Still Conceptualizing

Neil Erickson NeilEr

Subject: On30 track plan for my garage attic Below is a plan I've started building now that the weather is improving and muddy issues are behind us. The return loop on the upper left is for hidden trains. They will travel to the main town on the bottom right and will pick up and leave cars for distribution then return to hidden staging. Passenger and freight trains will originate from there and go up to the mines and turn at the wye. I'm leaving this area undecided for now as I'd like to get the loop to interchange done right away. I look forward to building a turntable and train shed, passenger station and stamp mill. This was a plan scaled up from HOn3 to fit my room and dropped in SketchUp. I traced over most of the mainline with changes to make better use of my space. Broad curves are 36" radius and 32" minimum. The return loop is only 24" radius but shouldn't be a problem for the Bachmann engines and cars I own. I like the height of your layout and will try starting at about 54" as well. The wye should be quite high, maybe 72", to give the illusion of mountain railroading! I might include a snow shed a'la Lizard Head, Colorado. This should give me an excuse to run my mogul and long passenger cars from staging to town and back and build some funky backwoods cars to be pulled behind my shay and climax geared locos. Low sided gondolas will handle the ore from mines and seasonal cattle drives into town to be routed toward the slaughter houses off-line (that part doesn't interest me). It would be fun to have a small hotel up on the mountain to occasionally route a sleeper from the connecting line.

Neil Erickson, Hawai’i

My Blogs

Reply 0

the MRH Forum

Smileys & People

Animals

Food & Drink

Symbols

Travel & Places

Alphabet

Activity

Modal title