Chimer

You're right about the sweep. I've brought the throat too far "south". Shifting it up a bit would ease that curve and also let the goods sidings fan move right a bit which would also address one of Flying Pig's points below. I recognise the freight / loco stabling conflict but wanted more room for the freight yard than locos. If I do have another go at this, I'll see how the options look with the throat moved up. I'm not convinced by the freight arrangements either, my interest wanes after the 1960s and I don't really get modern freight ops, just thought some sort of block train arriving and departing each day might fit the bill. And I wasn't happy with the long lead to the points fan either, but ran out of space.

OK, here's a more developed version of my first thought (as before, designed in 00, therefore squares 6" in N). It includes a loco stabling / fuelling point and a branch line past a halt to a hidden siding just big enough for a 2-car DMU. The branch can only use platforms 2 & 3, platform 1 being at the top, but main line trains can arrive and depart from all 3. Freight ops: in my usual steam age world, I would have scattered things like a goods shed, coal staithes and a cattle pen around the kickback freight area to provide target locations for arriving goods wagons. Here on foreign modern territory I am suggesting a 2 road "factory" where each day the arriving train loco shunts its rake of (probably identical) wagons in to one road and draws out the previous day's delivery from the other, before running round (using platform 3) and departing. Arriving empty, departing full, or vice versa according to choice! And a few random sidings in this area for whatever else you can still see on today's railway to add variety! Breakdown train, ballast wagons, maybe ..... Which could of course be omitted to give the rest more room to breathe. The backscene (green line) behind the halt could be as simple as a retaining wall for most of its length. But it could probably be worked quite nicely into the high level town idea. Hope this may give some more ideas / clarify some of the points I've tried to make earlier. Cheers, Chris

I would use the freight arrivals road (the lower of the two where you have the runround) as the headshunt to a kickback freight facility, rather than the way you have labelled it in the first diagram. Rather like the way I had those bits arranged in my pic way above, which used the third platform road as the freight run round prior to departure. I might have another go now your ideas are becoming clearer ....

Once your station pilot has removed empty coaching stock, you've got to do something with the loco that brought the train in. You could run light engine to an off-scene MPD (i.e. the FY - probably the most likely in the real world) but I would be tempted to have some loco stabling at least in the station area. And my vote would be to have the freight run round off the arrivals road - i.e. stick a crossover at the right hand end of the "storage sidings". Having it in the "freight area" would not be great for shunting (in my opinion).

Agree, but keeping double track all the way to the FY requires either (a) a traverser, which knocks out the option of having something interesting in front, (b) another pair of crossovers in the fiddle yard, which eats up the space or (c) using cassettes (which come to think of it could be a better option for fiddling operations behind a backscene).

Taking a slightly different approach, this version attacks the short FY issue by bringing the up and down lines together as soon as they're out of sight with just has a single fan of points for the fiddle yard sidings. These are behind a low back scene which allows the space in front on the left to be utilised for an MPD, industrial site or maybe a docks area. The other line could lead to a goods yard or MPD front and centre. 3 platform roads with the fourth (bottom) road for freight arrivals/departures. Second crossover added to the throat to allow all platforms to be used for arrivals and departures. Run round loops added, not essential but offer options, especially to allow freight loco to run round for departure after shunting from buffers end. Drawn (in XTrackCad) for 00 as that's what I've got loaded, so for the OP in N squares are 6 inches. Streamline points apart from Set-track for the fiddle yard fan, which could be small radius Streamline at the expense of losing a bit off the platform lengths.

Yep, my bad 🙃. I only think about operations, can't be doing with bells and whistles ..... DCC needing wiring where DC doesn't, who'd have thought it? 😄

I don't understand this comment. If a layout is wired for DC, it's wired for DCC - all you have to do is turn on all the section switches (assuming you've used any) and change the supply to AC. Whereas if you start with minimum DCC wiring and decide you don't like DCC, you'll almost certainly have to retrofit some extra wiring and change some metal fishplates to IRJs unless you can get away with doing all the isolating of locos and MUs you need by just using the turnouts. That might be possible with this particular plan, but it certainly isn't generally true. Imho, of course ...

You're right @RobinofLoxley, can only be done as an attachment to an email.

I know I keep banging on about it, but all other difficulties pale into insignificance compared to to the ones related to getting that table out of the top right hand corner whenever there's a need to get jackets out of that cupboard ..... Sorry.

I don't want to dampen enthusiasm, but this plan doesn't look like an experiment to me, it looks like a very major project, especially if it involves devising some way of regularly moving a 100 x 60 cm table with 8 tracks crossing onto adjacent similar tables. Given you'll be using settrack which is infinitely rearrangeable unless/until you start ballasting, I think I'd start with those 4 tables making a 7' x 4' ish board in the middle of the room so you can put together something simple to test out your thoughts on wiring etc without committing to anything major. Or just do a conventional baseboard (maybe in two pieces) of around that size sitting on the dining table. Don't know how old your son is, but at 12 I was pretty happy with a single circuit and a few sidings on a 6' x 4' piece of plywood ....

Would it help to get the shape right on some old wallpaper before attacking the ply?

Nothing seen recently seems to address the issue of getting at the cupboard under the stairs. Big boards in front of it are not going to be easily removed even for occasional access. So I would propose this as a baseboard layout which allows access by removing a single non-scenic board and associated track - shown in green. The quarter circle is the arc of the door. I've shown, without detail, a double track roundy-roundy which uses a second easily removable section to give access to the centre. I've shaped the boards so everywhere is reachable (also not true in some of the recent pictures). Not sure I've got the dimensions exactly right, but close enough for now. An alternative would be to scrub round the second removable section and do an end-to-end, possibly as two terminii rather than one with a sort of fiddle yard at the other end. You and son could each own one station and send trains to one another, maybe. That would mean short trains, though. Hope this helps to clarify thoughts, at least. Best of luck!

I can see what @RobinofLoxley is doing there and it looks good, except I would tweak the pointwork in the left-hand station so a train running anti-clockwise on the inner circuit can run directly into the bay platform. And isolate the sidings there, and have them as a single section switchable to either controller.

Is that a through lounge-diner arrangement in pic 1? Because if you can get away with never opening the door in the corner, one perennial problem for a round-the-edges layout is solved without testing your carpentry skills! A short removable section of board at the end nearest the camera is much easier to sort out .... Edit to add that a fully dimensioned sketch showing exactly how/where those alcoves/buttresses etc fit in would be helpful for those tempted to have a go.

A track! A track! I've seen a track ...... Really enjoying following you Philou 🙂

True, and so I would probably go for an insulfrog crossing 😝 ..... at a double junction I would expect most trains to be carrying enough speed not to stall on the frogs.

OK, here's the basic picture This shows 2 controllers feeding 3 sections via DPDT (double pole, double throw) switches. It should be obvious how it can be extended to any number of sections. The crucial point is that the switchery allows either controller to feed any number of sections, but prevents both controllers feeding the same section simultaneously. As @Nearholmer observes, you can use common return and SPDT switches to reduce the amount of wiring, but using DPDTs as shown is the solution I prefer. He's also right about only needing the more expensive multi-way rotary switches if you want more than two controllers. The green and yellow wires heading off to the right from DPDT2 are feeding another piece of track in the same section (i.e. represent another pair of droppers).

On the subject of DC electrics, if you stick to the simple two red and green sections and two controllers you suggested in your first post, you should consider setting things up so either controller can control either section. Then when you want to move something from one section to the other, switch both sections to the same controller. This is far better than trying to jump across with both controllers set at the same speed. It just needs two switches, is traditionally called "cab control" and I can draw you a wiring diagram if you like. If you split things up into the multiple sections as per your later diagram, it would need a lot more switches (one per section) but the principle remains the same - switch all the sections you need to use to complete a particular movement to the same controller. Cheers, Chris

There's a strange line which doesn't seem to go anywhere running round the left hand end of the layout outside the helix. If you lost that and cut the width of the layout down to exactly the minimum required for the helix, could you fit in narrow passages down both sides? Ever so tight, but would solve the access problems ...

Carriage sidings were a regular feature of the landscape until multiple units became all-pervasive. The problem with them in a model is they were often pretty long (minimum 8 coaches maybe) and almost always straight (stand by for lots of pictures of short curved ones). But a couple or three sidings running into a corner of a layout behind a terminus or largish through station is a possibility - and seeing your latest post suggests you're thinking big, so why not? A refinement would be to include the little platforms between the roads that gave access to cleaners, etc.

I know what you're saying is for the sake of realism, but that adds all the complications of a fiddle yard, lifting and reversing locos, brake vans etc. If all the OP wants to do with the high-level lines is have a varied sequence of trains passing over a viaduct in the background while he runs things in and out of the low-level terminus, what's wrong with that? If he's not fussed that the HST always goes east-west and the steam-hauled football special always goes west-east, it's his railroad after all .....

And my equally-probably-too-late thought is that it is only rarely that you will need the full access space. If the lifting flaps were cut in half (a la stable doors) you might only usually need to open the halves nearer the camera - and they would be lighter ..... but I may be getting totally the wrong impression of size and clearances.

I think that looks a lot better. Noting that the inner pair of sidings bottom left can be shunted using the inner loop as your headshunt, with another train still running round the outer loop, I would be tempted to stick a third siding into the fan there to give more shunting options/constraints/fun. And I would suggest you need a short straight before the S-bend on the top right siding, so you can fit a standard uncoupling unit there. Also, I would rotate the whole thing about 20 degrees anti-clockwise and move the two short sidings (which look like an engine shed to me) from bottom left to top left, accessed via a trailing point off the top end of the outer loop rather than the facing point off the bottom end as you have at present. But that's really a bit nit-picking when the main aim is having fun .... Cheers, Chris

I was spooked by the first shot last week which showed the module with that high foreground profile. Looks much less of a worry seen in the wider context. But I still think I might lower that highest profile by an inch or two and have the land rising away from the viewer.