Father: One thought here. Take the M. Place the Kisi Diamond, maye slightly turned smack in the center of the middle pennisula. And Boom, track going in each diurection. To the wall, run the train into a 90* turn, into a helix, and up a narow shelf to a top section. For Continouous running, there can be some creative ways to hide the trains coming back throug Kiski junction, the least of which is by running them through on another line's tracks. Or you could cheat and drop it 6 inches under the layout, make the turn, and climb bakc up once past Kiski. The other option, is to make the two furthest points contiuous, and make switching moves in the helix and center portions of the layout. The Helix can be augmented by starting the grade beind Kiski, so tyrains on the "lower level" can actually tunnel under tghe Helix, which can be masked off by uildings as well as mountains. EDIT: No Helix. Missed that part the first time. We can still get track going in 3 directions. I;'m not sure without a step grade you could get high enough up and over the main layout. With a gated access and an 8" shelf, one could do a small thing on teh back wall. All it would be is building flats, a branchline track, a runaround, and a bunch of sidings almost right up on the wall and the walls of the indusrty, but doable if you like switching. Useless trivia: You mentoin the PRR and SD7s: Are those units 8588 and 8589 by chance? If so, those two were the only SD7s owned by PRR, and in protpye worked a 6% grade in Madison Indiana. Otherwise, PRR went with the SD9s, presumably to get more power than the SD7s (Which put out the same HP as a GP7). But for Madison, the line didn't need powe so much as it did weight, traction, and an extra two pairs of brakes per engine for stopping power.
So, this isn't at all what I had first inisioned but it;s what came out. I made this in Paint, roughly scaled the gridwork to 1ft boxes based on your posted plan ( I assumed squarees were 4ftx4ft and rectangles were 2x4). It also doesn't take the rest of the room into scale, nor is the track. When I get my laptop back, I can do it better in RTS. Also, since you know the area better, I;ll let you fill in actual locales and indutries and sidings, this is just meant as a template, or a basic framework. You might need to pull the layout down room a foot or two to make room for the possile extra arms off, and I canned the sub wall where Kiski is. once you get away from the diamond, the walls may continue as you prefer. but to accuratelly caputre the diamond, I feel Kiski works better on a 4x8 table and not divided by the Great Wall. Oh, and one of those arms (the one to Pittsburgh?) would be a good place for a styaging stub yard. If you want one. And those aren't duckunders, I piucture dutrch door type things, or maybe lifting bridges.
Ponder this 'dog-bone'.. Ample aisles (3-5 feet), effectively 3.5 miles of mainline.. continuous loop that could easily have two, large trains running (any direction with the two passing tracks), but doesn't feel like a loop .. 'bone' ends obscured by hills/scenery .. massive yard and several siding/spur/industrial areas .. no duck-unders or helixi .. appearance of double mainline.. enough for subtle grades/relief.. no reversing-loops (unless you want a x-over on the pseudo-doulble main).. gobs of operation possibilities.. As for the work-area.. you'll have lots of area during construction, and then (as I did), you can have a large bench on rollers, that can reside under the benchwork.. That area was just too valuable to waste. Almost forgot.. 30" min radius too..
Thank you, Morgan and Brett! You both have given me quite a lot to think about. (I've been busy the last few weeks, obviously, with Advent and Christmas, and haven't been in to view these last few posts until now). Although I am trying to avoid duckunders, the way you have configured the junction could work well, Morgan. Both of the upper spurs would simply be heading to Pittsburgh (storage). The upper left could be a duckunder (no harm, no foul, since no one would actually need to follow their train through there), and the upper right could be a lift-out bridge (one actually crosses the Allegheny River there in relation to the junction). I am also liking the yard as the central feature in your design, Brett. I simply run a southern branch to the right (junction to Blairsville) and northern branch to the left of the yard (junction to Oil City), ignore the actual junction and storage to Pittsburgh. I take it back...I think both of you have given me too much to think about! Thanks for providing a lot of "grist for my mill"! My interest was starting to fade a bit, but that seems to have gone away now! Either of these (or some combination of the two) could work, and work well. Thank you, both! :thumbs_up:
Slight Problem. So I roughed the Kiski in RTS, and using the E shape bench plan, I can only give 30" to the left and right side of it. That's not intolerable, but it will be an impedence, and it could prove troublesome. How much of the Laundry can be blocked? Is that entire space Washer/Dryer? If I push the entire trackplan to the right wall, then it sticksa out in front of the laundry area by three feet,but gives you ample room to get to the bathroom.
I don't claim yard design as one of my talents, and much of the industry I've put in are based on satilite views which leave few clues to proper siding placements, but I have everything but the steel mill and the double track. Sadly, I'm not sure that's possible in your original configuration, as the min radius is 22" on the main. there's an 18 in the Ford City plant, and while your diesle choices will take a 22, an 18 is out for those SD7s. EDIT: Darn Photobucket won't post large enough, I'll get you a downloadable link. In the meantime: Top Left: coming out of Kiski, is the oil refinery (massive compression of distance). A tail track to push two cars into offload, then a track to push two cars to pick up the refined schtuff. I don't know what else a refinery needs. Next is a coal mine, but it can also serve as staging. Top Right Curves to under the layout staging, but the more I think about it, the more I think you'd be better served without it. COuld also go over the top but that's a steepergrade. Bottom Left is Kiski Yard. I left that is a basic placeholder for anyone who better knows yard design. One possible option is to take the line behind the yard on the other side underground and give more width to the yard. Next we come to the town of Leechburg. I didn't put industry here cause I didn't know what to put, but have at it. Out of Leechburg is North Vandergrift. Then Vandergrift, and the Wean-Mead plant. It Curves around into North Apollo. One possiblity is to bleed the edge of North Apollo and North Vandergrift togeether, so you only have to model one town, but to do that means removing the wall there. You'll notice I did a lot of curving, I thought that would better capture the winding trackage than would a buch of straightaways, and provide more interesting scenery. Out of North Apollo, the track needs to start a downgrade. If you keep the undertrack staging, it needs to drop 15-18 inches to clear Kiski and Staging. If not, then it only needs to drop 8. Then it slips Under Kiski Junction and picks up the other end of the diamond Bottom Right: Up first is Schenley, then Ford City. I have no diea which part of Schenely the Distiellery is/was, so I guessed. The PPG Works is based on a postcard painting I found on Google, showing at least one track o each side of the building. Where it went from there, I have no idea. From Ford City, the tracks begin the plunge to slip under Kiski and form the contious loop, coming out near North Apollo.
It has been quite a while since I posted anything here. The past five months have been busy for me and mine (starting with the death of my mother in February). But I have a little more time now to drift back into some of the things I enjoy. However, from time to time, I have been drawn to the trackplan / benchwork layout suggested by Brett Henderson in post #63 of this thread. It has forced me to re-think some of my "druthers," including benchwork construction technique. If a staging yard were placed on the other side of the double main above the storage yard, it could act as two yards. Let's call the western end "Oil City" and the eastern end "Blairsville." A train could leave Oil City, follow the track around the left penisula, then enter the main yard "Kiski." Or, if a through train, it could continue on the main past Kiski, around the right hand penisula, and enter Blairsville. I could operate point to point and have continuous running. This track plan is not "set in stone" yet, but I would like some initial reactions to this scenario. Thanks!
Yep, using the same staging yard to represent both ends of a line is always chill. If the line has directional traffic, it can help you circulate. For instance, suppose you have a mine on the Blairsville side and a power plant on the Pittsburgh side. That makes for a pretty regular loads-in empties-out coal haul. With a combined staging yard you can park two identical trains - one loaded, one empty. Loco picks up "loaded" train from Blairsville, runs to PGH, then returns with "empty" train in the other direction. I also think Brett's general idea of off-angle aisles and using the wall at the back of the room (where the "BLM" won't tread as often anyway) is the way to go. I might play around with it some tonight when I get home.
Indeed, this gives me the longest possible space for the yard. Since I had hoped to do construction in sections, and since yard switching is something I truly enjoy, I could begin with the main yard and the adjacent benchwork on the right side (an "L" layout), then add the two "blobs" as time and cash permit. Plenty to keep me busy (and interested) until all the other construction is complete. And at Christmas time, I could just put all four heavy-weight passenger trains on and let ' 'em rip for our holiday visitors! Not something I was necessarily planning on, but it looks as if the curves would lend themselves nicely to that as well.
This is completely prototypical. Just say that the Main Line is washed out/covered in an avalanche/currently on fire due to overturned tanker truck. In that situation the Kiskiminetas line would be the fastest alternate between Bolivar and Pittsburgh, with passenger trains serving Pittsburgh Union via the crosstown connection that parallels Washington Boulevard.
Here's my take on it. If you flip the aisle arrangement around in Brett's plan, you get a big wedge of table in the center of the room which is large enough to model Kiski. Junction. This also puts the yard as the focal point of the layout, the first thing you notice when you walk in the room. A decent chunk of the layout has under-table staging, which connects both Bolivar-Oil City and Bolivar-Pittsburgh. The real-life Blairsville has a burrowing junction where through trains can bypass both the depot and the wye with the line to Indiana. To me this seems too cool not to model, so I included it on the plan. It also helps with the downgrade to the undertable staging. The ridges serve as view blocks, and there's a wall to cut the Pittsburgh dogbone loop into two separate scenes. If you want the Kittanning folks to feel *really* isolated, you could have a backdrop that extends from the ceiling to the top of the ridgeline between Kittaning and the Kiskiminetas River. This is a whopper of a layout, and getting it built and sceniced is not a one month proposition. Building a "minimum operable segment" that includes part of the complete layout with a temporary turnback loop will let you run trains sooner. The version here concentrates on the yard, since that's what you seem most interested in modeling and I'm a strong proponent of eating dessert first.
I'm wondering about making thay wye more useable. Not sure of the height, but is there enough room to pull that other wye leg up closer to the edge of the layout, and allow a folding tableleaf style section to flip across the aisleway? And is that something that would even be nice to have? It would only allow the turning of a loco, but depending on what's moving that might not be bad. Looking at Blairsville. Is that a true turnback loop that comes under Market Street and back in front of the station, and does that track then plug abck into where it came from vis what looks like a dog-leg crossover? Makes for a good looping of a single train, but that switch would either have to be unsprung or on a very light snap-lock if a looping Christmas theme train is go through there largely unattended, something a pilot wheel or the lead truck of a diesel can push over when it tries to go the wrong way trough, that will stay in place for the rest of the train.
I didn't differentiate between doubletrack and singletrack, but the through line through Blairsville is actually doubletrack. In "idiot running" mode a train would enter the burrowing junction, loop back around, pass the depot, and then return to the doubletrack to Kiskiminetas Junction. I like the idea of the fold-out table leaf at Kiski. Junction.
