Roundhouse Dimensions???

[Doug Trouten]

OK I am thinking of scratchbuilding a Roundhouse (based on no specific prototype) and I was wondering if a 150' bay and a 110' (or possibly a 120')would be too long. Also would a 12" opening for the bay be large enough or should I go to abouyt a 15" opening?

The height of the walls would be 20' as the front of the bay, 25' at the peak of the roof. It will look something like this: ____| either a flat roof or a slight angle for 25' then a rise of about 5' or so then it will slope back down to 20' over the lenght of the bay.

I am not sure how wide the bays will be at back end, I am thinking of making it between 20' and 40' (depending on the width of the bays opening).

Thanks in Advance

Doug

 

[shaygetz]

Welcome to the Gauge, you will not lack for freindly advice here. When I do it (item #4L8TR), I will first set the length of my turntable for 10 scale feet longer than my largest loco. Knowing this will help establish the degree of radius to each stall. I have several older Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman issues that feature prototype drawings of several different roundhouses that appeal to me. From these I would be able to get rough measurements to make a convincing freelance model, again taking into account my longest (owned or planned to own) locomotive, adding 20 scale feet to that. Hope this will give you some ideas to think about. Here's to an ambitious and commendable project on your part:thumb:

 

[Doug Trouten]

Well right now

Well right now I have the Walthers Turntable but i plan on scratch building one based on some plan I got from a guy over on the Atlas Forum.

I am not sure what the longest loco I will be getting will be. I am looking at getting one of the LL Mallets after Christmas. I do plan on using one of the bays to house a FA2/FB2 set, FT A/B set, or a C-Liner A/B set.

I will be building a cardstock mock-up before i start the final roundhouse, so that i will know if it is going to work or not.

Doug

 

[Matthyro]

Welcome to the Gauge Doug
Here are a couple of drawings from CPR archives.
The dimensions may be too small to read but the front facing the turntable is 21.6 feet high and the door is 17feet high

 

[Matthyro]

You don't say how many stalls but this floor plan may be of some help.

 

[jon-monon]

I've uploaded plans in my directory (paulsenknudsen) in our yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The-gauge/

The stalls are about 100' deep and the openings range from 17.5' to 23.75' in height, and from 12.5' to 17.75' wide.

 

[Doug Trouten]

Jon- I will be checking out the plans on the yahoo group once my membership to it is approved.

Robin- Yhanks for the plans you posted they will help me out.

Bob- The primary idea for scratchbuilding the roundhouse came from the August 1981 issue of Model Railroader.

Hopefully I will be getting a new Digital camera soon so that i can take pics once i begin building the roundhouse.

Now has anyone used the Noch Styro-Flex wall material? I am debating whether i should use that for my walls or if I should just go the cardboard and cardstock route (since I can get vast quanities of both for free from work).

 

[60103]

Doug consider also:
You can build a stall or two longer than the others to hold your artics or whatever. If they aren't something that your enginehouse works on regularly, say, they are assigned to the Wyoming division, you could have some outside tracks that are longer.
While it makes a nice picture to have all the boiler fronts poking out the doors, the front ends were usually put at the wide end of the stalls where there was more room to work on the mechanics.

 

[belg]

I would go with the FREE material there will be plenty of things to buy later to accent your roundhouse. You can see Robin here works with pretty much nothing but cereal boxes and cardboard and gets great results. Pat