Switching Opportunities?

Unless you are enamored with breaking and making trains in a classification yard, your plan offers little in the way of destinations for the cars i.e. few railroad customers. Might you eventually get bored?

Huge facility

You are attempting to model a HUGE chunk of the CB&Q.  You have four staging tracks to handle a route that would see probably two or three dozen trains a day.

As an alternative I would suggest modeling the line from Ashland to Pacific Junction through Omaha.  You still get the passenger service (the passenger trains served Omaha), that line was single tracked (as opposed to double track on the one you've chosen) the depot is already available as a kit (the Walthers union station is the Omaha CB&Q depot) and you get a few freight trains to serve the industries in Omaha and Iowa.  Omaha has connections to the MP, CRIP, WAB, MILW, CNW and UP.  Each end of the line is a junction so you can add wyes or whatever and make it look plausible.  You get two large bridges to model, the truss over the Missouri and the deck girder over the Platte.

Choosing that line gets you everything you are wanting at a scale closer to the space you have available.

Interesting prototype

Hi Aaron - Welcome to the forum, and welcome back to the hobby.  I'm actually just up the road from you in Council Bluffs.  Having spent a year in Lincoln back in 1987-88, I have some pleasant memories of the area you're modeling.  You've chosen a real beehive of activity!

A few thoughts on your plan:

• Since there will be an aisle surrounding the layout, even with your desire to maintain portability, you'd get a lot more railroad in this space by going with an around-the-walls design with a peninsula out in the middle.  In fact, going around the walls with some standard 12-24" deep shelves would allow you to modularize and re-use more of the layout's components.  As it stands, you're using your longest walls for aisles right now, forcing you to squeeze a huge facility like Hobson Yard down to 8' of layout.  If you went around the walls, Hobson could be stretched out on a 16' wall, allowing you to model the interesting little sub-elements of the yard (arrival/departure yards, engine facility, icing, etc.) in their proper location relative to one another.  None of us has the space to model a yard that complex verbatim, but in my mind, a lot of what makes our models recognizable is simply giving the suggestion of the prototype.  Visitors won't remember how many tracks the eastbound arrival/departure yard had, but they'd remember where it was in relation to the roundhouse.  If you place those types of elements correctly, I think you'll have a layout that'll allow you to recreate a lot of your memories of the area, while maximizing your aisle space and layout access.
• If you do go with an around the walls plan, to allow you to maintain your shared staging yard and keep things as simple as possible, I'd suggest a swinging gate at the layout entrance.  I went that route with mine, and have really enjoyed it.  No problems with it whatsoever, even with our humidity swings, and it's no more difficult to use than walking through a door.  I keep mine open except when operating, so it's never in the way.
• Given the amount of traffic passing through Lincoln, I wonder if more staging is in order?  Six tracks supporting both ends of the railroad might be challenging.
• I understand that you're not done adding tracks yet, and I'm assuming the bottom and right sides of the plan as it stands today would be for the "Nebraska countryside and small towns" you mentioned.  Those should provide some nice variety and switching opportunities juxtaposed against the busy-ness of Hobson Yard.
• There are a few key elements of Lincoln that come to mind when I think of our time there.  It looks like you're on your way to capturing the depot scene, which was #1 on my list, and its position relative to Hobson.  In between the two, the UP crossing and tower were notable.  Any way you could tie the UP line into staging on both ends, perhaps on a simple loop that would exit staging, diverge from the Q as it heads west past the depot, cross the Q, and then return to staging?  
• Another feature I remember from the area is that the Q seemed to have routes coming and going from all directions on either side of Hobson, with the Denver and Billings lines diverging to the west and the Chicago and St. Joseph lines (and perhaps 1-2 others?) to the east.  I noticed you've represented one of those west of the depot.  Any chance of (or interest in) representing others?

I'm looking forward to following along with your progress Aaron.  Please keep us posted.

Omaha Q depot

I didn't know that Dave.  Interesting.

CB&Q Depot

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3094

Vs.

http://www.newenglandrailfans.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=131247224

Omaha Q depot

Thanks Dave.  Neat.  For anyone else who's interested, you can see a more current view of the Omaha Q depot at  http://binged.it/1aD953A .  For the OP, Walthers also offers it in N scale,  http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3257 .

"an around the walls plan"

 I totally agree, around the walls can still be modular and will give the longest run and room for scenes. I'd also go with 24 inch or greater radius since N looks and runs much better on wide curves. For a very busy area like that I'd probably concentrate on the one scene and model it as realistically as possible and use staging to represent the rest of the railroad( no extended mainline running).This allows the best representation of the key facilities and operations, assuming they are what you want to model? ....DaveB

Good suggestions

First off, thanks a bunch for helping me out! I'm glad I reached out on here for help because I realize now I'm going to need a bunch more advice before this comes together! This is exactly why I needed my sanity checked!

So let me see if I can answer some of this...

1. I have thought about "going east" of Lincoln (as Dave suggested) instead of trying to model Lincoln and I'm not entirely opposed to that idea, but my heart seems to be in trying to represent my home town so I'm torn...

2. I have quite a bit of available space... which is a good thing and a bad thing. I'm concerned about trying to find a healthy balance between filing all my space and possibly never finishing it and going too small and wanting to expand later without being able to do so. I would really love to even have multiple decks but I wonder if I can actually build it! It would be great to plan this in such a way as to make it expandable. I actually started with an around the walls on shelves type layout and was actually stumped by how to make the best use of the space. I agree this would be the best possible use of space so maybe someone can suggest a good arrangement for me? I will post a picture of my basement room below...

3. I'm really going for a point to point feel but I would like to connect and share the staging as a way to tie the layout together if I just want to run a train around for visitors. I hadn't considered a gate and that might be a good way to go.

4. I do really want to try to make the depot and yard as recognizable as possible. Since that is important to me I think I really need to expand this plan to take advantage of my available space in a way that I can capture that more realistically. This is one of things that is making this difficult... how do I approach selectively compressing these elements into something I can actually model? Where do you do the chopping?

5. Joe, thanks for all your help. Your layout really helps me out because it looks like we are doing very similar things. The staging yard connection west of the depot on this plan was intended for a UP crossing somewhere. This is something I would like to capture. I think it has become clear from yours and others feedback that I need some more room to adequately capture all these elements so I will be adding a better version of this element when as I revise the plan. I also want to have Hall tower in the layout. And it would be nice to represent those lines that diverge from the main towards Denver, St Joe, Billings, etc

6. A little bit about why I chose this prototype... I grew up in Lincoln and I remember going out to dinner with my parents and then driving over "the hump" which we called the overpass across Hobson Yard and looking at the trains. I also really like the way all the depot and yard tracks "choke down" to three or four tracks to cross Salt Creek east of the yard. This is something I really want to capture. My dad is also an investor in the Burlington Depot and Haymarket area in Lincoln and I really want to model the depot and surrounding area. I guess the biggest challenge will be deciding what I can realistically capture in my given space...

So here is a look at my layout room and the available space. The couch in the foregroud needs to stay but otherwise the rest of the space is available! The back area of the room is approx 12ft X 18ft with a door on the right. Maybe someone has some ideas of how I can best use this space? Thanks again for the help!

. "Maybe someone has some ideas?"

Do you have any photos of how the areas you want to include looked in the 50's ?  Also how do the two maps shown above relate and what part of them do you want to include in your layout? Someone familiar with the area can probably help you the most, the rest of us can look for functional errors in the design that might make it hard to build or might  interfere with your operational enjoyment. .......DaveB

Maps

Dave here are those maps connected together:

'maps connected together"

Ok, next step is to go thru the maps and pick out which parts are most important and distil it down to something you can fit into your room.  I'd start with scenes you remember and enjoyed, then maybe scenes you find in photos that look interesting, then scenes necessary for what ever type of operations you'd like to run. You could add any near by customers if you want some industrial switching. Once you have the necessary scenes picked out then you'll have to figure out how to best allocate space around you room for them. Using a loop around the room one wall could be generic double ended staging yard and three walls could be the modeled scenes for instance. . 

Hobson

Which yard is"Hobson" yard, the one across from Haymarket or the hump yard?

PS:   If you've watched the Husker games over the past two years you've seen my daughter,she's the ballet dancer spinning, for two seconds, in the UNL recruitment ad during sports games.

Chopping

Aaron, I think one important aspect to really focus on in all this is, what do you enjoy operating?  You mentioned not having much experience in this area, so before you go any further, I'd suggest spending some time operating on other layouts to see what it is you like to do.  Your passion for Lincoln mentioned in point #1 above at first made me think that you should absolutely pursue this and find a way to make it work in your space.  While I believe you CAN do that, I'd hate to see you do so, only to find out that yard switching isn't for you.

In my case, I was all about yard switching when I designed my layout.  While I still like it, once I started operating I realized that I most enjoy local operations.  If I've got a siding and a couple tracks to sort out my work, with the rest of the layout devoted to switching grain elevators and other rural customers, I'm a happy man.

In my case, it worked out, because my layout's a mix of urban and rural.  However, imagine if I'd modeled Hobson before coming to this realization.  That'd be an expensive lesson in both money and time.

You may end up loving yard ops, but I just think it'd be wise to be sure before you get too far down the path of designing your layout.  There are several operating layouts in the Omaha area if you're up for the drive, and mine isn't much further away.  Check out the Omaha_model_railroad list on Yahoo for invites, or let me know if you'd ever like to stop by here.

Hobson Yard

Good advice

Thanks Joe. That is good advice. I do think I need to try operations a bit before deciding what I really like. I think I also need to decide what space I really want to use in my basement for this and how best to use that space. A bit more research is in order. In the meantime, I'm working on a 5ft x 16in chainsaw switching layout to get my feet wet while I continue researching and planning this bigger layout.

Dave, I have seen those ads with your daughter! Thats great! And I'm a big Husker fan of course!

Aaron, have you decided to