About ready to build - Looking for feedback/support

Hi Jsolo53!  Welcome to the forum!  Congratulations on acquiring a nice sized space.  I'm not very good at SCARM and have had great help from others here on this Forum.  It would be helpful if you laid out the room dimensions, including doors windows, obstacles, and any space that is off limits.

Mark, thank you for the welcome!

Here's a pdf of the Scarm file.  It fits in the 24' 11" x 7' space I'm looking to use.  There are no obstacles within that space. One long side and the right hand short side butt up to finished walls.  About 4' of the left side butts up to the closet wall.  No doors, windows or other obstacles on the portions of the walls involved.  I reached the free Scarm piece limit so some of the outer loop curved sections are not shown.  The plan is for an outer loop O-72 curve at the left end and O-63 at the right end.

I completed you layout and naturally couldn't resist make some changes.

Jan

Welcome to the Forum!

Nice plan and great vision…….one question……I assume the the curved turnout on the lower left is O72/O54. Have you ever used one before? The power rail gap is not forgiving to shorter engines that may experience loss of power at slower (and more prototypical speeds).

This is a layout I started building in 2011. I used four Atlas O72/O54 switches……they worked great but within 2 years I replaced them with straight switches that had shorter power gaps. I got tired of my diesel switchers and short steamers going dead on the switch at slow speeds. It looks like you have a straight stretch where you could replace it.

Just my 2 cents based on experience…..and, btw, Atlas is a great track brand……

Peter

A good start.  Some feedback:

1. What is a long train for you?  For me, a "long train" is 15 40'/50' cars, 8 72' passenger cars, or 9 extruded aluminum cars.  This dictates the shape of the layout.
2. Some things are mutually exclusive.  An example would be a 24' layout and a 30 hopper car train.
3. Are you interested in postwar style accessories?  They need space in accessible areas.
4. Access.  The crossover in the upper right corner is hard to access.
5. Do you have any conventional equipment that you want to run?  Need to make provisions for conventional trains.  Someone may bring a guest engine.
6. What is your biggest potential locomotive purchase?  That affects track centers.  Big, heavy locomotives are hard to move around.  I have a Milwaukee Road bipolar and a Lionel scale sized PRR turbine.  Both need 2 hands to pick up.
7. Consider an elevated section for the 3rd train.

I "second the motion" about action accessories; they give your railroad reasons for being, as:
   * a logging area to provide tree logs for a sawmill
   * a dairy farm that ships milk in cans (or in milk tank cars) to a distant dairy facility
   * a coal mine & tipple that provides coal to a coal-fired power plant with an adjacent Coal Unloading Ramp
   * an oil field that feeds oil to an oil pipeline terminal
   * various industrial buildings - my favorite is a brewery (but re-purposed as a "Root Beer Bottling Plant").

   For passenger service:
   * a city passenger terminal
   * a rural or deep suburban station

For a downtown area:
  *  lots of structures are available; the iconic MTH Fire Station and Mel's Diner are fun to watch favorites
   * a City park with playground rides for kids.

Let your imagination soar.  You have the benefit of LOTS of space!

Carry on, regardless ...

Mike M.   LCCA 12394

.

Couple of things I can see. If the layout is up against a wall, be careful with access. I built a U shaped layout and I kept the width like 36" or so, and reach in some places is tough (I tried to always have reach to every point on the layout, but there are places where it is difficult, like trying to solder wire to the rails).

With all those switches, be really careful when wiring them, it is really easy when doing so many to kind of lose track of what you are doing (as I well know) Besides labelling the wires from the switch to the controller (I don't know if you plan on using a control panel or fascia mounting them to be near the turnouts or if you plan on using the AIU control of the switch machines) it is very easy to lose track of things (my layout is like 9x14, but I have roughly a dozen switches).

Someone mentioned stalling on the o54/072 switches. There is a way to wire that if you run into problems with that, using relays to avoid that (I am using dz1000 switch machines, I bought the relays to do this with my ross #6 crossovers, but didn't wire them in unless I find I need them).

You should be able to run three trains, since you have passing siding capability with the 2 mains, so that should be good.

You have a lot of sidings that should make for some fun switching fun, or as staging fortrains if that is your desire.

One thing to think about this design is what you want out of the layout. If you are into running multiple trains and having the visual look of cars sitting on sidings , this layout as designed is great. But if you also envision having a layout with a scenic plan, having a lot of tracks can work against that. I probably have much more track on my plan than I should have, for sure, but if I wanted to have a dual track mainline (I love trains passing each other going the other way kind of thing) and the kind of layout where I can have cars staged on sidings, engine sitting and waiting,etc, it meant having more track density and thus I won't have as much scenery options as if I used less track and had more space for scenery.

It isn't this design is wrong, it is just since you are in the design stage thinking about the vision for the layout, is it to run trains, or do you see a high rail scenicked layout you see in OGRR magazine or MR?  Obviously as I am already figuring out what I wanted originally and what I was able to build don't fully match (on paper, I thought I had a small dock scene possible, given the reality of the space I had I don't think it is going to work (at least as originally envisioned, might be able to model the approach to a small car float and leave it to the imagination.  It is why people modify layouts or redo them, that is part of the fun of the hobby, and thus if you build the layout and find it doesn't fit your vision, or the vision changes, you have reset capability

I agree with others, if you want to run conventional engines, either your own or if a friend visits, you may want to have the capability to run conventional. There are a variety of ways to achieve this with your layout. One way is to block wire it for standard conventional wiring, which if you have a transformer you can control them via 'the handle'. You also can use a Lionel powermaster that allows the Legacy base to vary track power to run conventional engines. If you have/get a lionel ZW-L transformer, the legacy base can vary the output on them, bypassing the need for powermasters.

Another question, not with the plan, has to do with control. Do you plan on running only Lionel command equipment (TMCC/Legacy/Lionchief)? The reason I ask is that if you have any possible thoughts of running MTH equipment with DCS, you may want in your wiring scheme to take that into consideration, even as a future option. DCS because it uses the center rail to send the signal, has unique considerations. The big one (to me) is having 'power districts' (basically electrically isolated segments, similar to block wiring), because there can only be one dcs signal input per segment. Having one dcs signal on a layout your size likely wouldn't work, it is very different than TMCC/Legacy in that regards.Not a hard thing to do when laying track, just using insulating pins or cutting a gap in the middle rail and having power feed to all the segments (one per).DCS also has a bit easier conventional control, the WIU has variable outputs that besides putting out the dcs signal, also can vary the power, to operate conventionally.

Congrats on getting to this point! And if it ever  gets you frustrated about how slow it seems to be going, you can always use me as an example and say "no matter how slow it is going, that guy is slower than a snail struggling through 90 weight gear oil at the North Pole in January"

Speaking of root beer bottling plants. . .the Dad's Root Beer plant was alongside the C & NW Northwest Line just north of Diversey in Chicago.  It had a large "Dad's Root Beer" sign visible from the Kennedy Expressway.  Since recycled into condos.

I created my own beer brand, "Jesuit Beer", with beer reefers to match.  If the Christian Brothers can brew wine, the Jesuits can brew beer.  (Christian Brothers high school and Jesuit college).

Wow!!  Thank you all for your replies.

I've attached a basement floor plan.  The layout will back up to the long wall with the 9" bumpout.  I've incorporated a couple of the suggestions to the track plan.  Thank you Jan and Peter.  An updated track plan is attached.  The yard and some outer loop curved sections are omitted due to the 100 part limit of free Scarm.

I do have several postwar accessories - Station platform and lots of street lights, icing station, dispatch board, hot dog stand, horse car and corral ...  I've been thinking the empty area on the right will be a town and the one on the left will be a yard and a place for the accessories.  I'm open to your input on this.

So far, the layout is one flat surface.  I'd like to change that.  Hope to add elevations with scenery to include a bridge or two.

For the blocks and signals I plan to use insulated sections of outer rail.  I've no experience with MTH DCS.  Are isolated sections of center rail the only track change required?  Perhaps a member could point me towards a thread on the topic.  Ditto for block wiring for conventional.

Regarding train length, 15 and more freight cars is what I like.  Currently I have two loops on a 4 x 8 with O-27 curves and I'll run 15 cars behind a single diesel locomotive on the outer loop.  It's so long that there's only two car lengths or so between the locomotive and the caboose.

Power and control wise, I may have gotten ahead of myself.  I do not own any digital control equipment - everything is conventional.  I do have two TMCC locomotives - so far.  I own a postwar ZW and two KW's.  I think that will cover the power requirements.  Diodes and fast blow fuses are installed inline.

@Jsolo53 I must say, @bigkid made a lot of comments that I have been dealing with.  My layout is in an 11x11 room, and to make for interesting runs, I have too much track considering I wanted to model Appalachian scenes and trains battling the grades.  You have enough space to do what I think you want to do, though I don't know if you want to include operating accessories and or some expansive scenery. 

I run DCS and TMCC, and while I got everything wired well, I don't make use of all the features the AIUs are wired for.  Even running slow trains, trying to run two trains can be tricky for me.  Given my available space and desires, I probably should be working in a smaller scale. 

@Jsolo53 posted:

Wow!!  Thank you all for your replies.

I've attached a basement floor plan.  The layout will back up to the long wall with the 9" bumpout.  I've incorporated a couple of the suggestions to the track plan.  Thank you Jan and Peter.  An updated track plan is attached.  The yard and some outer loop curved sections are omitted due to the 100 part limit of free Scarm.

I do have several postwar accessories - Station platform and lots of street lights, icing station, dispatch board, hot dog stand, horse car and corral ...  I've been thinking the empty area on the right will be a town and the one on the left will be a yard and a place for the accessories.  I'm open to your input on this.

So far, the layout is one flat surface.  I'd like to change that.  Hope to add elevations with scenery to include a bridge or two.

For the blocks and signals I plan to use insulated sections of outer rail.  I've no experience with MTH DCS.  Are isolated sections of center rail the only track change required?  Perhaps a member could point me towards a thread on the topic.  Ditto for block wiring for conventional.

Regarding train length, 15 and more freight cars is what I like.  Currently I have two loops on a 4 x 8 with O-27 curves and I'll run 15 cars behind a single diesel locomotive on the outer loop.  It's so long that there's only two car lengths or so between the locomotive and the caboose.

Power and control wise, I may have gotten ahead of myself.  I do not own any digital control equipment - everything is conventional.  I do have two TMCC locomotives - so far.  I own a postwar ZW and two KW's.  I think that will cover the power requirements.  Diodes and fast blow fuses are installed inline.

Welcome to the Forum. I like the plan overall. Only comment on the operating accessories is to have them readily accessible, especially for little hands, AKA- grandchildren.

I'd recommend circuit breakers to replace the fuses. TVS diodes are a must, breakers are reset-able, fuses are replaceable....and that gets old fast.

Bob

A second for circuit breakers and TVS diodes - cheap and easy insurance for expensive engines.

Suggest a maximum reach of less than 24", either from the perimeter or via access holes.  Even though it may be possible to reach farther than that, reaching while doing work that requires tools or dexterity is challenging.

@Mark Boyce posted:

@Jsolo53 I must say, @bigkid made a lot of comments that I have been dealing with.  My layout is in an 11x11 room, and to make for interesting runs, I have too much track considering I wanted to model Appalachian scenes and trains battling the grades.  You have enough space to do what I think you want to do, though I don't know if you want to include operating accessories and or some expansive scenery.

I run DCS and TMCC, and while I got everything wired well, I don't make use of all the features the AIUs are wired for.  Even running slow trains, trying to run two trains can be tricky for me.  Given my available space and desires, I probably should be working in a smaller scale. 

The problem with smaller scales is...they are smaller *lol*. I have been fiddling getting my DZ1000 machines/controller leds to work right, and have learned just how small they are and how easy it is to lose them and how hard they can be to put in with old eyes and big fingers *lol*. I saw a z scale layout the other day and it might as well have been ants as seen at 10k feet.

@bigkid posted:

The problem with smaller scales is...they are smaller *lol*. I have been fiddling getting my DZ1000 machines/controller leds to work right, and have learned just how small they are and how easy it is to lose them and how hard they can be to put in with old eyes and big fingers *lol*. I saw a z scale layout the other day and it might as well have been ants as seen at 10k feet.

Yes, you are right about small things.  I know what you mean about those DZ1000 LEDs.  I didn't finish all of them and have just put off doing the rest.  I might never finish doing them.

I would just say that as you go, take time to admire your accomplishments and search for enjoyment in a different quadrant of the layout every day.  There are always things that we see that make us question how we could have done this or that differently.  Basically, find reasons to fawn over your layout as opposed to fixing it.  This will get you running trains and enjoying it so much faster.