Be careful with you switches, you have drawn #2 or #3 switches, so the actual switches will take up much more room. 

I suggest buying a switch or a left and right of the switches you want to use, the photocopying them  and using the photocopies to layout of what you want full size on the layout, on pieces of cardboard/paper or the floor.  You can put down some flex track and set a few cars around to see the relative sizes of stuff.

The longest route through the most switches is 5 switches, with #4 at about 9" long that consumes 45" of 104". So you have a max of 59" non-switch track to play with.  If you want two cars past the runaround, one car at the elevator, 2 cars at the food place that is 5 cars at about 8" per car or a min of 40" of track   That leaves about 19" to play with.

If you go to #5 or #6 switches, the amount consumed by the switches goes up to 10" and 12" per switch respectively.

With #6 switches, 5 switches are 60", leaves 44".  5 cars is 40", that leaves 4" to play with.

 "I'm not good with proportion and aren't sure if I will be able to fit it all on there or even more.."

      My favorite way to design small layout like this is to get some turnouts and place them in possible positions till I find the arrangement I like best.This gives a chance to see how many cars can fit on each track, how the buildings can fit, etc. I like your preliminary plan, looks like it has interesting scenery and switching opportunities, you might consider adding removable switching leads to each end so longer cuts of cars can be featured, just boards with track on them and some way to temporarily attach them is required......DaveB  

I did forget to mention that. I was planning on some type of removable lead that would attach to the right hand end by the "hill". But yes, good point. I know I don't have much space past those switches for the siding.

I never even thought about copying the switches. I'll have to do that to help lay this out. I was planning on using number 4 or 5 switches in the sidings but I have two number 6's, which I was going to use coming off the main, into the siding. 

Peco templates are the simplest way to layout a track plan.

http://www.peco-uk.com/imageselector/Files/Track-templates/c83/SL-8361%20&%20SL-8362.pdf

This link is for number 6 turnouts, their site has several other configurations.  Regardless of turnout manufcturer, the Peco templates are an excellent resource.

if you use Peco code 83,here are there templates,hope these help

http://www.peco-uk.com/page.asp?id=tempc83

Ray

Looking at your plan, I decided to get it close to scale and make some revisions.

First of all, had you considered making a Free-Mo module. All that you would need to do is add 6" to the depth, which it looks like you are going to need for that ADM elevator kit.  See http://www.free-mo.org/ for more info. This would allow your layout to flip if needed or wanted directionally and allow you to connect to anyone else with modules or to your own additional modules in the future.

The plan below is close to scale but not perfect. Some details to help navigate it.

• All turnouts are #6. Don't go less, modern equipment won't look good on #4s.
• Track centerlines are spaced at 2".
• Cars are roughly 60'.
• The locomotive is roughly 65' - "Pointed ends and cab". This is a typical SD unit length.

Here are some of the alterations I recommend:

• Think about switching moves and how much space they need. This is ESSENTIAL. Draw your plan on paper to scale and create some cardboard locomotives/ cars to scale and move them around on your plan. You can get software to do this as well. Many problems will reveal themselves here.
• Remove most of your industries and sidings. A refrigeration/warehouse business is a great industry to model. So is an elevator. Add a team track that will allow any car to be placed there to deliver goods. You shouldn't need anymore than that and if you do an operation session by yourself, this could take well over an hour if you switched all of the spots.
• Keep some space open, especially on your side of the layout. Whether it is parking lots, vacant lots, highways, or just open space, have plenty of this. Not only does it allow room for your arm to reach in and uncouple cars without knocking things over, but it allows your buildings breathing room and adds realism.

I am designing a roughly 2'x10' layout to Free-Mo standards with a 3' extension on it and have a very similar track plan that works. Check out Lance Mindheim's books and layouts on small layout design and operation as well. Last of all, check out any of the Iowa Interstate modelers and their layouts. You might get some inspiration. Let me know if you have further questions.

Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Burlington Northern 3D Prints and Models

https://www.shapeways.com/shops/sean-p-murphy-designs

 

The Willmar Line: 1950 Great Northern - 1970 Burlington Northern

https://gnbnkandiyohi.blogspot.com/​

 

Sean P Murphy

Model Railroader magazine just did an article on not putting too many industries on your spurs. Good advice. There’s not so much ‘open space’ where railroads run other than farm fields, as most lots are parking or storage in the kind of place you have in mind, but open space without buildings is very good advice.

I have a sort-of shelf layout by concept, which goes around the room into the center of the room. I would agree with almost all the advice posted so far. With a layout as small as yours, there’s no reason why you can’t draw it out on paper, full-size. That’s where the photocopies of the turnouts will come in real handy. I did that with posterboard on mine, when working on siding lengths and turnout types.  I also placed the structures I already had (or paper cutouts showing the footprint) to check for how they’d fit. It worked well for me and nothing surprised me when I started placing stuff on the layout itself.

Just a few things:

• Your sidings will always be too short. Make them as long as you can.
• Allow as much lead as you can for any siding. I’ve seen people build layouts where the lead for a turnout is exactly the length of the locomotive from the edge. Heck, I did that myself on a shelf layout I built as a teen, but it turned out to be not that big a deal in my case.

You can never have too much detail or too many trees on a layout.

I used Xtrakcad to design my layout and it works great.  Templates for all the major brands are included.  Takes a little learning but I figured it out and I'm blond.  LOL  Its free too.  https://sourceforge.net/projects/xtrkcad-fork/

                                        Good luck,

                                                                   Joan

I used XTrackCad and found it hard to use. If you can use Windows, the last few years I've preferred SCARM (no Mac or Linux version):

http://www.scarm.info/

It's free. It's actually the same tool rebranded by Atlas on their software section. There's a large library of sectional track available (many vendors, many scales), support for flex track, and a few good tutorials to get started. 

A note of warning: these tools are never super accurate, or more exactly they are only as accurate as the data they collected to create their track libraries, especially for the turnouts (it's hard to go wrong with 3' of flex track).

If software and clicking right and left is not your thing, nothing beats printing turnout templates and aligning them on your shelf.