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I am not  great in track planning but seems to me that  #5,6 and 8 turnouts,  30" minimum, 1 to 2% grade  in 10 X 15 with hidden staging + levels sounds wrong to me.  30" minimum will take about  3 feet off each end. Leaves you with about 4 feet  and 9 feet to work with.  

Schematics are not very usefull either seems to me. Great for panels and PanelPro (JMRI) but useless to evaluate a track plan. Unless this is a prelim sketch of sorts.  

Someone tell me I'm wrong. 

Marc F

Thanks for your comments

Thanks for your interest and comments, Marc.

The mainline town of Benton Station is well over  25 feet long as it circles the whole room, or more precisely, the large central operating pit.  (The around-the-wall benchwork is at most 2.5 feet wide at any point.)  The grade runs through the town, so brakemen will need to "set brakes" although the stub-end tracks will be on the level.  The branchline terminus, excluding the mineral processing plant and its private railroad, is approximately 14 feet long and is essentially level.  Staging and sidings allow for mainline trains of at least 15 feet in length, with branchline trains half that.

The original track plan was drawn up in CAD by a friend.  It had a lot more tracks and specialized turnouts.  I've spent most of my time heavily revising it to make the trackwork simpler and more accessible.  He got tired making revisions for me and the learning curve was too steep for me to work well with CAD, so I've recently been relying on full-scale templates.  I don't believe there will ever be a drawing of the final plan, but one isn't necessary at this point as the grades, track separations, curve locations and benchwork borders have been worked out.

A schematic is very useful for analyzing  operational opportunities, and there is nothing like 1:1 templates to see what will fit.

interesting plan

The schematic looks very interesting and appears to have potential.  Hopefully you can draw up a rough diagram of the layout (on paper) and post that so we can see what the overall plan looks like.  Also please post pictures of how you are building this as it looks very interesting.  Lone Pine CA is only a few hours drive from me as well (I live south of it near the eastern end of Sierra Pacific RR)

Mike

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Ok.. now I get it...   not thinking in 2 dimensions...  Not thinking period...

(edit)  Reading thru the 2006 Railroad planning last night. Found a similar plan with 3 levels and stacked helixes in a 13 X 13 room.  It also had minimum 30"  curves.  I now see how it can be done.  It takes someone who knows there stuff. 

Marc F

no need for helix

The plan doesn't call for a helix.  The lower-deck branchline track climbs via a "nolix"  employing a double switchback to reach the upper deck which covers about half of the lower deck.  The steepest part of the climb is where the branchline pops up from under the upper deck (after already climbing 12 inches) to where it arrives at the upper deck.  This stretch of branchline has a six-inch climb in about 16 feet with a maximum grade of 3.3 percent.

Size of room

" I am not  great in track planning but seems to me that  #5,6 and 8 turnouts,  30" minimum, 1 to 2% grade  in 10 X 15 with hidden staging + levels sounds wrong to me..."

Marc,

FYI, My layout is in a room 12 x 11 and my minimum radius is 31 1/8 and the only turnouts that I am using is #6 and it worked out fine. I know that is not the norm but it works. The reason why I did it is because I am modeling modern railroading with big engines and long rolling stock.

I wish I had your track layout skills

I am attempting to build an "all around the walls" multi level layout in HO.  The "room" is 7.5'x31' and has three levels constructed so far along the long sides, the ends are still open as I cannot for the life of me get any real firm ideas on how to transition from one level to another.  A helix sounds simple enough the carpentry doesn't scare me, but it would be so big.  I like the switch back idea, it sounds good as it can be incorporated and look natural, something a helix doesn't seem to.  So I just sit here looking at what I have and hope some glimmer of imagination and creativity comes my way.

http://null.linuxgod.org/~whynot/traintrailer/

Nothing much original here

While your room is relatively narrow, it is long, and stacking the helixes at one end of the room would take no more than a fifth of the length. 

A switchback does increase the apparent length of run since trains must stop and reverse themselves to navigate the switchbacks.  Of course, they do eliminate the possibility of continuous running, at least on those segments of the layout.  Also, they take a fair amount of length because of the need for the switchback tails to be as long as the longest train you'll be running.  They are more suitable for branch/shortline operations (like McCloud River Railroad and the Oregon, California & Eastern Railway) or modeling initial, temporary routes used before tunneling is completed (as in Rawlins Pass -- Moffet Tunnel).

Actually, my schematic (sans switchbacks) is just a more sophisticated and larger version of John Armstrong's mid-1950s track plan ("variety in 5x10" article in Model Railroader magazine) for the Foothill and Excelsior RR which I built and modified in the 1960s.  One of the modifications was to use a nolix reaching an upper deck covering half the layout, inspired by a subsequent John Armstrong article..

nolix layout, 1967

5x10 nolix layout under construction, April 1967:

The "room" is 7.5'x31' and

With such a long narrow room, I would look at two options besides the traditional helix:

1) The train elevator. There was a MRP a while back that showed how to build a home-made one, and there are commerical products that can be adopted. Basically, the train enters a section of track and is hoisted up to the next level. The down side, of course, is having to hoist your train. A "non railroad thought" if ever there was one.

2) Nolix where you could use that long run to slowly gain hight.. you figure around the walls that 62 feet.. if you had a 1.5% constant grade you would be 16 inches above where you started at the end. You basically build your layout kind of like a cork-screw although you have to accept a relatively steady grade in one direction.. maybe too late to do this if you already have the three levels in.

Chris