Hello Jason & Lachlan in Victoria Australia My name is Daniel (Dan) Kelley in Winchester Virginia  Known here As Rio Grande Dan I hope the following will help you get started.

First and most important you need to figure out which American RR you want to base your freelance pike on. From what you have said so far as to what your wanting My suggestion would be the Southern Pacific Railroad and you could very easily rename it the The Jason & Lachlan RR. my reason for SP is it has everything your looking for in your model railroad and alot of SP equipment is already on the market so it`s only a matter of ordering it off the internet.

Next you need a book That a lot of people consider a must before starting, its 120 pages of the best information on designing and basics of any layout of a model railroad. The book is titled : the wit,whim,and(best of all) wisdom of John Armstrong on Creative layout Design .

I suggest you read this especially chapters 3 threw 6 before you cut your first piece of wood or buy anything as it will answer most if not all your questions on ; Chapter3 Scenic Realism, Chapter 4 Prototypes, Chapter 5 Pike Purpose and chapter 6 A unifying theme. but read it all as I find it to helps me every time I build a new layout.

one of the main things is to plan your railroad on products that are available. It no fun planning your railroad around a particular theme and after most of the railroad is completed the main industry buildings you wanted as your center piece is no longer available or manufactured or the same with cars and engines.

These following three books will help you with most of the rest of your questions and are great reference for the future as well:

All three are From the Model Railroader Library and the 1st will help with your multi-Deck questions.

Book #1 -       "Designing & Building Multi-Deck Model Railroads"    by Tony Koester

Book #2 -        "the model Railroader`s guide to FREIGHT YARDS"  by Andy Sperandeo

Book #3 -        "the model Railroader`s guide to LOCOMOTIVE SERVICING TERMINALS"  by Marty McGuirk

with these 4 books and Joe's Tapes you should have a good start.

Tools for layout design: 
There is a big difference between drawing a track plan and building the plan. What looks good on paper may not work on the railroad.

Before you start cutting wood and track and filling a room with train and finding things are to close or are to cluttered. Get an Idea of what the sizes are of your towns buildings and your stations base dimensions and the water tanks if any and Oil tanks & Your factories and industries. Buy an HO Scale ruler and take some thin card board  and long before you build these models or buy them in some cases draw the Bases of these models on the card board and cut them out and label them. With the HO scale ruler you can take the dimentions of any full size building and draw it down to HO scale for your railroad and again make a cardboard cutout to see how it will fit your Pike.

Next once you have your basic table and track design start with some Painters Tape. Now take and layout the outline of your Railroad on the floor of the room your going to build it in before cutting the first board and set all the building base cutouts where you plan for them to be. This is a great help in giving you a visual of what will be where and how well it will fit your plans. Its better to find out early if something will not fit then after spending hours building before the discovery of needing more room and a needed rebuild.

Well I hope this helps a little and you should get a few dozen more helpful posts later today from the other members.

Dan

Dan,

Thanks so much for the quick reply and the valuable starting information, I had a smile on my face as I was reading your reply.  As it happens I have always liked the Oregon area in particular Astoria (stems from a weird obsession from the movie "The Goonies"), so when you mentioned the SP RR as a suggestion coupled with seeing Joe Fugate's "Siskiyou Line" for my RR this has given me a few ideas on where to start and possible areas and a RR to model.

At this stage I think my first RR/Layout will be purely freelance and not prototype regarding scenery and LDE's, however I like your idea on using "well stocked" & "manufactured" RR stock.  I have already pre-purchased several structures that are givens and that "i must have" for our RR.

My next step is to source copies of the books you mentioned, do you any suggestions on reliable sources in the states, that ship to Australia?

Thanks,

Jason...

Hello again Jason happy I was able to help you

Most of the Books I mentioned can be found at the following url:

http://www.kalmbachstore.com/modeltrains-railroading-model-railroading-b...

You'll find the two books on Freight yards and Engine servicing in the Modeling Reference section.

Designing & Building multi deck is in Track plans & Layout Planning section. You may find other useful books in this fairly large Model railroading library's they have many beginners as well as advanced books to help with track designing and Model Railroad electronics as well as mose everything else Model Railroading.

As far as John Armstrong's book on Creative layout Design the following url at amazon.com  is the only place I could find this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Layout-Design-Wisdom-Armstrong/dp/089024538X

if you need any more assistance we'll help as best we can.

Dan

My dad was born in the town next door to Astoria and I've still got family up there, so I've been up there a lot. The railroad to Astoria was owned/run by the Spokane, Portland & Seattle, Burlington Northern, or Willamette & Pacific/Portland & Western, depending on what decade you were in. The SP&S and BN days were defintely the most productive, until the 80s the line actually continued through Astoria to Warrenton and down to Seaside.

There is no current freight service to Astoria - in fact the line itself is washed out to the east of town.

The Astoria Riverfront Trolley now uses most of the tracks in town - it's a fun and cheap ride.

I just wish I could find some old photos of the Astoria Plywood Mill - I'm going to have to go back up there and hit up the local historical society I guess.

How old is your son?  If he is small, put your main layout at the height that is comfortable for you, and build an around the walls loop for him below your layout at the right height for him.  If he stays interested in trains, by the time he is big enough to use your layout, he will have probably out grown the desire to just run trains around in circles and be ready to switch out industries, and generally operate the way you do.  The other thing to consider is that if he is a little guy, you probably want locomotives and rolling stock with less delicate detail so it doesn't break off when he handles it.  I would recommend an Athearn powered A & dummy B unit set of F-7s with a few r-t-r Athearn cars and a caboose.  Also I would build his layout with code 100 track, and install an Atlas re-railing track some where to make it easier for him to put his trains on the layout.

 Dan,

Thanks for the links to the books, I'll have a look at getting them so that I can start doing some more research.

Cheers,

Jason...

Hi Russ,

My son is 2 1/2 at the moment, and my plan is to have the layout finished for his 5th birthday.  My original idea was to possible have a twin or triple deck layout with a section/level for him.  Because I don't have a vast amount of room I was going to put a level for him on the bottom and then a staging level, and finally a level for myself and him (for when he is older).

I was going to run some Thomas Gear for him on his level (he loves Thomas) and keep all the expensive, grown up stuff for Dad (and him when he is older) on the upper "out of reach" level.  So this was me reason for wanting to have all decks/levels joined either by helix or on grade.  Eventually once he is old enough it would be god to have all levels connected to enhance operating sessions.

I have thought of some type of re-railing/fiddle track for his section.

Cheers,

Jason...

I don't know why Thomas didn't come to mind when I was thinking of sturdy trains with little detail to break off.

Hey guys,

Was after advice from those that have constructed and used a helix as to what is the minimum and recommended sizes for a helix on a HO scale layout.

I would like to know what is the minimum radius, and overall dimensions to install a helix, as I am short on room and may have to look at other options.  I will be using HO scale as mentioned in my first post and will be running 70's onwards motive power and upto 80' rolling stock/passenger cars.

This will give me an idea on what room I have left for layout space, and perhaps change my overall design ideas.

Cheers,

Jas...

your looking at an area min 62 inches across because you would need a 30 in radius that's a little larger than 5 foot circle across and if you figure out the track usage it takes more track to build one 8 step helix that about 16 inches between 2 levels than it takes to build the rest of your railroad.

Dan