Thanks! Couple of things... Aside from that one road I haven't given a lot of thought yet to grade crossings and overpasses, but I will. Regarding the mains, I sort of see it as Main #1 and Main #2. Main #1 is what I want to use for those fast freight or passenger trains orbiting the layout. From the operator area, Main #1 is the inside track on the interior side and the outside track on the exterior side. If you follow the single main north from the Amtrak station and never throw a turnout then you can go round and round all day without interruption on Main #1. What I'm calling Main #2 is the one that serves most of the industries, so in theory it'll be fouled somewhat frequently while leaving Main #1 free and clear. Make sense?
Nice. I work in commercial construction so we use MM as a concrete/aggregate supplier fairly frequently.
Rail Modeller Pro is somewhat limited in its 3-D capabilities, but here are a few shots just for fun...
Back to the drawing board! Well, sort of. In a few years the wife and I plan to acquire some family land. On that land is my grandparents' old homestead. And there's an addition to that house in the back that is a wide open 28'6" x 29'6" open room. I wasn't sure of the dimensions when I started this little project so I was just guessing. Now that I have them I realize there's more room than I thought. I want this room to double as a home gym and train room, so I'm increasing the size of this layout to 16x24 to take up approximately half of it. I really like the track plan I have so far so I'm planning to tweak it to fit the new size. This gives me room to increase mainline though so I'm trying to think of the best benchwork design to accommodate that. Something like this is what I have in mind. Can y'all think of another way to design benchwork within a 16x24 area that could maximize mainline even more? I would essentially keep the same track plan but now I have 24 feet to work with in length and enough width to add a peninsula in the middle with a partition for more mainline run.
I like the E shape, Hoss. The only possible shortcoming I see is the 2’ wide aisle on each side of the bottom and the 3’ wide aisles. This is plenty wide for one or two people but kind of tight if you have an operating crew.
I'm assuming at least the top and one outside edge will be up against a wall, preventing access from "behind" the layout on those sides. I'm also assuming the grid is 1 foot by 1 foot. That will make reach into the back corner(s) about 4.24 feet. Unless your day job is an NBA basketball star, that is unlikely to work well for you. You could create a 3' (or less) radius backdrop in the corners, to limit your reach to no more than 3'. If the layout height will be 30" or 36" (table or kitchen counter height, respectively), 36" is the absolute maximum reach (again, unless you're an NBA star), but for constructing and decorating the layout, uncoupling railcars, re-railing derailed railcars, etc., you will want much less reach. You could invest in a "top-side creeper" (used for working on engines in pickups, etc.), but maneuvering one around the narrow aisles will be a pain, and may completely block the aisle. I would consider using a baseline depth of 2' or 2.5' deep for your fixed layout, with bump-outs to 3' only where needed, and away from inside corners. As mentioned earlier, the aisle bottlenecks near the entrance (bottom of illustration) are very narrow. At 2', the passages are impassible by two people unless they are intimate. But reducing the baseline depth of the layout as suggested will help that. I would suggest aisles should not be less than 30" wide, and infrequently that narrow. Just consider two people back-to-back in a 30" doorway, let alone a 24" doorway. Now extend that doorway to a hallway of same width... This benchwork certainly gives you room to place a lot of industrial scenes, as well as some scenic rural runs through the countryside to visually and operationally separate them. But it is a LOT of space to fill.
Alright, here's a draft of the new benchwork. I changed the baseboard width to 30" on the outside edges and the top. The peninsula is 24" on each side of the partition. 12 inch grid. Clearance between benchwork is 42 inches except at the radiuses ends where it drops to about 38-39 inches. Benchwork radius at the bottom end is 30 inches. Inside benchwork radius at the top is 18 inches and at the top outside it's 24 inches just to round the edges. The reach at the top corners is about 36". Everywhere else the reach is either 24" or 30" max. I probably won't get a chance to work on track work until this weekend but it's roughly going to be what it was before except more of everything. @BigJake & @country joe - I think I addressed all your comments. Would love to hear more feedback.
I realized after I posted that last photo that I made it 28 feet instead of 24 feet, so I need to take four feet out but that won't change anything significantly.
The new benchwork looks great, Hoss. There’s enough room for operators and visitors. The curved ends are more difficult to build but I think they are worth the effort.
Very nice!!! The back outside corners of the benchwork need not actually be rounded, just round off the backdrop on top of the benchwork, and that will make construction easier. If the curved front edges are too difficult to build, you can always approximate them with angular, faceted edges, much like you did earlier. Only you can make that decision.
Thanks for the feeback! I started re-drawing the yard and the south end of the yard last night but forgot to take a screen shot of it before I went to bed. The wife and I are doing a little day trip of railfanning to take pictures of features and towns along the way that I want to model. so I'm sure there will be more to come this weekend.
Fun fact...while doing a little research today I learned that what I've been calling the "industry loop" north of the BNSF Temple yard is actually the Central Pointe Rail Park operated by the Temple & Central Texas Railroad (owned by Patriot Rail). I'll have to do some custom paint work when I get to that point, but this gives me a legit reason to run some short T&CTR trains on my layout. I even found their roster.
Based on a pic from their website and satellite imagery from this year, it looks like this old GP38-2 and SW1500 are what they're using today. From looking at the roster above both of these have been through a few railroads before landing at the T&CTR and they're both still wearing paint from their last gig. Looks like they also acquired a pair of SD40-2's back in 2019 but I can't see evidence of those being used right now on Google Earth. Might have to make a site visit!
I found the SD40-2's. One is wearing its old CITX paint and the other looks to be dressed in FTRL colors. So right now it looks like they're running two SD40-2's, a GP38-2, and a SW1500 in a variety of colors. That's some modeling fun right there!
My layout room is 20' X 20'. The layout is an around-the wall 30" wide shelf with a roughly 6' X 12' peninsula. There are two liftouts--not ideal, but no way around it (mine is HO scale). I'm a pretty small person, but I'm still glad that I didn't crowd the walking space anymore than I did. People can bump things; sleeves can snag things while leaning over either looking at something or trying to put a piece of rolling stock on the track. Two feet of walking space isn't really enough. I wanted a little more creative track plan, but decided to go with larger radius curves (31" radius HO scale for mainline and minimum 28") and plenty of walking space, and I'm glad I did. Just some food for thought. My wife and I live in west central TX--about 55 miles NNW of Abilene. My layout is a depiction of this area of the state with a generous amount of artistic license. The area you are modeling is a great area to model. Lots of interesting stuff. Have fun!!!!
The room I'll be building this in is 28x29 and I'll admit I considered doing some sort of around the wall thing leaving the middle open or with a couple of peninsulas...and I may still draw something like that up just for giggles. The good thing is I have plenty of time to plan, design, and start acquiring rolling stock, locomotives, buildings, etc. I did widen my aisles to 42", and while I think that's sufficient for 1-4 people to operate I also recognize it could still get a little crowded. I very seriously considered modeling your neck of the woods. I have another thread on here somewhere about a west Texas BNSF layout. The Sweetwater area was of particular interest to me because there are multiple railroads and seemingly a lot of local service operations potential in that area... I even drafted up a potential layout by highlighting lines on Google Earth... I love west Texas, but ultimately the Temple area is closer to home for me and offers a lot of modeling opportunity. Plus I didn't want to have to scratch build thousands of windmills. ; ) Like you, I'm trying to be fairly prototypical but obviously have to take some artistic license as well.
There's no way one of those worthless modern wind generators is going to be on my layout!!! Currently, I model late steam / early diesel. At some point in time I may consolidate and simplify things and model the late 50's through 1968ish. The abundance of variety during that period was amazing. High and low nose geeps; first and second generation diesels; rolling stock from the 1930's through the 1960's; some with and some without roofwalks. 42" walkways should be sufficient. If some absolute klutz comes over to run trains and creates an earthquake, just "accidentally" fail to invite him to the next operating session. The other thing about the Temple area is the proximity of Ft Hood. You can have some military equipment in transit either to or from the Fort. I've got an entire troop train, complete with troop sleepers, kitchen cars, an officer's car, and quite a few flats carrying military vehicles. Have fun with the daydreaming and designing!!! It's better to figure it out ahead of time than to try redoing something you don't like.
There won't be any windmills on my layout either. I hate those things. They have ruined many square miles of beautiful scenery in Texas. I'm planning to model more of the modern era but as far back as the 90's. That let's me include some of the pre-merger locos from Cotton Belt, SP, ATSF, and BN in my predominantly BNSF layout (with some UP mixed in)...plus some short line stuff like what's pictured above.
I had the opportunity to draw some track in tonight. My main focus was to redraw the yard and all of the happenings at the south end of the yard where there's a lot going on (just like there is at the south end of the prototype yard I'm modeling). I also drew in a quick and dirty schematic of the double main (which drops to single at the end of the peninsula to preserve curve radius). **I placed the tracks 4 inches apart at this location to allow room for a difference in elevation. It'll have more curves, bridges, crossovers, grade crossings, industry switches and all that good stuff eventually, but for tonight I just wanted to get something down on paper to roughly show the route. The double mains are spaced 1.25" apart with an inside radius of 26.75" and an outside radius of 28" in most locations. The only sharper curve on the main is the inside track on the peninsula, which is a 24" radius at the turnaround. There are a handful of larger radius turns as well. All switches are Peco "large" with the exception of the engine service yard (which are Peco "medium"). I even went with large in the yard to make everything flow nice and smooth. Blue - Mainline Lime - Yard Gray - Passenger Station Orange - Museum Tracks Pink - Engine Service Overview North Yard Middle Yard South Yard South Loop & Engine Service
