and could be good fun. Trains leave terminal roads onto inner (anti-clockwise) circuit, then do a few laps before diving across the return loop* by the turntable onto the outer circuit, at which point they can make it into the storage loops for a rest, eventually returning, maybe after a few clockwise laps, to the terminal roads. Next journey (if not a MU) hauled by a different loco coming off shed. I agree with @DavidB-AU that the other return loop* above the engine shed has no function and will just complicate the electrics. I would do whatever I could to maximise the length of the terminal roads, including curving them round under cover of the station building. Freight traffic is limited to the occasional appearance of a freight train from the storage loops to do a clockwise lap or two on the outer circuit. The thing that would make me a bit unhappy is the way using the return loop involves cutting across the station throat, but I can't see any other way of arranging a return, given the unusual overall layout shape. *I'm using the term "return loop" here to describe the short bits of track that turn the dumbbell ends into return loops, where the conflicting electrical polarities will have to be sorted out somehow.

Hi there - I was away at the start of this saga and have been reading through with a mixture of amazement at the huge space you have available for a 2mm layout, and horror at your apparent inability to accept everyone's comments about the need to be able to reach everywhere, e.g. the thought of hidden sidings under scenery against a wall 4 feet away from the nearest access spot. If you really do need a super-wide baseboard to realise a bit of your dream, can I suggest you consider something like this, giving access to both sides and a possibly negotiable duck-under? I shall continue to watch with interest!

I would rearrange the pointwork around the station as shown below - basically I've moved one crossover from the left side of the platforms to the right, and shifted the rest of the pointwork along a bit. This allows you to bring a passenger train into either station platform, run the engine round to the other end and leave in the other direction, using the crossover to shift to the correct (left-hand running) track. The shifted crossover is now "trailing" instead of "facing" (that is, you have to stop and reverse across in normal operations) which is in accordance with traditional safety-driven practice in the real world. (I used Peco Set-track not Hornby, which is probably why I can't quite match your point formation without a discontinuity). Can't help much with the rest and largely agree with Phil. If you want it realistic, you need to take an awful lot away. See for example "Rannoch Revisited" in this month's Railway Modeller (sorry BRM!), which is highly realistic, but would give you nothing of what you want! I just suggest that for now you get some track down without fixing it at all, and do some running, operating the points by hand, and see if you can get what you want out of it. Hope this helps ... feeling your pain.

At first glance, I'm not sure having sidings going in both directions can work without some way of a loco running round wagons. But if you can visualise how to do it, please ignore me!

Generally trains don't "arrive" in sidings. For a drop-off to a single siding, the train will stop on the main line before the siding, uncouple the part of the train behind the wagon to be dropped off, pull forward beyond the turnout, reverse in, drop the wagon, come back out of the siding, drop back to recouple the back end of the train and go on its way rejoicing. With an obvious complication if there's also a wagon in the siding to be picked up, which has to be pulled out first.

@Dungrange is basing his criticisms on seeing your plan as a conventional double track main line. I saw it instead as two separate single tracks, which gives a lot more freedom of manoeuvre, e.g. trains can go in both directions on both circuits without upsetting anyone. And you've got a couple of ways to get from one circuit to the other and back again. This illusion works best if the two circuits are kept as far apart as possible, and don't run parallel to one another. Re "picking them up and taking them places", this is the definition of a steam era trip freight working. So you'd have a goods train wandering round the layout picking up trucks from one location and dropping them off at another, possibly controlled by throwing a dice or something similar to tell you a particular wagon has to move from A to B. Doesn't work particularly well if you designate A as something as specific as (say) a lumber yard, as your lumber wagons wouldn't want to go anywhere else, but this can be worked on. Your passenger train on the other hand will probably always be the same coaches, but pulled by different locos. And you might also have a DMU or similar for variety. Things become interesting when you want to get your goods train from one circuit to the other. You need to park the passenger somewhere - the loop line in the station will do the job. I think there's the basis for something interesting here. But not yet got the best arrangement of sidings for operational interest. (And I still don't think you'll be able to lift it!! 🙂)

Leaving aside the track plan for now, are you saying you have successfully built a 10' x 6' baseboard that you and one other person can raise to above the height of a car in a single lift? I just can't believe this can be done with a board strong enough and braced heavily enough not to twist in three dimensions and fall apart in the process.

Nah. Deliberate repetition for effect, clearly 😀

Whatever else you do, you need to be able to leave a wagon where you can run round it. So probably either end of the straight between the two points on the bottom road.

So 26' equivalent in 00, 10' more than my sketch? Agree tricky, but maybe do-able.

How about this (schematic only, not to scale and done in 00 Streamline) .... brown track (which could be doubled) leading to a high level terminus above the left hand dumbbell, with a return loop? Not sure whether in your space the terminal platforms would be long enough, but might be worth a more accurate look?

2 hopefully (🤪) helpful thoughts - does your headshunt planning leave room for buffers? And how long are you going to have to wait for PECO to come up with a bullhead short crossing?

At the risk of keeping you going round in circles 🤪, you could take a couple of stub sidings off each end of the shortest storage loop, which would give four more storage roads (for locos or two-car DMUs) at the cost of keeping the loop itself clear. Other than that, I think you've got the best FY solution in your latest iteration.

Stick with this and ignore everything else! Life is just not that complicated ....

Hi Noob, I'm one of the comparatively few people on here who uses XTrackCad in preference to AnyRail. It can do all sorts of amazing stuff, but finding out what's possible and how to do it is quite a challenge. Have you found the on-line manual and tutorials that hang off the installation screens? You've done well to post a layout image, that beats a lot of people, and getting a turntable just the way you want it isn't that easy either .... Cheers, Chris

I can't help wondering why those facing crossovers are needed (and whether they are a relatively recent addition, given the historical aversion to them).

If I did double the helix (which I don't think I would), I wouldn't then bring the lines together all, just have 2 parallel sets of storage sidings representing Carlisle and Sellafield respectively. Would save fretting about return loop polarity .... But whatever, I think I would use R3 curves on the S bend on the lower level so as to get the storage sidings as close to the front of the board along the top wall as possible (for ease of access). And I wouldn't take the sidings round the top right corner unless you really need to, to accommodate a particularly long rake of stock. I reckon you can fit a 6' siding in without going round the bend (🙂) at all. Also for ease of access, are you thinking of more than one full circle on the helix, to gain greater separation between the levels? If you are going for it, might as well go for broke!

I don't think you're gaining anything with that double track idea. Anything that reverses in the sidings area is going to emerge running "wrong line" for the six inches you can see before the line singles. A passing loop on the single track out in the country might be better.