Layout idea, opinions sought

[ajdown]

Greetings all

 

Here's my first draft of a trackplan I've been thinking about this week following discussions elsewhere on the forum.

 

This is the scenic section, which should be approx 10ft x 2ft 6".

 

 

To the left is a road overbridge as a scenic break, with the two main lines and a separate 'freight loop' - this is accessible from all directions and trains (milk tanks, cargowaggons or railfreight vans for palleted products, coal or oil for the boilers) will run into the freight loop then either reverse into the dairy yard, or the dairy shunter will run forward on to the freight loop and draw the wagons into the yard - this is prototypical based on the Chard Junction dairy shunter which was mainline certified for the immediate vicinity and used to run wagons from the dairy across the mainlines into the bay sidings for branch line trains).

 

The "X" crossing is a diamond, rather than a double slip, by the way. I'm planning on using concrete sleepered code 75 track on the main, and wood sleepered code 75 track for everywhere else.

 

To the right is a junction, with a triangular centre platform, with another road overbridge creating the scenic break - the station buildings will be across the tracks East Croydon style, with platforms obviously continuing "past the scenic break".

 

The bay platform - I could either put the bay where shown on the plan above, or alternatively I'm toying with the idea of the bay being in the middle of the Y - any thoughts?

 

I'm also contemplating having "mainline" trains not stopping at the station, with the platforms obviously "out of use" (similar to the arrangement at Brixton currently which is what gave me the inspiration for the platform configuration) but I'm not sure how this might look. Again, comments invited.

 

A possible change I've contemplated would be a third "branch" on the top of the layout, only served by a small DMU service, with a second line being extended from the headshunt of the freight loop, terminating before the road bridge in an obviously disused platform - but I don't know if a 6 platform station would look a bit excessive for what is basically serving a small market town? Alternatively I guess what is currently the "branch" could become the mainline, and use this idea within the "mainline" platforms but then I couldn't really run such a variety of trains along that bit - which is one of the reasons for wanting the double junction in the first place.

 

I haven't drawn this out "full size" yet so I don't know quite how it's all going to fit, but I'd appreciate some feedback from independent eyes as to whether it looks right or I've forgotten something obvious.

 

Region is 'nominally south' somewhere, set late 80's so lots of blue/grey and early Sectorisation stock will be in evidence. I toyed with the idea of making the main line third rail as an excuse to run the new Bachmann EMU's but as I'd need at least two units it's out of budget at the moment, plus it ties the layout to a more defined area that I don't particularly want to yet.

[The Stationmaster]

I always apply an acid test to any layout plan - will it signal (i.e can it be signalled, and therefore operated as described) for the period being modelled.

 

You have passed that test

[Kenton]

I always apply an acid test to any layout plan -

My acid test is will it fit when drawn to scale

 

Ignoring the width of the buildings and the curves of the track and distances across the junction before you can actually implement a turnout ....

There are 8 tracks across a 30" width

and a run of 6 points (again ignoring any curves and track in between - siding length) across 10ft

 

I don't think it passes - but would like to see it in scale because it might just.

 

I'm assuming OO

[10800]

Not quite sure what you mean about putting the bay in the middle of the 'Y', but if you moved it across to the other side of the station you could dispense with that facing crossover which makes me a bit uncomfortable (even though you'd get an additional facing point instead). Nice range of features though in principle.

[The Stationmaster]

Not quite sure what you mean about putting the bay in the middle of the 'Y', but if you moved it across to the other side of the station you could dispense with that facing crossover which makes me a bit uncomfortable (even though you'd get an additional facing point instead). Nice range of features though in principle.

 

I wondered about the facing crossover too but then looked at the 'date modelled' and decided it would pass - unusual but ok by that date (with the right signals for period, but that's me being finicky ).

[ajdown]

Even if I moved the bay to the other side, wouldn't I still need the facing crossover for access from the branch and main (for trains heading right to left), to the freight loop - but I suppose I could assume that there's a crossover at the other end of the platform and run that platform as bi-directional.

 

I know that spacewise it may still not fit, and I may end up extending the layout after all, but as I said this is still early plans. The sidings for the dairy are just an idea, they're really a secondary feature that will be "shrunk to fit" - the dairy at chard Junction just has a headshunt with 2 sidings kickback style and no run-round facilities, for example.

 

Instead of the four points run from freight loop to the bay, could I replace those middle points with a double slip? Or would that be 'even worse' on a main line with a reasonable speed? I just can't think of another way to get into the freight loop from the right, that's all.

[The Stationmaster]

Even if I moved the bay to the other side, wouldn't I still need the facing crossover for access from the branch and main (for trains heading right to left), to the freight loop - but I suppose I could assume that there's a crossover at the other end of the platform and run that platform as bi-directional.

 

I know that spacewise it may still not fit, and I may end up extending the layout after all, but as I said this is still early plans. The sidings for the dairy are just an idea, they're really a secondary feature that will be "shrunk to fit" - the dairy at chard Junction just has a headshunt with 2 sidings kickback style and no run-round facilities, for example.

 

Instead of the four points run from freight loop to the bay, could I replace those middle points with a double slip? Or would that be 'even worse' on a main line with a reasonable speed? I just can't think of another way to get into the freight loop from the right, that's all.

 

A double slip would really be wrong for date although you might just get away with it on the Southern (but a very close run thing, especially in that position )

[ajdown]

Ok I guess I can save the double slip for in the yard where, being older track, it might well have still laid.

 

Incidently, I didn't know until just now you can download and print off PDF's of the Peco track plans from their website - http://www.peco-uk.com/Products/turnouts.htm - which are running off the photocopier as I speak. That'll make life a lot easier in the planning stages once we figure the quirks already being discussed.

 

I tend to use the shortest points I can for slow crossovers, and will either use the medium or long with the diamond crossing for the junction itself.

[Miss Prism]

My acid test for a plan is fiddle yard lengths - a couple of 20 foot ones should do this plan at a squeeze...

[ajdown]

I'm planning on a roundy-roundy - not a fiddle yard on each end. The storage facilities will be at the rear of the scenic section on separate boards, with setrack curves at each end hidden to complete the circuit.

 

Obviously the fiddle yard will decide on the final size of the trains I can run, which may be another reason for extending the layout a little further than originally envisaged.

 

But it's the scenic bit that's my main focus at the moment, not just for practicality, but also for appearance - and apart from discussion over the facing point seems to be generally accepted so over the next week or so I'll start figuring out what board sizes I will need to accomplish this.

[shortliner]

Purely personal opinion - for my taste, too much track in the space, which will make it look awfully crowded - but it is your railway!

[ajdown]

Purely personal opinion - for my taste, too much track in the space, which will make it look awfully crowded - but it is your railway!

 

Valid comment and something I've been guilty of in the past; dump the bay platform (which is unnecessary really anyway) and reduce the sidings for the dairy... would that improve it by your eye?

[Kenton]

Jack, I think, was just be blunt and summarising what I was eluding to earlier.

Before arguing too much about facing points and dropping sidings you really do have to see it laid out to scale on a plan and in 1:! templates on the floor.

 

There is a lot more to planning a layout than the initial scribbled idea on the back of a fag packet/beer mat/izal note paper.

 

Not only do you need this to be able to make a judgment on all important stock clearances but on the relationship of the scenic items (building, platforms, bridges to the proposed trackwork. It is no use slapping down your track on a layout without these considerations for detail as at best all it becomes is a big trainset not an operational layout.

 

Building this as a single part length of what is obviously now a big room roundy roundy seems to me a waste of a lot of planning potential.

 

BTW: There is nothing wrong with a big loft roundy-roundy as a loft/garage/big room trainset if all you like doing is running trains

[ajdown]

Building this as a single part length of what is obviously now a big room roundy roundy seems to me a waste of a lot of planning potential.

 

It's not a 'roundy roundy' in the sense of 'it fills the entire room', I mean it's a scenic part of a compact loop - the "unscenic" parts of the layout aren't as big as you might think as at the end it's just radius 2 and 3 setrack half circles to the storage facilities which are right behind the scenic bit on separate boards.

 

I'd love to have a whole room to build something - but that's just not an option at present.

[Kenton]

So which end is the dead end?

... and you must have long arms to reach over both your FY "how many tracks behind" and the 2ft 6" in scenic plus any building bridges to re-rail the derailment on the front track.

Sorry to seem so negative but I'd prefer you sifted through these arguments here and a 1:1 scale plan rather than get it all worked up on baseboards to find it doesn't work.

[shortliner]

I'd certainly suggest putting the plan through something like XTrkCad to see if it will work - and may lead you towards making some changes. I'm not sure that the problem lies with the Bay or the Dairy - It just (as drawn) looks far too compressed for the length - putting it through trackplanning software will give you a much better idea of how it will all fit in relation to space available and space required for buildings/platforms/etc.

....and sorry if it sounded awfully blunt - I just gave you my personal feel about it.

[ajdown]

So which end is the dead end?

... and you must have long arms to reach over both your FY "how many tracks behind" and the 2ft 6" in scenic plus any building bridges to re-rail the derailment on the front track.

Sorry to seem so negative but I'd prefer you sifted through these arguments here and a 1:1 scale plan rather than get it all worked up on baseboards to find it doesn't work.

 

Neither end is a 'dead end' - it's scenic breaks made by road overbridges, and behind them a 180 degree curve of setrack takes the tracks to the fiddle yard.

 

Yes, I'm aware that there may be issues of getting to stock in the yard but at the moment my plans are that I'll have an 18" wide board for the fiddle yard leaving about 6" of "grab space" from underneath if I need to access - and, of course, if I'm building with exhibitions in mind then I'll have proper rear access when not in the restrictions of home anyway - a future house move will also take this into account!

 

I hadn't gone into a lot of detail for beyond the scenic bit with regards to storage yards, how it fits in my room etc as I didn't think that was overly relevant (thought had gone into it previously) , it was just the track plan I was concerned about getting right.

 

The 'bottom' of the plan (ie away from the dairy) is the 'front' of the layout that it'll be viewed from.

 

Over the weekend I'll be laying out the Peco templates on some boards that aren't the right width but long enough, so I can get an idea of whether it's going to work or not. Photographic results will be posted here in due course. Unless, of course, it's really embarrassing then I'll just hope this thread quietly dies and falls off the page

 

Sadly I'll have to do it with paper, as I can't get my head round the various track planning programmes I've seen out there.

[ajdown]

Ok taking on board some of the things listed in this thread, I've modified the original trackplan to lose the bay platform, and simplify the milk depot sidings.

 

 

I've laid out on two 4ftx1ft boards the basic track plan of the main part of the layout which was causing concern, the freight loop crossovers and the junction. On the plan above, the pink line is where the two 4ft boards join.

 

First, the left side - the freight loop - the '31' is sitting in what would be the freight loop. There will be at least another scenic foot on the left beyond the end of this board behind the loco to show the trains stopped in the loop (which may or may not, of course, be going into the dairy anyway)

 

 

Next we have the right board, the double junction. It's a bit tight here but I think I can just about get away with what I'm trying to achieve. Again, there'll be at least another foot of scenic stuff beyond the far end of the board behind the mk 2 coach.

 

 

I don't think that actually looks too bad. It'll give me plenty of opportunity to have through and stopping trains, a chance for my DCC sound locos to 'show off' revving up, and the long headshunt for the loco at the end of the freight loop gives an opportunity for start up and shut down sequences, if the loco isn't running off to the off-scene depot for refuelling or whatever.

 

Of course this is still in the early stages, and I may yet decide to reinstate the bay platform (if I move it to the top right instead of bottom right as suggested then I may have a need for a further crossover which I'm not keen on, nor do I really have the space) .

 

As previously mentioned, don't worry about the rest of the layout - fiddle yard, 180 degree curves etc, as that's all fine and dandy, it was just the scenic area that I was wanting suggestions on.

 

I may well drop back to 2ft wide boards as it looks quite possible that I won't need that extra 6 inches - plus it saves quite a lot of money on wood as I can keep it within a 8x4 sheet.

[Kenton]

Neither end is a 'dead end' - it's scenic breaks made by road overbridges, and behind them a 180 degree curve of setrack takes the tracks to the fiddle yard.

 

I still don't understand You say it is not a roundy roundy and it is not an end to end, yet you say from both ends of the scenic there are 180' turns back to the FY and the FY is a board behind the scenic.

 

I just don't follow that.

 

.. and it doesn't matter anyway because access is going to be OK.

 

Still I am glad you are starting to use templates to size up the space and check clearances.

 

 

Any way back to the plan:

Does frieght arrive in th loop from the main or is this some "freight only" route - in other words I'm a bit confused by the term "freight loop" and the fact it vanishes off the sceene to the left through a bridge/tunnel - presumably back to the FY. or is it a real "reception loop" and would go back to the main beyond the bridge?

 

Whichever, I'm having some concern as how the freight is going to get to the dairy - all that shunting back and forth - I just get the feeling that it was to be built in real life they would not have done it that way ... and with two sidings 3-4ft long that is a lot of traffic.

[ajdown]

I still don't understand You say it is not a roundy roundy and it is not an end to end, yet you say from both ends of the scenic there are 180' turns back to the FY and the FY is a board behind the scenic.

 

I just don't follow that.

 

The gap in the middle is not an operating space - probably about 6 inches - which may well end up being scenic anyway and filled in. Being DCC it will be set up to operate from the front or the rear, with plugs for controllers in all corners.

 

 

I've only drawn one 180 degree track on each end for simplicity but that shows the general arrangement. Hopefully I've explained myself at last! To me, a 'roundy roundy' is a layout that goes all around the edge of a room, viewed and operated from the inside.

 

Does frieght arrive in th loop from the main or is this some "freight only" route - in other words I'm a bit confused by the term "freight loop" and the fact it vanishes off the sceene to the left through a bridge/tunnel - presumably back to the FY. or is it a real "reception loop" and would go back to the main beyond the bridge?

 

The freight loop continues through the bridge off-scene, then runs parallel to the main lines before rejoining some quarter of a mile or so beyond it - in reality, just back into the fiddle yard. The reason for the facing crossover that caused some discussion is so that trains coming from the right (main or branch) could access the loop.

 

Whichever, I'm having some concern as how the freight is going to get to the dairy - all that shunting back and forth - I just get the feeling that it was to be built in real life they would not have done it that way ... and with two sidings 3-4ft long that is a lot of traffic.

 

The dairy at Chard Junction was laid out in almost an identical manner, except it ran forward along the main line then reversed into the 2 dairy sidings, with a headshunt siding for use within the yard. A google maps search will show you the trackplan if you look carefully enough (the concrete inlaid sidings aren't easy to see in the dairy yard itself but the loop and headshunt arrangement is. The only way I could really do this on my plan would be to run the freight loop further along to make basically a 5th platform face, which I'm a bit reluctant to do, although I suppose could just as easily turn it into a bay platform and extend the freight loop into there, with a reversal into the dairy? Not sure I'd have room for the additional pointwork required though.

 

The sidings area could easily be rearranged to be more like the 'prototype', I just liked this arrangement a bit more that's all.

 

As a general rule, when the dairy still sent stuff by rail (just milk tanks, I've extended the range of products the factory handles), the train loco would bring in a set of empty tanks which the factory's own shunter would then take into the yard, and shortly after take away a set of full tanks which the shunter would then drop onto the main for the loco to run back on to. There wasn't a great deal of shunting, joining and splitting - and with the factory's own shunter doing all the work, wouldn't clog up the main for ages. I just thought the freight loop would help me run a more frequent service - Chard Junction had one train an hour essentially at the stage I'm modelling, so careful pathing would have left plenty of time for the run-round operations. Unfortunately you can't operate that prototypical timetable very easily with an hour between trains!

 

http://maps.google.c...ion&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=32.610437,56.162109&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Chard+Junction,+Chard,+Somerset,+United+Kingdom&ll=50.837943,-2.939615&spn=0.000793,0.002736&t=h&z=19

[Kenton]

The gap in the middle is not an operating space - probably about 6 inches -

and that is the bit that adds to my concern about reaching over to re-rail derailments - or the need to run round/duck under the whole layout.

 

To me, a 'roundy roundy' is a layout that goes all around the edge of a room, viewed and operated from the inside.

Whereas the usual definition is one where a train can (but doesn't always) go entirely round the layout. The classic trainset mat comes into the definition as well as some stunning exhibition layouts. They do not necessarily have to be operated from inside the doughnut or go all the way round a room.

So the term isn't really derogatory, just like the term 'plank' isn't.

 

 

 

Thanks for clarifying the operational intention and that it is a deviation from the prototype.

 

I just liked this arrangement a bit more that's all.

and quite rightly it is your layout after all

[ajdown]

and that is the bit that adds to my concern about reaching over to re-rail derailments - or the need to run round/duck under the whole layout.

 

I understand that - and it's possible I can make it larger to operate from the middle, I'm just still working on the finer details which may mean I can actually have an 18 inch operating/access "hole" in the middle (or use non-square - parallelogram? - boards to get round one of my other issues of lack of space at home ) - it was more the length than the width that was constraing me in that original plan.

 

Whereas the usual definition is one where a train can (but doesn't always) go entirely round the layout. The classic trainset mat comes into the definition as well as some stunning exhibition layouts. They do not necessarily have to be operated from inside the doughnut or go all the way round a room.

So the term isn't really derogatory, just like the term 'plank' isn't.

 

I understand. Apologies for confusing you I confuse myself sometimes...

 

Thanks for clarifying the operational intention and that it is a deviation from the prototype.

 

To be honest, there's a lot of "deviation from the prototype" as Chard Junction station doesn't look anything like the configuration I have - there was an O gauge layout in Modelrail a year or so back with the triangular station/junction that I really liked which inspired that bit, and the operational requirements of the dairy and to not block the mainline kinda led to the rest. I'd better clarify that this layout isn't in any shape or form based on any real prototype, simply taking a number of elements from other locations to fit together to make a 'could have existed' scenario. It's compressing it into the space I have that's the challenge.

 

and quite rightly it is your layout after all

 

Well yes, but on the other hand I would hope to be able to exhibit this layout at some point in the future after it's built, and I don't want to have to supply soft mats for the floor for the people rolling about on it in hilarity at my attempt at a layout

 

Interestingly, this photo (http://linesidephotosthebrera.fotopic.net/p59943581.html) is almost exactly what I have in mind, just without the station showing.

[Shadow]

Just did a quick plan on Xtrkcad, its all on the straight, but can be skewed later.

 

See what you think.

 

I can upload the .xtc file if you want.

 

Shadow