Great

That's a great layout.

Wolfgang

What do you want from a layout?

Rick,

Welcome. For your own on-line saftey, you will want to edit your first post to remove your email address. Bad guys use automated 'bots to collect email addresses posted in public for nefarious purposes. Any MRH members who want to contact you can do it through the site.

Bill Henderson and I share a last name, but unfortunately no relation (and I've got none of his modeling talent, more's the pity).

The article on the Coal Belt in Kalmbach's Great Model Railroads 2002 covered the layout pretty well. Are you interested in replicating the 1910 era and Fall/Winter season? If so, you'll probably want to take a look at this and other articles on the layout published in back issues over the years, as well as perhaps the tape. Bill's an excellent modeler. But if you are just interested in using the track plan, there may not be a lot more detail available in these sources beyond the track plan you have seen. Bill mentioned in the GMR article that he drew only a very rough track plan to begin. Unless someone else took the trouble to try to input the published plan into a CAD progam, which is unlikely, there is no 3-D view available anywhere.

It works fine for the way Bill operates the layout, but some might find the small number of staging tracks (3 or 4, depending on how you count) limiting. The traffic to and from the loads-in/empties-out connection between Treskova and Port Carbon is really the only coal-oriented business on the layout. Bill's focus is on running a relatively small number of trains in a session, some with helper service. Does that fit your interests?

Bottom line, building someone else's track plan, even if very successful for them, may not work for you if your own interests are different.

Hi Byron, thx a bunch for the

Hi Byron, thx a bunch for the reply...I appreciate the heads up on the E-Mail issue and edited my message accordingly. One thing in your reply that woke me up was the lack of staging tracks and the length of the actual coal running buisiness on the layout. I looked over the plans and info i presently have and see exactly what your talking about. The space i have to work with is approximately 240 square sq.ft. (12X20) room with a 4 ft. door located directly in the center of one of the 20 ft. walls. The reason the plan really appealed to me was the fact it would fit in my available space nicely, has 2 main lines running over and under each other throughout the layout and its a coal operation based plan. The actual plan calls for an 8X20 space so do you think i'm dealing with enough room to extend switching opps..i.e. more track, wider layout, extended coal operations etc.?? I'm presently checking out your site so you might be my super hero here lol..I'm going to go ahead and grab the past 2002 issue of GMR to get a better visual idea of how Bill done his layout scenery and elvations, guess the 2-D overhead plan is going to be pretty much all i'm going to have to work with so if i go this route I'll just have to use my imagination and learn as i go. I'm very excited to get started on this, took me a month just to build this room thanks to my wife pretty much claiming the rest of the house lol..appreciate anymore comments or if you feel as a begginer there's a different route i should take, please let me know Byron! Thx A Bunch!! .....Ricky'

Awsome video's Wolfgang,

Awsome video's Wolfgang, beautiful trains!!!

The best plans come from knowing yourself

Ricky said:
The actual plan calls for an 8X20 space so do you think i'm dealing with enough room to extend switching opps..i.e. more track, wider layout, extended coal operations etc.??
< snip>
I'm very excited to get started on this, took me a month just to build this room thanks to my wife pretty much claiming the rest of the house lol..appreciate anymore comments or if you feel as a begginer there's a different route i should take, please let me know Byron

That will be enough room for quite a bit of interesting railroading in HO, if used well. And that's the challenge for a newcomer. The advice I always give (which enthusiastic newcomers always ignore -- it's OK, I'm used to it) is to contain your urge to do something quickly, as tempting as that can be. Designing one's own layout requires some background in real railroading and best practices in layout design, and that doesn't come overnight. The ultimate foundational source (IMHO) is John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation (Kalmbach). This is a book that takes time to understand and digest, time a lot of newcomers are reluctant to commit to learning about layout design before jumping in.

I also strongly recommend visiting layouts and attending operating sessions before you start designing a layout to begin to develop an idea of your own likes and dislikes. Your local NMRA region may organize layout tours in conjunction with regional meetings and other events, and the Operations SIG also makes it possible to visit others' layouts with their Callboard program. Sometimes a local hobby shop is a good connection to existing model railroads. Offer to help out in construction of someone else's layout and you'll start learning quickly about your own preferences and interests.

But if you are like most people and I can't convince you not to race ahead now, there are a couple of alternative approaches to consider. One is to build a couple of chunks that might be useful in the ultimate layout as sections and join them together with temporay connections and temporary staging yards to allow you to get some trains up and running. One could certainly build the whole layout in sections, as Model Railroader magazine is doing in their current MILW "Beer Line" project (but please, do yourself a favor and don't limit yourself to 18" R and SnapSwitches).

Another approach is to do what MRH Editor and Publisher Joe Fugate talked about in his "Reverse Running" column in the first issue of MRH: build a layout that you know is temporary and interim (a "Chainsaw Railroad" as former Layout Design SIG Layout Design Journal editor Dave Clemens calls them for the fact that they wil be cut up and removed at soem point). This could be a smaller layout in a corner of the current space (but please, not an HO 4X8). Work on that for a while and you'll get an idea of your likes and dislikes. Then you can design a room-filler that fits your interests and start building the ultimate layout in another corner of the room, dismantling the temporary layout when you get there.

Either of these approaches to starting smaller than the ultimate room-filler layout would give you more insight into your own interests -- which is ultimately the key to a successful layout desgn. So you could certainly do a lot worse than to copy Bill Henderson's Coal Belt design, but you also might be able to do better, for you, with more development of your own preferences.

Best of luck!

Twice around

Ricky said:
The reason the plan really appealed to me was the fact it would fit in my available space nicely, has 2 main lines running over and under each other throughout the layout and its a coal operation based plan.

Strictly speaking, most people call that a twice-around, as it's not really two main lines (unless I'm mistaken). Trains go around the layout once, then continue around again on another loop of track before re-tracing the route. This gives a longer run in the same space, but does mean that locations on the layout that are supposed to be "miles" apart will be adjacent to one another.

For some people that's a "don't care", for others it matters a lot. That's one of those preferences people develop by seeing other layouts.

But if what you are thinking of when you say "2 main lines" is to have multiple trains orbiting independently on separate loops of track, the plan as drawn won't work that way. (Although adding some cut-offs might allow that as an option.)

Thanks Alot Byron

Well now ya got me in a whole new ball game lol, after reading your post i'm definitely going to take your advice and "Listen" instead of jumping in. Just ordered John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation, after reading your advice I've decided to do exactly what you recommend and take this "step by step" and build my own plan starting in one of the corners of the room and go from there. I have a real good friend that has loaned me his Joe Fugates-Siskiyou Line series and between that and the book i just ordered that you recommended I'm hoping to get a grasp on how to start this the right way. I definitely want to get the most out of the space i have available and your post have been a really big help. Going to watch this video series and read John's track planning book until i turn purple before starting anything! lol....I really appreciate the sincere advice byron, i can tell just by reading your post that you really want me and others to do this the right way in order to really be happy and proud in the long run and I'm definitely going to take the advice from your experience in this hobby and try and learn as much as i can before i even start and then learn as i go. One thing i need to do for sure is to quit shopping for loco's and cars on E-Bay, looking at them in boxes is driving me nuts! haha.. Looking forward to getting John Armstrongs book in and i will read it thoroughly and take your advice and start off in small sections and work my way up using my own ideas rather than copy another plan, This is probably the best thing you could have recommended i do in order to stop me before i started. I have to agree that the ultimate satisfaction in the end is for this layout to be my own ideas and planning rather than try and build something fast off of someone elses planning and ideas.....Have a Great Week byron, Thanks a Million!!!!.........Sinc. Ricky'

Sounds like a good plan

Best of luck, Ricky!