A while back I had a thread asking for power feed and blocking advice on the small N scale KISS dining room table layout I was about to begin. http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=91807 I want to thank all for their help and comments there. Since then, after a lot of setbacks, I've gotten my foam slab, and started tentatively laying out track. With a bit of trial and error SWMBO and I determined that I could go with a bit longer footprint than I'd originally planned. This lead to a revision of the plan...see below. For a little background, this little layout, when in it's operational position will be viewed and operated from the front (lower in the pic) and right sides, with me in a wheeled chair (mobility issues). The other two sides will be accessible for derailment clean up, but it will be a PITA. For construction and maintenance, the whole layout will be rotated on the table to get to the back side and left end. My theme is a small Midwest farm town serviced by a local switcher. The local switcher will go off to drop off and pick up cars up/down the line (the fiddle track) then position them as needed around the small farm town. The layout's small size, my near non-existent budget, and a single not-so-swift operator (me) dictate small trains. My operational plan is for no more than two trains at a time...with one probably being a through train, and the other the local switcher. <deep breath> So...the question after all that long winded gobbldy-goop is...what have I missed? BTW...the no-mans land in the middle of the layout is intended for the future non railroad related town homes and buildings. Those areas will not be readily accessible from my chair, so I intentionally left that area track free. I've added a second pic showing a possible use of that no-mans land.
Hey, Looks fairly good. Are you liking it? There are quite a few sources of small track plans. For example: http://www.thortrains.net/npoorx.html I really enjoy browsing this page: http://www.naisp.net/mfischer/m_train2.htm Of course it seems they can be a bit of a challenge to convert to unitrack.
Given my space, budget, accessibility/mobility and skill limitations, so far I'm liking it better than any of the umpteen dozen small plans I've come up with over the last 10 months of seeing if Xtrkcad has a melt-down point. It's taken more mental conditioning to get past the general fear of SOB syndrome (Small Oval Boredom) than it has to get past the limitations of this particular plan. Yes, I'd love to have a small staging yard and another industry siding somewhere, but I'm not seeing possibilities for either, given my limitations. I'd not seen the first link before...I'll be scouring it for inspiration tomorrow. So far, attempts to convert other track system plans to Unitrack have been more than a challenge...... :tb-wacky:
Not much, from what I can see. I'm assuming you will run counter-clockwise most or all of the time, and will back into the fiddle yard at the end of each run. Do you plan to switch one industry for each loop around the layout? That should yield a satisfying run for each train. And if you set up your fiddle yard to accept 3-foot long cassettes, you could store several cassettes under the front edge of the layout to give yourself 2 or 3 different trains to run in an operating session. Are you comfortable with the 2 foot reach to the turnouts left of the Coal Drop siding? Electric switch machines? FWIW: If the w/c access on the right side offers limited turning (if you have to reach into the layout from the side of the chair), would there be any advantage to moving the turnout to the other end of the siding--closer to where the road crosses the main and the siding just above the engine facilities--and running the Coal Drop siding straight back (up) and parallel to the right side of the layout? You wouldn't have to wheel (or reach) quite so deep along the right side of the layout. Regardless of how you position the coal drop siding, the trees along the right side of the layout may get caught by shirt sleeves or elbows as you reach to the oil and feed mill sidings. Having the ground in that area quickly drop 1 to 1.5 inches below the rail heads along that side of the layout would let you still have trees but their tops would not be as likely to get caught. Some people prefer to run roads at sharper angles to the longer sides of a layout...maybe angled from the engine facility toward the feed mill instead of parallel with the front edge of the layout. Others don't mind it. Your layout, your choice. I'm looking forward to seeing this town develop...especially the view through the overpass into the town. That ought to yield some great Photo Ops.
Layout hight? I'm about ready to start build bench work and was wondering what is the best or average hight/wide for a HO layout The layout will be put in a room that is about 30 Ft by 10 Ft
The track plan looks good. The only flaw I notice is in the town layout. From personal experience, the area you have allotted for houses will only have space for maybe 4. What I did on my door was to eliminate the school and bus the little bugg....er...children to the next town. I freed up space for 3 more houses that way. I also used 2 small 2-story apartment buildings from Kato to boost the population. Many of the small farm towns surrounding Montreal have this type of building. SOB shouldn't be a problem. It looks like you'll have lots of switching work to keep you busy. Dave.
My layout is 3 feet from the floor and 3 feet deep. I find the reach to the back somewhat of a stretch. I am 5'8".
I've pretty much resigned myself to having to back a train into the layout for any clockwise operation. My plan was to operate much the same as the old Wabash/N&W did in my home town...through trains very very seldom did any drop-off or pick-up. That work was all handled by a local switcher. The local switcher would make a trips to one of the bigger cities in either direction (in my case to be represented by the fiddle track), to drop off empties and pick up loaded cars for spotting. I've gone back and forth with the idea of cassettes. Yeah, they would be great for bringing whole trains to the layout...and for turning whole trains. On the other hand, I seriously doubt my ability to maneuver the cassettes without derailing the contents. One of the purposes of the one angled locomotive area track is the possibility of using that track as the receptor for cassettes made from light weight steel studs. The angle would allow a cassette to be in place without too seriously impinging on traffic flow in the room. The Kato turnouts have built in switch machines...those two turnouts will be the first electrified. That's also the one place I've planned for an uncoupling magnet. If I can get the magnetic uncoupling working reliably, with the electrification of those turnouts, trips around that end of the layout would be minimized. Actually, I started out with that approach, but abandoned it for two reasons. First the only way I could come up with to make it work kind of blew up the idea of my fiddle and locomotive tracks being somewhere over the horizon...I'd have to be switching directly off of them. Second, to make it work, I had to reduce the bridge scene to a single thru-truss span, which I didn't like the looks of, and I lost the freight siding to. Also, w/c access on the right end is actually going to be better than from the front of the layout. I agree...those trees were not well thought out. Basically I just put them there to take up space...and to provide a partial natural plummet guard. I was planning on the kind of drop off you mentioned on the coal drop half of the curve on that end...but the front half was planned to be level. I still need to come up with something to stop plummets there where the curve apex is close to the edge. <shrug> The pre-stretched version of this plan...the one from the earlier post I mentioned...had all the roads parallel or at right angles to the edges. The two angled roads were a bit of an attempt to break that up a little. Really at this point, other than the railroad serviced businesses, the interior of the layout is not a done deal...it's more a matter of insuring at least one possibility. That will depend a LOT on my yet untested skill in pulling this off. Also it will depend on this old dog learning another new trick...taking a picture that is not out of focus. So far, in about 45 years of practice, that's never happened....LOL
I've been kind of torn on the housing situation...yeah, I'd like more houses...but I don't see that many kits that would fit in a small Midwest town in the 50s, that are remotely in my skill level. It's funny that you mention the school location...one alternative I've thought of is a old small town mini-mansion, with maybe a barn/carriage-house nestled at the back of that triangle of real estate. A lot will be determined by what I find when I get around to working on the interior of the layout...and how my skills evolve (or with my arthritis, devolve).
It's going to depend on your situation....there is no one size that fits all. Your height, reach, and most likely operation and working position. will dictate what works for you. For me being limited to mostly working from the seated position, I had to go with a lower height...about 35-36"...and keeping my track within 15-18" of the table edge. I think the best answer would be to experiment a bit...maybe put/stack boxes of various heights on a table and do some test reaches to see what height works for you.
I'd say desk height (typically around 28-30") for me would be a bit on the low side, especially if the layout were semi-permanently mounted...working on wiring and such on the underside would be a PITA. 5ft for the upper level, unless you are very tall, is going to make reaching anything beyond the front edge difficult to impossible. If you go with that height, be prepared to spend a lot of time on a step ladder or some such. To me, it's more than just coincidence that kitchen cabinetry has pretty much been standardized at around 36" height for the main working surface, and the lowest shelf of the wall cabinets above at about 54"...they are good compromises for most people. I've always used those figures as reference points....not only for model railroading, but for any kind of "working" cabinetry, work benches, etc. I'm not saying that those are the heights to use...just that they are good starting points....and getting too far from those points gets more and more questionable. But in the end, it is your choice, and you are ultimately the only one who's opinion counts.
