Embedded Version

Hope you don’t mind. N scale seems to be an ideal railfan scale but I don’t know much about how well they work for operations. Marc Dance seems to have a great deal of luck and a lot of info online if you are interested in ideas in this vein. 

Scale

Your rough drawing does not have a scale reference, but estimating the distances indicates trouble with many parts of your layout being difficult to reach.  Keeping access within an arm''s length of reach should be seriously taken into account.  Aside from the costs and efforts to fill those large portions of the plan with scenery, plans need to be made on how to keep all of that territory clean.  Then there are the inevitable derailment and stalled train situations that according to Murphy's Law, will occur at the most challenging areas to reach. Not trying to be a killjoy to your ideas and ambition, but some modifications to the plans may be seriously thought about.

One of my attachments shows

One of my attachments shows all the dimensions of the layout. I designed it to be able to have a max 24" reach. Hopefully my plan will work out with few or modest modifications.

Like it!

Hi,

I like your track plan. It has a lot of operational potential and it depicts two complete industry chains and a third one partially.

If you put a few farms on the remote parts of your mainline (e.g. a milk can platform and a pig loading ramp at one or both of the sidings) you'll even have the third industry completed (pig farm-> livestock pen-> meat packer-> store).

You have two tracks (between engine house and the meat industry) that seem to be "sorting" tracks (or any other yard purpose). What a luxury

As for the comment about reaching the tracks, I wonder if you're planning to have the rear of the layout at a higher elevation than the front (which wouldn't make the issue go away but it would help reduce it)?

I'd like to build it (I like the track plan! But I don't have the time...). Even so I'd do some minor changes.

1. One would be to run the double main line out of the station to the rear of the left wing of the layout, turn at the bottom and return to your single-track main line in the rear left corner. The siding and the sawmill spur would then be on the diagonal (and thus easier to reach).
2. This would also help with the sharp corner behind the power station.
3. On the left side I'd put the single-track mainline out of the station in a tunnel or a snow-shed-like-gallery and pull the coal mine to the front (right on top of the tunnel/gallery), again helping with access.
4. Switching would happen at the coal mine, not at the siding, so the remote siding at the top center is less of an issue access-wise.
5. I'd want to try and optimize the siding length, but I guess you've spent quite a bit of thought on that as well, so it's likely fine.

Please keep posting! This is a great track plan and I'd like to see it come to life!

Have fun!