Alright, I think I finally came up with a layout idea that I am happy with: The Minimum radius is 24" and the turnouts are Walthers #5's and #8's and it will be set in a warehouse switching area in Florida. The deign is heavily inspired by Lance Mindheim's "East Rail" layout. I liked how he was able to achieve a good design with as less track as he could and I tried to recreate that here. the entire right corner is dedicated to scenery and buildings while the left corner is a industrial area. I only used 5 turnouts because it would look better and be alot cheaper and easier to maintain. I tried to spread out the track as much as I could and I think I achieved a nice balance between track and scenery. I have a couple of question I would like to ask, First: are there any errors on my track-plan that I missed? and Second: How hard is it to scratch-build warehouse buildings, I recently scratch-built a loading ramp out of wood and it was pretty easy and I was wondering if Scratch-building with styrene is harder that building with wood.
Justin, I don't see a run-around track. If a train comes in from staging locomotive first it's almost impossible to spot cars as all your switches are facing point. This means all trains will have to shove cars from staging, In the real world this would be undesirable as a carman would have to hang off the first car to look for obstructions such as vehicles in the crossings. A run-around would make it more versitale, 2slim
I wanted to have a runaround but It would take up too much space, I plan on having the engine push all the cars into there spots, It appears that CSX does this at their "East Rail" Switching area in Miami so I would think that it isn't a very unprototypical thing to do.
Here is my latest design, Sorry if it is a little bit unorganized. I simplified the design and added some buildings and named them after real places in Miami. I got all the ideas from Lance Mindheim's site, he has pictures of most of the industries here. The layout is loosely based on the "East Rail" Area of Miami because some buildings I took from other places in Miami. I kept the Right side of the plan to be a scenery-only area. So what do you guy's think?
20 + years ago when I was in NC the CSX pushed the cars from the end of the line to the yard/interchange with the NS. Looking at Google Earth it looks like they still do today. Gary
Lance Mindheim's East Rail layout is very well done and it's understandable that many people want to copy it. But just because that real-life railroad primarily shoves cars out only on that particular line (and Mindheim's model follows suit), doesn't mean that a similar arrangement will always be the most engaging use of the space for a model railroad. You certainly do have room for a runaround. If you choose not to include a runaround, that's fine, but you are leaving out some potential operating interest. Note also that Mindheim's original East Rail layout track plan does include one spur in the opposite direction, so he sets up trains with cars on both ends of the engine to begin on the removable staging track. The real-life railroad probably sets the cars up similarly in a nearby yard or siding enroute. His plan is on-line here: Track Plan That removable staging track on Mindheim's East Rail plan also provides "room to work" while switching. I notice now that you are planning to include that, which will help. Otherwise it's really tight. Best of luck.
I would like to have a runaround but unfortunately my budget doesn't allow for the $30 it would cost to put in a runaround. The amount of operations a runaround would give me just isn't worth to $30 it costs for two turnouts. There is still plenty of operations without a runaround, all of the industries on the layout have multiple car-spots which makes switching fun even without a runaround. I am debating whether to put a urban area on the right side of my layout like the plan shows, or add a more scenic area with just some trees and stuff, I would like to have it be an urban area but I am not very good at scratch-building with styrene, If there is a guide to scratch-building with styrene anywhere it would make me very happy. :tb-biggrin:
Justin You have alot of structures on your plan that could cost more than $30 even if scratch built. Plastic sheets aren't exactly cheap if you don't have a free source. Then there's windows, doors & other details to be added. Why not make some cardboard/paper mockups and spend the money saved on the runaround switches. There's always people selling track unused or even used in good condition. Check out eBay & the Yahoo group selling sites.
Even if I had money to spare on a runaround, I don't have anywhere on my layout to put it, the only option would be to replace an industry on my layout with a runaround track and that would take away from the operational capacity of my layout, and its not something I need since all of my spurs are facing the same direction You are right about building paper mock-ups, I will have to try that! My hobby store sells sheets of styrene in packs for about $6 so I shouldn't have to worry about the price. Thanks for all of your help guys! I hope this will be my last layout design thread I make. If there is still anything you wish to point out about my design please tell me!
Hello Justin, It looks like you’ve put together a pretty realistic plan that would be both straightforward to build and fun to operate. I have to chuckle when I think back about the mild uproar that has arisen about the lack of a runaround track on my East Rail plan. You’d think I’d slighted the Pope! The omission was intentional and done to accurately replicate the way operations actually transpire in that specific area. We all have different ideas about what constitutes operational ‘fun’. However, when we get into how a specific prototype actually arranged its track and how they actually work a specific job we get away from opinions and move towards facts. The plan, as you’ve drawn it, is a very accurate rendition of how a CSX served industrial park in Miami would be laid out. The CSX main runs north/south through this part of town. You have Hialeah Yard in the center with clusters of industrial parks north and south of the yard. The tracks in the various industrial parks were laid out by the civil engineers for operational efficiency, not operational ‘fun’. The track in the parks has been laid out primarily with facing point switches and very few, if any, runarounds. In talking to the crews I am told all industrial job blocking is done in Hialeah yard. The job then proceeds to the industrial park and executes a series of push/pull moves. Boring or not, that is how they do it. We can debate at length whether modeling this procedure is ‘entertaining’ but if we switch the discussion to what is accurate then you are looking at the push/pull situation. I’ve been down there a number of times watching the industrial job (its Y120 if interested) work and often they’ll have a very long handle of ten or more cars doing a shove into a warehouse. Running parallel and on the east side of the main, outside of all of the industrial parks, is a long siding. Main years ago the crews dubbed this siding ‘East Rail’ hence the name of my layout. If you go down there and ask what is going on at ‘East Rail’ they’ll all know exactly what you are referring to. If a runaround were to be performed, East Rail is where it would occur. If you felt you needed a runaround to add interest my suggestion would be to put it on the staging cassette (that would by your ‘East Rail’), not on the layout itself. I considered this on my East Rail layout but abandoned the idea as being un-necessary since the train just arrives at the entrance of the industrial park correctly blocked. In the real world if a crew arrived at an industrial park with the train incorrectly blocked, said crew would be more than a little ticked to put it mildly. Jogging back and forth on the East Rail siding to sort things out would not, in their view, be ‘operationally entertaining’ J Finally, I encourage you to try your hand at scratch building in styrene. The structures in the Miami parks are relatively simple boxes that would be a good training ground for you. You can pick up a 4’x8’ sheet of .060” styrene for less than $30. For solvent I use lacquer thinner and a small paint brush. Scribe and snap the styrene to shape, cut out the doors and windows, and you are ready to go. Have fun! Lance Mindheim www.lancemindheim.com
Justin Please do not give in and try and squeeze a run-round in. One of the appeals of Lance Mindheim's plans are that you have to think a bit and they look good because you do not suddenly get turnouts half-way along a spur. Here in the UK we are nearly always working with very small spaces and a run-round literally eats up valuable switching space. Sorry if I have spoken out of turn as some people seem to think a run-round is essential. Your plan is very good and as Lance himself says try and scratchbuild, for large buildings foamcore is a useful starting point and has been covered on various boards. Looking forward to following your progress Best Ken
Thanks for the Advice Ken. If you want to follow my layout progress I will be posting Updates at: The Gauge: http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3011 And My Blog: http://justinmiller171.blogspot.com/ And a special thanks to Lance Mindheim for giving me the inspiration for this project!
Justin, I checked the plan on your blog. I see no obvious flaws in your design (it looks pretty darn nice actually) and encourage you to move from the planning phase to the building phase. After a certain point you gain very little by thrashing every possible plan. As a student, dollars are hard to come by. This layout doesn't need to last for a particularly long period of time. Consider purchasing two sheets of 2" thick extruded foam for the bench work. (Home Depot or Lowes) You can build everything right on that as is. Cut the foam to match your planned footprint and splice the shapes together underneath and rest them on cabinets. You might want to finish the edge by hot gluing some wood or styrene sheet to it. For track Atlas code 83 will serve you well. You can throw the turnout points manually just by flipping them with your finger. An old MRC power pack will work for power. You are at an age where it is to your benefit to build, learn from your mistakes and not worry about perfection, run trains and have fun. Lance
Justin: Temporary Buildings Foamboard and cardboard mock-ups of buildings make good temporary buildings until finances and modeling skills allow you to construct something more permanent. These buildings are in my steel mill area: :tb-wink:The potential drawback to decent looking temporary buildings: sometimes "temporary" gets defined in terms of years. LOL Track Planning for visual access Regardless of whether you are using an uncoupling pick or using a magnet for immediate or delayed uncoupling, coupling and uncoupling is easier if you can see the couplers you are working on from the side rather than looking downward from over the couplers. You may want to consider adjusting some track locations a little or else modifying building heights, sizes, shapes, and locations a little bit to ensure being able to see the part of each industrial siding track where cars will be coupled and uncoupled. (Buildings 2, 6, and 7 in the most recent plan) Operations are usually more enjoyable (less problematic) when you can see the points of turnouts, too, even if you have all turnouts electrically or mechanically operated from the fascia board and LEDs showing when points are closed or open. Building 11 may block an easy view of the 2nd turnout, and, if Buildings 4 and 6 are too high or are closer to the turnouts, they may interfere with seeing the points of the 1st and 3rd turnouts. Experiment with different layout heights and building heights/positions until you get what you want. (A lower layout height will permit you to accurately model taller buildings without hiding turnouts or couplers as much.) If you are using manual ground throws mounted next to each turnout, you may want to adjust building heights and positions so your hand can manipulate every ground throw without bumping structures or any rolling stock parked on nearby sidings, or going through extreme hand and wrist contortions. Operations Lance/Justin, 1. Do either of you have any information about whether car movements were only from Hialeah to the various industries and back to Hialeah, or did they also sometimes move from one industry to another (e.g., would a boxcar loaded or unloaded at Gulf Atlantic Warehouse be moved to Truillo Foods? 2. Were there any interchange tracks with other RRs in the 35th Ave to 37th Ave area modeled? Such a track would provide an opportunity for more varied car types to appear on the layout. 3. If you want to, it would be possible to operate this track plan as a variation on the Inglenook Switching Puzzle. 4. I have lengthened some of the jobs during operating sessions on my layout by setting up holding tracks for when there are too many cars to be spotted at one industry. Operators must always spot cars from the holding track into the industry before spotting a car from their train in that industry. If you designate the part of the leads to Seaboard and to Gulf Atlantic next to Industry 7 as holding tracks for overflow from the middle industries, you could lengthen the operating session by having to spot cars left on the holding tracks in the previous session into their intended industries before you could spot any cars from Hialeah in those industries. Staging Options If it is not necessary to run the track between 37th Avenue and Businesses 14, 15, and 5, for realistic representation of the track configuration near these East Rail businesses, then you might consider eliminating Business 3, moving Business 16 toward Industry 12 and 37th Avenue leftward to the left edge of the upper right shelf so you could model Buildings 14, 15, and 5 as false fronts and have a staging track (or 2) hidden behind them. The track from Hialeah staging would cross 55th Street as it appears from behind Building 14. Judicious planning of building heights and staging track positioning (and layout height) would allow you to leave open access above the staging track(s) for easy maintenance and swapping different cars on and off the layout between sessions, but would prevent you from seeing the staging area when you were comfortably standing/operating in front of the layout unless you deliberately leaned over to look into it.
Justin, The photo Dave H. just posted is worth a hard look as I think that would be a good next step for you. It's a way to get a quick sense of the size and shape of things and allows you and others to see what you are trying to accomplish. Just copy what Dave did. There really is not any business to business switching in answer to Dave's question. That being said there are a lot of 'hidden' industries which go back to one of Dave's earlier posts. The first issue is one of car storage. For reasons nobody can figure out, as the older syle reefers are unloaded they don't pull them back to the yard immediately. Instead they shove them off to any vacant track that is out of the way until they have a cut of three or four and then haul them all back at once. I've also seen boxcars spotted, as if being stored, with large signs on them saying they are being fumigated. You also have 'offspots'. This happens when more incoming cars come in for an industry than can be sqeezed inside the gate. Extra cars are parked outside until room frees up for them (I saw this on my last trip at Sentry Industries which takes chlorine). As you can see, you start adding a few moves in like this and things get busy in a hurry with very little track. I'm sure CSX interchanges with FEC somewhere near but I can't say exactly where the handoff occurs or if they just shuttle back and forth. Miami is much different than most other cities in terms of rail action. It's basically like going to the 1940's. There is the constant sound of horns and switchers throttling up and down as they work the various industries. Anybody in a funk about the loss of bygone era's owes themselves a trip down there. Drop into the C.O.D. , restaurant, grab your Cuban coffee and enjoy the show! Lance www.lancemindheim.com Lance
I took your advice and added a storage track near the Archive America Warehouse Here is my latest Track-plan:
Looks good. I think you're pretty much done at this point. It's just a labeling change but I'd change the name of Cuba Tropical International in the corner to Guixen's Food Group. Guixen's is actually located in that spot and still takes rail shipments (rice I believe). Switcing the Seaboard Warehouse is pretty involved for the prototype, often taking over an hour so you want to label your doors/car spots for that particular industry. Sentry is very active and often receives more chlorine tanks than they can get inside so you'll have to spot the extra's outside and re-spot them as space clears up. Lance www.lancemindheim.com
Tropical International is a auto parts distributor in east-rail, it appears that they were rail-served until recently, Here is a picture I took using Google street-view: Guixen's food is the gray building on the lower right of the photo below. The Tropical International building in this photo is not rail-served, the rail-served portion is to the left across the street and it is called Parts Depot.
That is an awesome trackplan. Not having a run-around makes things so simple and prototypical. Any news on this project? I was wondering about the turnout that links the track leading to Archive America and the middle storage track. Looks a bit like a S-curve. I think you could make your design a lot smother using a high # right-handed turnout instead of a left-handed turnout.
