1st run

You're off & running! Paul Keep up the good work! J Revenaugh

An exciting time!

Getting the golden spike in the mainline is for sure a really exciting time!

Keep it up, there's more to come.

Charlie

Great progress

You've made great progress in a very short period of time, Paul. Very impressive! The long train and somewhat exaggerated speed show that your track work is very well done. Keep up the good work, and keep updating us on your progress. It's going to be fun to watch the layout develop over time.

Tom Patterson

Great job Paul

Paul, that's a great looking layout.  Congratulations on the first run!  I like your layout plan - very creative use of the space for what seems like a very long run, and all the curves and tunnels seem very fitting for the locale.  I'm a "plan fan", so it was fun to watch the videos - the long train helped me to make sense of what went where in the plan.  Any chance you can share the lower level staging plan so we can see how this all fits together?

Question:  The middle track that passes under the bridge to the right of Bluefield yard - is that strictly a yard lead, or are there two mainlines entering Bluefield from that direction?

Track Plan

Joe,

Glad you liked the track plan. Like you, I love to pour over track plans too.

I tried to devise a plan to have as long of a mainline run as possible in my rather limited space, without it looking like a bowl of spaghetti. To do that successfully, I try to break the layout up into various scenic sections and try to imagine in my mind how things might look in real life. If you include the mainline track that's part of the lower level staging and the two helixes, I have a total mainline run of about 230 feet. Since I usually operate my layouts by myself, that is a long enough stretch to let me work a switcher in the yard, or run a local way freight to switch industries, while letting a train run on the mainline, without it going by every minute or so. 

Here's that track plan for the lower level staging to satisfy your curiosity. Since it's a lower level, I tried to keep it as simple and basic as possible for ease of maintenance. Besides leaving one track open for the main if I want to let trains run around the layout, I have tracks to hold four through freight trains of about 30-35 cars in length. You'll notice I did not design into the layout any kind of reversing loops to turn trains around, though it would have been fairly easy to do so. I might change that later on down the road. But at this point I don't think it's needed. I have a "sequence" schedule planned for operating sessions that intersperses through freights with local way freights. Two staged through freights in each direction will give me more than enough hours worth of operation for each session. 

That other middle track you asked about to the right of the Bluefield yard is in fact nothing but a switching lead. I'm sure prototype railroads probably don't have yard leads that go into a tunnel like this, but I wanted a longer lead than was possible without the tunnel, so something had to give! But I guess that's the challenge of designing all our layouts, isnt it?  

Paul Krentz

Helixes

I understand your helixes are 24" radius and canted outward to prevent string-lining with your 35 car freights. I would like to know how you came up with the amount of 'tilt' and how long a train of correctly weighted cars do you think your helixes would allow without the tilt. I to have a section (1 turn)of a helix at 24" radius and am concerned about this issue. Also, how steep is your grade in the helixes?

Scott Haycock

Re: Helix

Scott,

There was nothing scientific about the amount of outside camber that I built into my helix. I had some leftover 1/16" vinyl sheet used for a bathroom project lying around that I cut into small strips and laid under the inside tie edge. It looked ok and worked in my initial trials, so I went with it. I used varying lengths of masking tape cut into thin strips to make a ramp that leads into the vinyl strips.

The grade on my one 3 turn helix is about 2%. To get that I cut the clearance between helix layers down to the bare minimum I could get away with. I have one high cube boxcar that I used to determine that height, which ended up being a 3 1/4" seperation from the top of one helix spiral to the top of the other. If you didn't want to run a high cube box, you could even get it lower than that and reduce the grade more.

The cars I use have not been weighted to NMRA standards. They are the stock weight right out of the box. I do however put Intermountain wheelsets on on my cars to reduce rolling friction, and go over all the trucks once with a Micro-Mark truck cleaner. I'm not sure how many cars I would be able to run up my helix if it didn't have the outside camber as I never tried that. One reader commented about the helix on my first blog post because his club was having some helix problems. He seemed to think without the outside camber I would not be able to run the length of trains that I am.  

I had an earlier N scale layout with a helix and the first time I tried to run a train up it all the cars pulled off the track to the inside of the curve and landed on the floor a scale 1000' below. Not good! I had to re-engineer that layout. Not wanting to risk that happening again, I planned to use outside camber on this layout from the beginning. I've been extremely happy with the results and haven't had a single problem. 

Hope this helps!

Paul Krentz

N&W Pokey District, Sub 1 3/4