Notes

I apologize for not labeling the buildings, but I was using the free version of SCARM and I had reached the limit.

I like lots of industries, and the several Walthers Cornerstone industries are on this plan, as well as a Pikestuff enginehouse.

Reach?

Looks like the large leg is 3' deep.  Do you have access from both sides?

Scott Chatfield

Reach

I do not have access from both sides, however I can still reach the back of the shelf.

The short runaround track

The short runaround track just to the right of center seems redundant and eliminating it would save two switches and leave some room for RR related buildings.  There isn't much of a lead for switching all of the stub ended tracks on the left.  One of the angle spurs on the right could also be eliminated to save another switch. I do like it but it seems a bit "busy" with all of the tracks.  

Robert

What I See

Is reaching around the buildings in the front to gain access to the tracks.

Espee over Donner

Building Height

Hi,

I would tend to agree with Robert and Patrick. My bigger concern would be the placement and height of the buildings, which I am assuming are in the front. It would force you to operate looking from the "helicopter viewpoint" all the time. I really enjoy taking low-level or "eye-level" model photographs and even operating from that viewpoint. It adds to the imagination and experience. If the operating view were from the other side, I think it would be better.

Have fun! 
Best regards,
Geoff Bunza

Reaching Over

Not to belabor a point, but uncoupling by reaching over the buildings is possibly problematic.  Shirt sleeves and errant hands or arms can induce a 8.0 Earthquake on the layout, with resultant casualties.  Also if the turnouts are manually switched, same problem.

If it's all remote operated, then problem solved.....

Looks like an small town

Looks like an small town industrial switching pike. A small town would not have all this trackage to service the customers.

IMO: Its a ton of track with little space for the scenery details. Its busy with short sidings, short leads, short runarounds, short customer spots, and the multiple back-to-back turnouts are all opportunities for derailments. Since you will be operating your layout from one side, you will be reaching over/around a few buildings to handle uncoupling or throwing turnouts. All this together will compromise the enjoyment of operations. 

Removing the extra "storage" tracks (6 that I see) that don't directly service a customer and using a single "main line" will free up space and create distance. 

What is your vision on operations? This will guide us to help critique your plans.

operation?

the San Jacinto district RR may offer some ideas

Plan

Reach will be an issue if the layout is above about 40" off the floor, especially in the upper left corner.

The back tracks, all those in the upper left corner will be extremely difficult to get to for switching since the only tail is also what appears to be the engine house (the building the tracks go into). Except for the two "mains" on the lower left, all your tails are shorter than the yard or industry tracks.

Most of your time switching the tracks in the rear will be spent running back and forth sawing to work your way back there.  An engine will go about 40 ft to get a cut of cars from the yard next to the blue building to the track by the orange building.

My suggestion is to flip the plan and put the tracks next to the aisle next to the wall and vice versa, moving the really big buildings to the back and eliminate about 10-20% of the tracks, give yourself better tail tracks and not put the engine house on a tail track.

Or......

Move the large green building to the lower left leg, since that has nothing going on and the green building doesn't appear to be rail served anyway, eliminate about 10-20% of the tracks, lengthen the tails and not put the engine house on a tail.

Vision

My dream for operations is lots of switching to assemble and then run the train on the mainline. As you can see, the mainline is pretty short, so that would have to include backing up the train and dissasembling it and taking the various cars and "unload/load" them.

It is not intended to be a small town, just part of a larger town, with an industrial park just to the north.

For everybody's information, I intend to make the layout a "push of a button" controlled layout, w/ switch machines, electromagnetic uncouplers, etc etc.

The track density

would be fine for a big city pocket terminal served by railroad car float. Numerous New York Harbor sites come to mind. The tracks by the large blue building would be a good place for the car float bridge.The various spurs could be freight house,coal dealer, produce wholesaler,flour distributor, auto ramp, team track, etc. ...DaveB

Paint

You can open your track diagram in MS Paint (on most PC's running Windows) and use that application to put labels on the tracks and industries.

Work the switching moves in your head

One way to see how viable your design is could be to work through some switching moves in your head or "on paper".

Imagine a cut of cars gets set out by a passing train on the main or passing track. Then your local power needs to lift those cars and switch them for some of the cars spotted at various industries. 

Looking a the spurs in top of the plan, what moves will be needed for the loco(s) and several cars to move into that area with the cars from the main, pull several cars from various spots and then spot the new cars? 

Typically a job like this would lift then spot ("pull and place" or whatever local terms are used). You may twice the length of the longest cut of cars plus the loco as headroom to do this somewhat realistically.

In your plan it seems like several of the spurs across the top of the layout don't have enough headroom to pull more than one or two cars at a time without running into an industry at the other end of the spur. So the loco would have to run back and forth to the main with just one or two cars multiple times.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!    It's just not very realisitic if realism is a consideration for you.

Labeled Trackplan

Hi Dave,

This is the trackplan after being labeled in Paint.  

Switching moves

Hi Pete,

Thanks for your idea! I have the free model train simulator in SCARM and I use that to get an idea what it will be like. As to running the loco with just one or two cars multiple times, I agree, it detracts from realism, but adds to interesting ops. All about them ops!

By the way

BTW, does anybody have an opinion on the Walthers Mainline SD70ACEs and ES44s?

Ops

All depends on what you consider "ops".  Some people think "ops" is just activity, others think "ops" is trying to do it like the real railroad does.

An alternative

Here is an alternative.  It solves some of the sawing problems, keeps the switch engine out of the diesel shop and is a simpler plan.

Bottleneck

That's good Dave! But I think there's still a bottleneck at the right hand end of the main, see below. It's not quite as bad for the cement plant and storage tracks but for the plastics side, I'm not sure even one car plus the loco would fit in there.

csx4451, could a drop-down extension be added to the right of the red box I drew?

Extension

No, I don't think I could fit an extension on that side. I see what you mean, though. I'll think about how to fix that.

Diamond?

Maybe a diamond in the middle, something like the very bad sketch below, could give you roughly equal switching headroom on both sides of the layout? 

bottle neck?

You could move the passing siding over to the left with just enough room to let an engine escape on the left end then the right end would have a longer tail.....DaveB

Tail

Yes the red tail is a bottle neck (among many on the original plan), but its not really a big deal in the greater scheme of things.  An operator could operate it just as well using the other lead.  In other words:

1. Pull a cut out of the lower storage yard, through the crossover, back onto the back main.
2. Shove right on the back main past the first lead switch (where the word "mainline" is). 
3. Pull back onto the  lead connecting to the cement plant and upper storage yard.

From there the operator can either pull all the way up to the shipping warehouse track to work the pellet tracks or the engine house, or leave the cut on the lead and run around it to work the upper storage yard or the cement plant.  The tail room on the shipping warehouse track is roughly the same as the tail room from the first lead switch to the right end on the back main, so getting a longer cut there won't help much.

To "fix" that issue it requires removing some of the tracks (see previous suggestion).  Added benefit of the track reduction is to allow the benchwork to be narrowed by even 6 inches for improved reach.  Its almost 4 feet from the upper left corner to the aisle (and by the way, if the engine stalls out switching anything on the right side of the layout, that's where it will be).