Yes, I have experience with that, since I always use foam as a base for scenery and tracks. And it gives troubles with modules that have to connect to eachother: the tracks are just not very well attached and will come loose or will shift a little bit. Getting the tracks aligned at meetings is therefore quite difficult... You should at least attach the ends of the tracks to a piece of wood or something, for stability.
A piece of lumber in the one-by family it would be equal to ten feet thick. Built properly an EL structure completely of plastic will be self supporting. If you must build your structure around a solid piece of something use eighth inch plexiglass. It will form a solid backbone that you can see through. If you want something ultra light but a sturdy as wood try a piece of Gatorboard, also known as signboard.
Thanks for the tip, Thieu. That was one of the things I was thinking of as an option. I'll run some experiments and see what can be done. Thanks CNW, that's a good tip. Gatorboard might just do the trick!
Hey Randall, can you tell me if two SL switches connected in crossover will make for the same distance between parallel tracks as a pair of Atlas #4 standard switches? XTrkCad doesn't have the small Peco switches so I'm having to build it with the custom turnout tool and I'm not able to tell if the turnout will fit in the same place. If so, one of these plus a 25 degree crossing would make it so I didn't have to build a custom crossing, plus would allow for a neat prototypical crossover in between buildings that I'd love to recreate. Thanks (or thanks to anyone else who might know).
I just went through that design exercise about six months ago for a switching layout I was designing for a friend. I pretty much proved that you could get as tight as 1 1/4" track centers (17') and make it work, but it would involve custom cutting and soldering of both the switch and the crossing. Same with crossovers; doable, but not without some butchering. The switch into the diamond crossing is way worse than the crossover switch to pull off. In general, on the small switching layouts you need to move centers closer together than the 'stock' track will allow. I do custom track component fitting as a service - not like handlaid code 40 but I can fit, file, and solder C80 with the best of 'em. I have all my track centers at 1 1/8 with Atlas (15') and remember the prototype is often at 12'6" The way I do layouts like yours is that I have .JPG's of the actual components printed out at full size that I can print, cut out of paper, and actually cut and trim with scissors to make sure it works. On a layout this small never mind a scale drawing or struggling with the computer, you can make it full size, just tape up some paper. PM me and send me an email and I'll send you .JPG's of the Peco components that I've made up. Nothing brings you back into reality on a design like this like doing a plan full size on paper. I have had some fun with people looking at my track plans and saying it won't work when I've already built them. But yeah, I push the envelope pretty hard on component fitting. And it won't work if you just look at the computer.
As best as I can tell from my photo, the Peco shorty turnout with the 9-inch radius diverging curve has a distance that is very close to 11/16 of an inch from the centerline of the straight leg to the centerline of the end of its diverging leg (see picture to clarify what I measured). I put the silver nail as close as I could to the centerline of the end of the diverging leg to try to make it easier to see this distance in the photo. Please note the 11/16 inch figure is not exact. If you are thinking of constructing a crossover between two straight tracks using a pair of these Peco shorty turnouts, with the two turnouts butted up against each other, I *think* that means you would have a distance very close to (22/16) 1 and 3/8 inches between the centerlines of the two parallel straight tracks.
Thanks Randall. I'm a lot like you. I've got tons of experience making do with whatever I can get my hands on and I figure that these switches will work out fine for what I need. And as for printing out in full size, me too. Much better way to try stuff out in real life than trust a CAD program (even though they're very precise if used correctly). I like to see stuff in front of me and fit it up and then decide how to cut/scratch/chop/bend to make it all come together. Excellent Carl, and thanks a lot for the photo! I was making rough measurements from a product photo and some measurements I'd found online in a PDF file from a club in Australia. Your measurement works out to smaller than what I was able to eyeball from the product photos that I was measuring with pixels in my image software. Here's what I was measuring it for: And with N-Traks: The big parallel warehouse is based on a prototype at Bush Terminal (here's a diagram with the tracks) and I really like how the two tracks with the crossover and little back-in siding are set up.
Looking at your parrellell warehouse, looks cool, but you have a boxcar sticking out into what looks like a major road. I'm thinking protoypically that's a no-no, too much concern over someone dringin into the knuckle and damaging their car, or the bigger nuisance, having to replace the knuckle. To the farthest point west of the layout, there's a track in the street for parking cars on, that originally was the carfloat holding yard. If we're going to go with the yard, that track is now redundant, and to me, serves no real purpose. there's not really enough room between there and the carflaot main to unload trucks street style. Ad the part of me that's still not fond of the yard is kinda wondering to what purpose it will serve, as I see it very quickly becoming a bog-down on the whole oepration, as between it and the float the layout capacity for cars will be twice what the industries can process. Maybe not though, an operator person would have a better feel. EDIT: Numbers for brainstorming: Barge is bringing over 8 (2 track) to 12 cars (three track) at a time. Layout can spot up to 14 cars, at a go. Two trips to meet entire needs. Yard capacity looks to be 16 cars. Filling the yard with the next batch of cars os only going to bog the switcher down, as he cannot empty the float. None of the industries to mee look like something that will do more than one turnover of cars a day, so each days session is handling a maximum of 28 cars, the days inbound plus what's leaving. Yeah, need a yard for that. Except, not everything will neccesarily move at the same time, and if a float is already making two trips for prpbably a maximum handling of 20 cars a day... Alright, yeah, you win. There's got to be a place to hold the barge while loading and unloading, That yard's gotta be there. My advice, clean it up, print the plan, BUOLD IT amd dn't let us come up with any more ideas, or you'll be paralyzed into forver designing tis layout. It's good, the way it is.
That's just for planning purposes until I can get the measurements right. I'll make sure that no cars find their way into the streets. Basically, there's only four structures that have been finalized on the layout: The double warehouse, the fuel/oil facility, the engine house and the industry next to the fuel/oil facility. The rest I'm still working out. Yes, the original plan for that double-siding was the mini-yard, and I was excited at the opportunity to have trains under the side of a building (with exposed cement pillars and all, just like an article in an old MR that I saw forever ago). But now looking at it, and since I've got the "over-the-track" building on the right, I should probably nix the inner track and expand the building, adding a dock down the left side. Excellent, you beat me to my argument! :tb-tongue: But, that said, here's more to support my/your observations. This layout is based on the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn. And while I'll be modeling a few "industries", the main purpose of this railroad and facility was to serve as a storage and transfer terminal, with trucks taking the freight and moving it the last mile. This would mean that a constant stream of car floats would be picking and dropping cars to be transferred to and from trucks moving out on the busy streets of Brooklyn. Further research on this will help me to decide which other industries will be included, but at least that transfer warehouse, and maybe another single one, will be included, just to give the overall feel of the terminal. Take a look at this photo, and this map, and this other one here. See how huge the yard is? And look how dense the buildings/warehouses are there. That's what I'm trying to capture, and I think the yard helps tie it all together. BUT (a big but... no comments from the peanut gallery, btw) that doesn't mean the layout wouldn't work without the yard, which is why I'd like to give it a shot with a detachable yard section. Besides, challenges are fun! That's the wonderful thing about fauxtotyping... you can come up with a way that it works based on fact AND fiction.
Just a quick note. According to the specifications of the Bush Terminal yard, it held 1,000 cars! And all of this served by 2 car float bridges and a handful of little locomotives. Amazing!
Yeah, well Bronxers are a little prone to the sarcastic boast. Case in point: the Bronx Cheer. :tb-tongue: But it would be good to write out the specific jobs that need to be done on location, and then the lists of traffic coming in & out. When someone first told me "Take your yard capacity and divide it in half or 2/3rds, and that's what you can realistically count on", I didn't get it. Now I'd lean towards the 1/2: the other 1/2 is the space around & through the cars that allows the cars to move. It's kinda like in Driver's Ed, when they say the spaces between the cars are moving at the same speed as the cars themselves. Or Lao Zi: Walls & roof make a room, but it is the doors & space inside that make it useful. Therefore Possession comes from what is there, Usefulness from what is not there. Anyway: good idea to mock up number, type & destination of cars coming in & out, and then balance number of fairies (trains are magic!) and number of cars on layout. Get the ops & track right, and the buildings can always find a way to fit
If anything still makes me twitchy about your design, it's the switch at the far 'east' end of the yard. The sharp curve across the street puts a wicked "S" curve from the curve into the diverging route of the turnout that is going to throw freight trucks in opposite directions and be the 'push' direction of every car back into your yard. Can you redesign that end so that the switch is flopped - it will be an angle across the street and then into that switch inside the building - and still work? It would sure flow a lot smoother on car behavior. I'm really getting excited about that plan. Your track centers will be governed by how tight you can get that switch+crossing deal. The centers determine the crossing angle. That's the toughest part on the entire layout to fit and design.
Bronx?! Nahh man, we're tawkin' Brooklyn baby! That would mean that my current layout is Extremely Useful! ;-) My oldest son is VERY interested in running trains with orders. So that means we need to sit down and come up with a master plan. We're already researching the industries served by Bush back in the 60s to early 70s and should have something soon. Then we'll come up with their "needs" and figure out how we can serve them. Funny you should mention that. I was just tweaking the layout design again and came up with this: I've fixed the s-curve (was just looking for stuff like that, thanks for pointing it out!) and realigned the fuel/oil facility siding (closer together, looks better I think). I also took out the spare track on the left and adjusted the building accordingly (I think it works much better now), which also let me make a broader curve. Then I adjusted the building next to it to have a row of truck loading docs (and put some trucks and trailers in there to show how it works). I moved the engine house up a bit, partly to be more like the prototype (the reason it's got an angled side is that it was next to an angled track) and partly to allow for another connection to more off-layout trackage (that lonely interchange on the left didn't seem to cut it). This also gave me more room for railroad vehicles, equipment, trash, etc. I put a billboard on top of the left building (there'll probably be more of them, and other signs visible from the EL tracks). I also adjusted the tracks between the double warehouse. Yes, I know that the green boxcar is basically stranded (unless I can get my Plymouth switcher to work on this setup), but that's ok. I'm building that mostly for the way it looks. Plus, in typical fauxtotypical fashion, I'll just say that they made good use of a winching system to pull the car forward for loading/unloading, then winched it back to position for pickup. Thanks again guys. This is looking awesome! :thumbs_up:
I must say i like it, just one thing I noticed with your switchback at the warehouse (red circle): How do you get the switcher and the box car in and out? The switchback looks too short to hold both and you cannot extend it without the barge getting in your way. Not that I have a solution, just pointing out a potential problem. Andreas
Not a problem, glad everyone here at TB has been so great about finding ways to improve the layout. I think it's going to be terrific.
N scale supply has good detailed images of the SL switches so you can copy them, print them out, and do track planning with them: http://www.nscalesupply.com/PEC/PEC-.html It took some digging, but I found images like that for most of the Peco line so that they could be resized to actual and printed out for track planning purposes.
Thanks Randall! Those were exactly the ones that I found and was attempting to measure with my graphics program (got it pretty close, too).
Back to a previous question I had, here's a step-by-step process on how the whole car float loading/unloading thing works.
