Very nice trackplan and article! Everything seems well balanced. I appreciate that there is not more than one deck (apart from the staging). When searching for inspiration in published trackplans, I often get a bit intimidated by all the helixes and levels (not to mention the complicated liftouts you have to build for those 3-deck layouts), since I'd rather spend my time on the phases coming after benchwork construction.

Well done and thank you!

 I really think the "relaxed" concept is right for this layout theme.  It needs to represent the "wide open spaces" and the elevator "environment".  I designed a smaller layout with a similar theme but moved before I got beyond benchwork and a little track.  Someday...

Byron, please consider writing a layout design book!

Great job!

I appreciate the comments. This was a nice change-of-pace project to work on, since many of my clients have visions for their layouts that demand more compression. I wasn't able to clear copyrights for one photo I really wanted to use that epitomized the feeling of these upper midwest towns.

This linked image is a photo of Angus, MN (probably in the early 1900s) from the collection of Michael Johnson. I found the photo on the Great Northern Empire site, which has a lot of GN information.

As far as a layout design book, it's on the list to do someday.

Glad you enjoyed the article, and thanks to MRH for the opportunity.

Dear Byron, ever since I entered "layoutvision" for the first time; I enjoy a lot your work. On the recent trend of "helixes" & "double deck" layouts, a relaxed approach seems what I would look forward in the future for the construction of my own yet to be "NACIONALES DE MEXICO, RAILWAYS" layout. I specially liked the sectional approach that would let you rearrange chunks of the layout in case a sudden move happens.

Muchas gracias for a magnificent article: Alejandro Ramirez "Guadalupe" from sunnyside but polluted Mexico City.

A change to see a more relaxed track plan, especially one that is also suitable for one man operations. It gives the feel of the wide open spaces and more laid back approach!

Brian

I really like this layout design.  It looks fun to operate and has some decent scenic potential.  Well done!

I appreciate the kind remarks. Credit must go to the client, too, whose concept was for something a little more visually realistic. He reports that he has some benchwork built and has started trackwork at New Flora. He thinks the resulting scene looks even more open and spacious in 3-D than on the track plan.

Both this plan and the CN/CP one in the latest MRPlanning where there are more scenic scenes than town/switching-puzzles has got me wondering if I need to 'relax' my trackplan a little. I know I like switching but have spent LOTS of time trackside in remote/pretty locations and might end up a little disatisfied if its all town,town,town...

Thanks to you, your client and the MRH editors for making me think...

Bob Courtney

I enjoyed this plan quite a lot. When I first saw how open it was I had to check to make sure its not N scale. This is going to be a lot of fun for your client to build and should be fun to play with operate with even one town completed.

Putting the yard in the middle rather then at either end by staging is going to make for some fun putting trains together. Now a logical case can be made for assembling two local turns, one for each direction. Trains will get to show themselves without immediately entering a yard and being broken up.

I also noticed that you mentioned you could use "Broad Curves" but that those were 30"R. I had always throught that 24-30 would be considered relatively tight. Perhaps I need to rethink the standards I am trying to apply when I design in HO. Its been hard for me to scale the expectations I have from  N into an HO world.

Regards,

Chris

The traditional idea on curves in ho has been that 18" radius is tight, 24" would be considered a medium and 30" would be considered broad.  These recomendations date back to the Lynn Westcott days at MR.  Today with modern long diesels and long highly detailed freight cars or long detailed passenger cars, the radius might need to be increased.  Since I model the 1950's except on a home switching layout to be built to operate a single Cf7 and freight cars no longer than 60 feet, I have no experience with the long modern diesels.  I have run scale 85 foot passenger cars behind Alco Pa's and E units on the modular layout, but we have a 36 inch minimum radius for the mainline standard in the modular club I belong to.

Nice essay on a "relaxed" layout design. The discussion about the trade offs of whether or not to pack as much (or not) activity into a layout is an important consideration.

These layout design discussions interesting and helpful.

I have about six months before the occupant of my layout room is off to college.   There seems to a revison everytimes a discussion like this comes up. (A good thing.)

I also noticed that you mentioned you could use "Broad Curves" but that those were 30"R. I had always throught that 24-30 would be considered relatively tight. Perhaps I need to rethink the standards I am trying to apply when I design in HO. Its been hard for me to scale the expectations I have from  N into an HO world.

"Broad curve" is slightly relative. Generally, the relationships that you are used to in N scale carry over, just mathematically adjusted for the difference in scale. So curves we N scalers think of as fairly tight (say 11" R), scale out to about 20 1/4" in HO -- and are also fairly tight. Many room-sized HO scale layouts are built around 24" R (just over 13" in N scale), although this can limit equipment to a significant degree (easements help).

So by comparison, for many layouts that are actually built (not just dreamed about), 30" R is pretty broad. 48" HO curves would be great. But they don't fit practically in this (or most) rooms -- if you want a peninsula with a "blob" at the end. You have to consider the typical 1:1 room as well as a purely theoretical radius. That's especially true for a layout like this that will move to a new unknown space at least once in its life.

It seems that 28" Radius in HO scale will handle nearly everything except some particularly stiff brass engines -- especially with easements. That's a "go to" number I use a lot when space is a bit tight but the desire is to run nearly all equipment.

N scalers are fortunate in that broader relative curves fit better in typical rooms than the equivalent curve in HO.

It seems that 28" Radius in HO scale will handle nearly everything

28 Had been what I had been working toward for mainline if for no other reason then I had read some other period modelers using that, but had become insecure about larger passenger cars and started to try to fit larger curves. The down side to turn-of-the-century modeling.. while freight cars are tiny, passenger service and its larger cars are ubiquitous. 22" would be broad for my 36 foot boxcar (yeah I have only one right now..).

I read an interview with John Armstrong where he said that one of the most common mistakes people make in layout design is trying to use too large a radius for their space. Probably something I have been guilty of.

This weekend I operated on someone's layout that had a little pocket yard at one end of the line.. a three track siding, a four track yard, and a few small industries in a space that had to be no more then 7-8 foot long and 2-2.5 feet wide. In the course of my session operating it I had several passenger trains come through incluing one with five cars. It was fun to operate and was plenty big enough for what it needed to do. I think it really made the case that I have been thinking "too big" in HO and that I can get very satisfying operation in more heavily compressed scenes.

Thanks for the feedback.

Chris

The optimal radius really depends on what sort of railroad you are building. My club plans to run helpers up 2% grades and trains including 89-foot trailer flats. At home, the longest cars handled will be 33K propane tank cars and lots of 57-foot reefers.  My diesels will be Geeps on the branch and nothing bigger than a C30-7 on the main --  no turbines, no Challengers, no Big Boys.  So I'm setting minimums accordingly and still plan to use 40-inch curves where I can find room.

Here is some good advice on determining track radii from the very first issue ever of Model Railroad Hobbyist: http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/mrh2009-01/curve_insights

I am very familiar with the article and the LDSIG article that preceeded it but thanks for the reference.

In my N-scale days a 50' boxcar at 3.75" would have a 4x of 15" R. Very manageable. If I wanted to account for the conists of diesel locomotives I would need 18"R for 4x. I settled on 16" as a comprimise. A blob, not even really a blob, fits well inside a 36" wide penninsula maintaining an optimal (to me) 18"R reach in on both sides.

The problem I am having with HO is reconciling the needs of the majority of traffic (36' boxcars) which is about 5" or a 4x of 20 " R(!!!) vs an 80 foot passenger car which would be 33" at 3x. In addition, its unclear how to treat things that do not fit the two truck model like a steam locomotive. I need to find the worthy comprimise and don't have the same sense of these things as I do with N which I have worked with for years and operate on a weekly basis.

So, thats where I am coming from. I recommend the aforementioned article to anyone as a good starting point, but it is not a panacea.

In any case, my original post was just to notice that a 30" R would be considered broad in a general sense. I found Byron's qualification:

for many layouts that are actually built (not just dreamed about), 30" R is pretty broad

to be very enlightening. I would rather build the layout with sharper curves then dream of the one with broad curves.. something that is more of an issue in HO then in N where you can pretty much go to broader curves the moment you move off the door..

Regards,

Chris

Do you already own the biggest steam engine you are likely to use on your layout?  Put in a straight section of track a foot or two long on one of the 8 foot sides and then transition a wide curve to the opposite edge.  It doesn't need to be a full 90 degrees to serve the purpose.  In fact you could do a 30 inch radius on one end and a 28 inch oon the other end.  Hold the track down with some caulk or similar material that you could lift easily with a putty knife when you are done.  Then test run your locomotive and longest equipment.  If it works on 28 inches, Then lift he track and lay some at 26 inches and 24 inches and test over again.  Use the cheapest plywood you can get and saw horses to support it.  Just use jumper wires with alligator clips to provide an electrical connection from your power supply or dcc to the track.  You won't be building anything permanent here, just a test curve to see what works and what looks best to you.  Presuming that the first test shows your equipment to work well on 28 & 30 inches and you then pull up the track and lay it at 24 & 26 inch radius for a retest, and allowing overnight for the caulk to cure between tests, you should be able to complete the testing in a week.  

You can't really say what the minimum radius needs to be until you test, especially with steam.  Some steam engines have blind center drivers and lots of side slip on the driver axles to allow them to run on tighter radius curves.  Brass locomotives in their dedication to being prototypically accurate are often the least practical for tighter radius curves.  

The idea here is to know what your equipment will handle before you design and build your layout.  Also remember that industrial switching districts probably won't be running either big mainline steam, or passenger equipment.  If you are modeling railroading today, you might need to allow a large enough radius to handle 85-89 foot freight cars, but if you are modeling the 1950's-1960's your longest freight cars will probably be in the 60 foot range (mill gons, and maybe auto boxcars).  In other words, set the radius on your industrial spurs to match the equipment that will be switched on them.  If you are running diesel, use 4 axle sw or gp type diesels for industrial switching.  If running steam, use 2-6-0, 2-6-2, 2-8-0 or 2-8-2 power to switch out the industries.

I hope these ideas are helpful for you.

I should only have smaller locomotives, 4-6-0 would be the biggest. For instance, Bachman's ten wheeler.

My worry is passenger cars. My interest in HO is to model 1900-1910 period (year TBD, probably 1908). I still love N for diesel era but all my friends do that so i wanted to go another direction and I love the reserch. The "typical" passenger train would be 60-70 footers which I could probably get away using a roundhouse 50' to represent. Who would know? The only picture I have of that train is a blurry shot from a distance. However, if I model what I am considering there would need to be one Pullman train (Bar Harbor Express) which would require 70-80 foot cars and is well documented. The cars would need to be shoved right down to the docks.

Your advice is good.. I own almost no HO equipment so I am somewhat stuck there.. but I should be able to borrow some stuff to try on a friend's HO layout as an interim step. For instance, to test possible helix designs I borrowed a friends 4-4-0 and put shorty covered hoppers (its a modern layout) to simulate my typical freight to see the performance on what I consider to be a pretty tight and steep helix, 2+% at 24". It was about 11 cars on the bottom and 15 cars near the middle and top which leads me to believe there is a spike in the grade at the start but I am going off topic..

Chris

I haven't run a 4-6-0, and don't remember seeing one run, but I have run Bachmann 2-8-0, Athearn Genesis 2-8-2, and Bachmann 2-10-0.  The 2-8-0 and 2-8-2 worked fine in a tight radius curve in the switching district of one module (I'm guessing 15-18 inch radius, but not sure).  The decapod needed a longer radius, but I think 20 was ok for it.  I would guess that a 4-6-0 would work on any radius that their 2-8-0 would handle.

To test your pullman train for radius, you don't need to have the exact pullman cars.  The 50 foot roundhouse cars would work the same as a 50 foot boxcar in terms of radius required.  For a 70-80 foot pullman, do you have any friends with any of the Walthers 85 foot streamlined cars or even older Rivarosi or Con-cor 85 footers?  In the case of con-cor, be careful, they made both full length 85 foot and "shorty" 72 foot streamliners.  If you know anyone with long cars, you can test the radius with them.

By the way, manufacturers have used talgo or truck mounted couplers to get longer cars to handle tighter radius curves.  The problem is that pulling a car with talgo trucks using a locomotive with body mounted couplers causes the talgo trucks to tend to derail while pulling and in ho talgo trucks will be guaranteed to derail when pushed by anything.  A trick you can use for long passenger cars is to "body mount" the couplers on a long piece of styrene that is mounted to swivel on the truck mounting screws.  You just can't use diaphragms between the cars because the interference between the diaphragms on tight curves will derail the cars.  The long shank of the coupler mount will allow the car to handle a tighter radius because of coupler swing, but when you push the car the pushing force is transmitted to the frame at the truck mounting screw instead of pushing the trucks causing side force to derail the car.

Not all 85' passenger cars are created equal when it comes to bending them around tight radii curves.

S curves, such as those occuring in a crossover are the worst because the ends of adjacent cars want to go in opposite directions as the car ends traverse the crossover.

Cars with standard body mounted couplers and working diaphrams are the most persnickity, especially if the diaphrams 'attach' to each other, either with a tang or magnets.

I've found my Walthers cars which are advertised as going around a 22" radius are a lot more comfortable on those dread 30" curves being previously discussed. Modifying the diaphrams should make them much happier. I'd expect that trying to shove a set of these cars through any thing tighter than a #6 crossover would lead to difficulty. On the plus side, the Walters cars look pretty nice and I didn't have wheel gauge problems.

I have some Bachman Spectrum 85' heavy weight cars which have articulated couplers, not talgo, but they swivel like mad when going around a curve. These are perfectly happy on quite tight radii curves and crossovers (diaphrams don't touch each other). I'd recommend checking the wheel gauge before buying - of the 4 cars I purchased, none of 'em had all their wheels in gauge and changing wheels on these cars is an ordeal (please let me know if you have a good way to do this!)

Cheers,

Charlie