Help Is Needed.........

[Sniktag]

Hey all,

i am a newbie in the mrr circle, , I have a greart room for trains, it is finished perfectly, I have mastered the art of benchwork lighting even how to paint a reasonable backdrop......however I am pretty much a moron when it comes to designing a working track plan( 4 attempts in one year and still no luck)....... can anybody help????

[Jim Krause]

First things first. What scale? Room size, including door and window locations and any internal obstructions? What railroad era are you interested in? How large will your rolling stock be?

[Sniktag]

Hey there Jim,
Ok where to start, its a 9x11 room, with one 4ft window that I have closed out with a dry wall. No internal obstructions( it was a spare bedroom.) I am interested in the last glory days of steam (transition era) and first gen diesel. The biggest Loco I have at the moment is a 4-8-4 the smallest is an lod 4-4-0 that is to be an excursion train.

Does that answer the questions? I also have the Kato Super Chief Set of 12 cars.

kind Regards Gregg Atkins aka sniktAg

[bigsteel]

we still need scale,largest rolling stock,and what kind of operations.i think you should take a look at this http://forum.zealot.com/t110655/.it will help you and everyone who wants to help you out.--josh

[Jim Krause]

Also, can you provide a basic sketch of the room arrangement? Where the door is located? Which way does it swing? What are your thoughts and ideas so far?

[Sniktag]

Wow, Tak about help!! I cannot thankyou guys for the response ive had.

To answer all questions.

I am modelling N scale, The room has no door at all so around the walls with duckunder is no problem.

However the door is on the shorter wall (9') on extreme right hand side.

I will post a floor plan asap, I like the whole gammut of scenery, however I like mostly high desrt scenery, Donner pass region, and the SP coastal Route in Northern California.

I hope that answers your questions thus far.

God Bless Gregg

[Russ Bellinis]

In n-scale it would seem to me that a 9 x 11 room would have room to model almost anything! Of course I'm speaking from the perspective of a ho modeler. Do you want to run point to point or have a continuous run? A concept I've often though would be interesting if I ever got to build my "ultimate layout" would be to build a good sized mountain on one end of the layout with a helix and staging yard underneath. You could model a part of the western slope of Donner pass coming down into Sacto. Do and around the walls layout incorporating some favorite prototype scenes and perhaps industries for switching. When the layout gets back to the beginning, put in a large city like Oakland, and have the tracks disappear behind the city buildings into the staging yard. You could then bring Eastbound trains on scene fromt the staging yard and out of the city to folow around until the train climbs Donner Pass and goes into a snow shed and down the helix back into staging. A West bound train climbs the helix out of staging and comes on scene blasting out of the snow shed and continues around to go into staging behind the city.

[Bones]

I believe his super chief set would probably have the longest cars; unless he is running articulated auto-carriers 40 years before their time....

Sniktag, if you post your floor plan, and "givens and druthers" the guys here will do what they can to come up with something workable for you. I personally am wrapped up in a lot of kit-bashing, and my own layout at the moment, but you should have a lot of feedback in a short period.

Just try to be as specific as possible with your posts.

[Sniktag]

Hey Bones thanx for the Advice, as well as Russ.

I will follow your advice, just at the moment I am so swamped with work tha I barely get the time to log on....... Being a school teacher during exam time here in South Africa. But I will Get a formalised floor plan online by friday(tommorow) sorry for the delay guys.

For the record I do like point to point ops having been an op for a guy that has since passed on. However I am in the process of getting the kids in the school involved, so Continuous running must also fit the bill, because thats what they like to see. I have Got my version of the MR MAG Carolina central N scale "Door" layout set up in our schools media centre and bot the response to it is great.

Thanx again for all your help Guys and Your advice,

God Bless Greg

[MadHatter]

Hey Sniktag

Where in South Africa do you stay?

I stay in Roodepoort, Gauteng.

Regards

[Russ Bellinis]

For continuous running on a point to point layout another possibility would be to put a 4x4 section on each side of the door to allow a turnback curve. You could then either have a reverse loop at each end, or make it a long folded dogbone that would look like a double track mainline between the turnback curves. If you are modeling Santa Fe, the mainline between LA & Chicago is mostly double tracked. If you put Raton Pass in the middle of the layout, you could model plains on the Eastern (North) side and high desert red rocks of Arizona/Colorado on the Western (South) side of Ratone.

Basically the Santa Fe mainline runs East out of Los Angeles to Riverside & San Bernardino where it turns North to go through the Cajon Pass. On top of Cajon Pass it turns East again to Albuquerque, NM where it makes another turn to the North to go up into Colorado, over Raton Pass and on to Chicago. In the plains, you could put in sidings with grain elevators as a source of freight. To the West Santa Fe had one of the largest fleets of ice reefers in the country hauling iced produce (especially citrus) out of California to the East Coast via Chicago. At the same time, there was a thriving meat packing district in Los Angeles that was the destination for many livestock cars. Also Armour, Swift, Morrell, and Rath packed a lot of meat in Chicago and shipped it out to the West Coast as well as stops in between.