I would.......

....... try to make the tracks and layout edges less parallel to the walls and to each other. Any doors, windows and/or electrical panels there?. Other useless nuisances like washer, dryer, furnace, columns, etc?.

Answers

This will be a modular/sectional layout in my garage. Therefore this is what fits in the space. I am also trying to design it so that I can raise it into the overhead of the garage so that I can move it out of the way when I need the garage but I won't necessarily have to completely disassemble it. The garage door is on the right side, that is why it's open on that end. Also I need to be able to put my Harley in there at the end of the day.

I have room around the back side of the layout to get to the equipment that is behind the layout. I can't mount it to the walls as they are already covered by cabinets, workbenches, tools, toolboxes, compressors, etc.

Are you talking about raising the entire layout as one piece?

I think that you will find it difficult to raise an entire sectional layout that is bolted together as one piece without causing things to shift and create a misalignment. If you are going to raise the layout into the roof structure of your garage, you will need to make sure that the roof framing is engineered to handle the load that you are going to put on it, and that whatever system you use to raise the layout will have the necessary strength to lift that load.  This includes your own strength if you are going to use some sort of manual pulley system.  I would suggest building it in three sections, and put them on wheels.  They would then be unbolted and each individual section raised.  The reason for the wheels is to allow you to move them into alignment for bolting together when you lower them into position.  f the lowering system is precise enough, you could dispense with the wheels, but I can't think of a way to make a raising/lowering system that precise to keep even HO scale tracks aligned, let alone -scale.  You might get away from the need for castors if you make legs a separate system that is taken down and stored when the layout is raised.  Then when it is lowered, if it is on cables, you could perhaps align and bolt it together while still suspended and then put the leg assemblies under it.

The other thing to keep in mind is height of the sections.  My friend and fellow "gear head" has a small "hobby shop" where he works on cars.  I was thinking of putting a lift in my garage, but he told me that a lift requires a minimum height of 14 feet from floor to ceiling.  The point being, how tall are the two levels including bench work, and any permanent scenery?  What is the distance from floor to ceiling in your garage?  You may be able to make the layout sections light yet strong by using steel or aluminum structural members and foam for the sub-road bed, but I think you helix will have to be constructed of much heavier material, and well braced.  It will need to be either a separate section raised and lowered by itself, or permanently mounted to the garage floor. 

I have to admit that I continue to be skeptical that a practical method can be engineered to do what you want to do with your layout.

Thanks for the concerns.

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to build it so I can raise it into the overhead.

As for construction of the modules, I'm using 2 X 3 steel building studs which are actually galvanized thin steel shaped in "C" sections. It's very light. On top of that I glued 2" pink foam. A 14" X 48" section weighs maybe 10 lbs on the high side.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can lift the two decks together or if I'll have to lift them separate. One option may be to remove the upper deck in sections and store it, then lift the lower deck as one. I'd have to remove the legs either way to make it fit. One other option is to make all of the structures and trees removable, stack the two decks on top of each other, then lift it as a hole. I'm also working on a way to make the helix removable.

Yes I have my work cut out for me. But that's what makes it fun and challenging. And I love a challenge. as for lifting, steel cables, pulleys and a hand crank like you use on a boat trailer. I used this on my last layout I had in the garage but it was a lot heavier as I used wood for the framework, plywood for the top and steel table legs. Plus it had a huge control panel because I was using DC. This time I'm going DCC which will also cut out a lot of weight with no more requirements for the big control panel, wires and switches.

Parallelism

I agree with pipopak. The layout will look less toy like even with very slight angles relative to the edge of bench-work. For example just putting 1 degree angle on Fort Worth would help.  You could also put a 1 degree bend at each end and a very gentle curve in middle.  No extra space would/should be required.

OK

So even though the Prototype is straight as an arrow, your saying to add a few angles to it. That that will make it look better? Say angle the passenger station some and then it straightens out before going into the roundhouse/corner. But do I also try and angle the freight yard? Or do I leave it? Remember that the yard and Midland on the other side are separate modules and the mounding for an upper deck will be in the middle of them.

What about Odessa at the top? Put a bend in the middle of the town? Or try and angle the whole thing and just cut off the buildings on the edge of the layout with a solid wall? I think it may be too hard to leave those buildings open and try and model the inside of them as they are oil industries and grain elevators.

Ok, with changes.

Ok here's with the changes as recommended. Does this look better.

Here is the result.......

I've been fooling with your plan and came up with this. Flipped the roundhouse to put the most interesting view up front. Area on lower right needs major rethinking, but I have no time right now.

Yard lead

Looks really good!

For the yard to be functional you will need to add a yard lead otherwise you will not be able to pull longer strings of cars from the yard. I'm not sure what the prototype did but I would take the existing track at the end of the runaround and extend it to the first town west and add a crossover from the main to the yard lead just before the start of the "ladder". That would let you continue the yard switching without fouling the main and allow you to pull full length strings of cars from the yard.

Roundhouse

Pipopak,

  One of the reasons I have the roundhouse as it was is because the prototype is a 360 roundhouse so I was trying to model that. I looked at trying to move it out to the edge and do a 1/2 roundhouse so I could see inside of the roundhouse. But It takes up too much room and I couldn't find a way to get into it. If I go with your design, then it defeats the 360 roundhouse look. 

As for the lower right corner, what is wrong with it? The cross track is to represent Tower 55 and the cross track of the North/South MKT and the East/West T&P. 

Mike, there are basically two yard leads on the right end of the yard. One up next to the end of the warehouse and another near the main. Or at least I thought they were yard leads. Am I wrong? 

My trains will be about 3' long max. Thanks for the inputs.

Rounhouse

Well, I redid the roundhouse as a full circle, with many dummy stalls and put back most of that corner in basically it's original configuration.

What I don't get about the right corner is that looks like a spiral with the track that comes all the way around the layout entering it and with no way to come out, short of backing the whole train into the yard. Can you post a bigger plan of that corner (higher def)?. I may be missing something.

Sorry.

Sorry about that. That corner is the helix that goes up to the upper deck. The entrance to it is on the bottom. I've only posted the lower deck at this time. I'm still working on the upper deck which will be the North/South MKT line.

I know there will be some dummy stalls on the roundhouse and a lot of it will just be painted on the back drop. Remember that there is a hidden return track that is running behind the roundhouse. The two lines you see in the lower left are the hidden track and the backdrop. I can email you a bit map if you like? Or if you have a copy of XtrakCAD, I can send you the file.

That's one of the hard parts is trying to see some of the detail in the JPEG posted. But I do not know of any other program/way of posting the plan. Any Ideas?

Thought/question

Thinking about the helix. My original thought was a single line helix. But I got to thinking, that would mean only one train at a time in the helix. So that brought up the thought/question of having two tracks on the helix. With the limit on space, the outer would be 15" radius which it currently is and the inner would be about 13 1/2" radius or there about.

So my thought/question was this: can I make the outer line a dedicated up travel and the inner a dedicated down travel? Would it make sense to do so. How to I control it? Does anyone make a automatic switch that would always be in the position to allow a train entering from the lower deck to be sent to the outer line. And that when a train is coming down on the inner line, it could pass thru the switch and basically manually move the frogs over to exit the helix but the switch would not have enough pressure on it to derail and of the cars? Or would I be better off with a block detector circuit that would control the switch? I'm thinking this would allow me to have trains running in both directions at the same time.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Thanks.

Yard Improvement suggestions

Use your finger to trace the route a train would take to each track in the yard, the upper three tracks can only be accessed if the train zig-zags into them. Maybe stick with a more conventional ladder. I'd probably use the three through tracks adjacent the yard as the main, siding, & arrival departure. Move the yard lead and caboose track left and get rid of all the crossovers on the left side of the yard.

Helix

Now that I got the part about the helix, why do you want to run a hidden line around all 3 sides of the room?. I think you could hide it inside the turn at the upper right and find some excuse to disguise it. That would open a whole lot of space at the bottom right corner and give you more freedom at the left with the roundhouse, not to mention that you will avoid all that hidden track (and related headaches).

You can PM me the BMP if you want.

Cheers, Jose.

Yard

OK here is a close up of the yard. As you can see, there is a entrance/exit as you suggest on the right end of the yard. The question is, how do I do one on the left end without doing a zig zag and still be able to use the full length that is shown? The greenish box along the top is the T&P warehouse. The bottom two tracks are the main and siding. The third track is the A/D track. I'd like to be able to enter the yard from either direction like the prototype does. I'm open to any suggestions to make it better.  

Helix

I'm running a single helix in the lower right corner. The upper right corner is where the line "Continues" on to points west rather than doing a reversing loop and going back thru the scenery from where it just came. This was suggested in a previous thread of mine and it makes sense. This will also allow me to have a East bound train come "into" Odessa and continue on east into Fort Worth. The hidden track behind everything only takes up about an inch of space. 

The second deck has something similar. A train headed North will be able to "disappear" behind the scene headed North. It can sneak back to the hidden helix and go down to the lower deck and arrive as a west/southbound train pulling into Fort Worth, depending on "where" it came from.

Does this make sense?

I'm going to try and email you the bit map file.

Raising the Layout

I agree with Russ.  I believe that your proposal to lift the layout, although theoretically possible, will be practically impossible. The steel stud/foam construction will be light, indeed, but very flexible.  You are setting yourself an almost impossible goal.

Dante

Parallelism

Hi Crusty, My apologies, I didn't intend to drag you off in a direction you don't want to go in. If the proto is straight as an arrow then by all means model that as much as possible.  But even straight tracks don't need to be parallel to the bench work edge. Beyond that, the plan appears to be shaping up nicely. And I learn from these layout planning discussions.

JR

The yard doesn't need all of those crossovers.

If the yard is going to be used for classification, it only needs a crossover on the track that an inbound train would use to allow an engine escape.  Any tracks running through the yard could have cross overs, but leave the rest as stub ended sorting tracks to be worked by a switch engine from the ladder end.  An engine escape should be only  a little longer than your longest engine and space to clear the switch.  If you put the engine escape adjacent to your yard lead, that would make it the most practical layout.  If you use that yard for car sorting, I think most of those cross overs you have pictured will soon be blocked and useless.

Thank all

I think at this time, I'm going to change the direction a little. And I think it will work out better. Not sure why it took me this long to figure it out. I think I'm on rev 10 right now.

I'm going to just model all of Ft Worth on the lower deck. Get that all built. See how well it works. Se how well putting it in the overhead works. And then see if I can do the second deck. This will at least get me building something and closer to at least laying track and running trains. The plan will have a reverse loop at each end. I'm going to try and set it up so that i can remove the reverse loop and replace it with a helix when I go to do the upper deck. So stand by for a new plan. I've started on it some but just had a good idea this morning so I've got to do some moving around of track. the upper deck will house all of my other towns.

Again thanks all for the inputs.

I think you will be much happier with the result,

I suspect that you will find so much enjoyment with operating on one deck, that you may not want to build a second deck.  If you do decide to try the second deck, build bench work for a couple of sections and see how it works to raise and lower the layout with a second deck before you lay any track on the second deck or build a helix.

Revisions dont hurt anything.....

Enjoy the design time. Dont be afraid to think out of the box, try different things and see what developes.

I kept all my revisions in a notebook, ended up with over 30.

Sometimes you lock yourself into a mold with a design, thinking the roundhouse MUST go in THAT corner ( for example ) but what happens if you moved it to another corner or used it to cover the return loop? 

Dream it and then build it.

I'm Liking it!

I'm liking your latest design, I think you're on the right path. But a few things. What are the bold black lines running across the benchwork? Are they dividers? Separating one scene from the next? If so, too many, too close together. If not, then don't worry about it. That run around track in the back, you say it's behind a backdrop of some kind. How tall is that backdrop? Is it short enough for you to reach over it in case of a derail back there? You surely don't want any spot on the track that you cannot quickly get your hands on, especially in N scale. I agree that the yard needs work, but it sounds like you've already got some good ideas brewing on that. And the roundhouse. Just because the real one is a total circle does not mean you have to model a full circle. Because as someone else mentioned the visual effect of looking at the rear of the building is not as appealing. But I would more worry about operations of the roundhouse, can you see what you're doing if the doors are facing away from you like that? See which train is in which door? When to stop when pulling in? Seeing the inside of the roundhouse seems almost critical to operating it, unless it's just a model for looks that you aren't really going to park trains in. 

And you were asking about if it were possible to direct trains in a certain direction at the top and bottom of the helix. Yes is the quick answer. I've got a PSX-AR auto-reverse module that has a turnout decoder built in, that can switch a turnout depending on the polarity of the auto-reverse, so a train moving in one direction would switch the turnout one way, and a train in the opposite direction will switch it the other. With some creative thinking that could be made to work for your purposes, or something like it. There are other photocell detectors and such products out there that can throw turnouts for you automatically, in conjunction with a Digitrax DS64 almost anything of that nature is possible. No computer program needed. Although, if you do use block detection and a computer program, lots of magic can happen! You are thinking of using a round helix to get trains from the top to the bottom and back, but also consider the possibilities of a long helix. A long oval looking helix can get the trains up and down with less turns, less turns means less loss of power on the incline. And from the way it looks, you could have a very long incline that could take the train from top to bottom without any turns except in the corners of the layout. Just one long hill hidden in the back like that return track, that would emerge somewhere at the opposite end of the layout. Not saying that the round helix is a bad idea, just bringing up some options you might want to consider.

With all those thoughts on the table, I really like what you've got so far. It looks like a very good layout for both scenery opportunities and operations. And remember, planning is half the fun! It's easy to make changes on paper, once you begin construction, changes will not come so easily. So if it takes a hundred drafts, nothing lost right? The longer you plan, the easier the build will be!