any armchair designers out there?

HI Rob and welcome to the best source of advice and help ANYWHERE for your project!

Stand back and be ready for an onslaught of great ideas and photos. You  seem to have a really nice area to start with size-wise.

I would second your choice of ScaleTrax as we had a nice fairly large layout using it and I was completely satisfied with it - especially the visual impact. It has the lowest profile rail of any (which increases the apparent size and massiveness of your locomotives) and the center 'blade' is much less obtrusive than the rail used by all the others. The tie spacing comes under criticism for being slightly too far apart but we found that we quickly adjusted to it and it was fine. 

So many layouts are paved with track, and go around and around, with no holiday tree

in sight, so mine is point to point with reversing means, loop and wye at each end.  The intent is to operate it like a real railroad...possible in a large space, with trains starting, traveling, and terminating.  What I am finding is that industry structures, their sidings,  and yards take up a LOT of space.   # 4 or #6 switches take a lot of

room to leave the main.  Better to do measurements, with some track program, and with a vision of that, see how much room you have for yards and supporting industry.  Without a barn size metal pole building, I am finding it hard to get even the planned stations into available space.  I am thinking I am going to lay all the track out on the floor, at least roughly, to see how much I have to curtail.  But avoiding that, paper/

cardboard outlines of them...which used to be available for some gauges.....haven't heard of them in O 3 rail, at least, lately.  What looks like a big, empty room, looks

a lot smaller when switches are put in place.

such a large space sounds like a daunting task, but it really isn't.  only once did i have a space that large (40' x 45') to work with and that was even a 3-rail layout with O96 min radius.  the way i started was to find a 3-4" size jar top.  peanut butter or tomato sauce jars are a good size (~3-3.5" diameter).  make that your minimum radius and scale a piece of paper (pick up a ream of 11x17 or even C-size paper) to the room dimensions.  then just start lightly drawing circles and arcs and joining tangent lines connecting the curves.  avoid laying straight track parallel to walls or aisles.  pretty soon you'll have a path for your two track mainline and once that is established, it's a lot easier to focus on the details.

good luck...gary

Get a good program like www.RRTrack.com or www.scarm.com to design your layout.  Using a peanut butter jar for curves might work if you are a meticulous draftsman with years of experience, but I don't know anyone like that, anymore.

A locomotive chasing its caboose gets old, fast.  Trains need something to do!  Make your layout point to point, for the most part.  Yes, you can have a loop, for those time when you want to show off your layout for the great unwashed, but for yourself and your train buddies, you NEED industries to switch. 

Do you need a large division point yard with a round table and all the trimmings?  No.  A small two or three track yard will keep you busy for longer than you think.  A junction with a foreign railroad gives you a universal industry where you can ship cars "beyond the basement."  A forest to a saw mill to a lumber yard or furniture factory gives you a complete industry.  A grain elevator to an industrial bakery gives you another industry.  The grain elevator to an ethanol plant, then to the junction gives you another industry.  The possibilities are endless.

Plus, with 3 rail, you don't have to worry about wiring return loops or wyes. 

With a room like that, a shelf around the edge of the room with some islands jutting into the middle will be the best use of the space.  TMCC, Legacy or DCS for control so you can walk with  your trains.  Manual throws for the switch points would be my choice for simplicity and realism, unless you are modelling ultra modern railroading, but then you will need a computer to control your turnouts if you went that route.

Just remember, this is a hobby, and the idea is to have fun.  It is your railroad, your ideas.  What I just said is how I would do it if I was starting fresh with that amount of space.  As to using numbered turnouts, there is a reason for them, and that is reliability of operation... fewer derailments.  A turnout is an opportunity for a derailment.

One last thing.  Use the largest curves possible.  With a space like that, you could easily use 120 inch radius (0240) curves, maybe not everywhere, but often enough to be useful.  Think big.  Everything will look better on big curves.

Have fun.

One characteristic I've seen from "armchair designers" is one can make a wonderful complicated layout design ... especially if they are not the one who has to construct it!

SteveF is right on about yards.

We have two yards; the "A" Yard which has three tracks, one of which doubles as a "run-thru" track, the yard itself is used for making up and breaking down freight trains, and the main "60" yard, which has six tracks.  It's a stub yard.

Thought it wasn't going to be enough "play value" in it, until I took 1-1/2 hours to make up an outbound freight train!!!

And we have one small three track couch yard, with an additonal REA track by the depot.

i eventually transferred the design to a CAD program, but believe me, in the early stages it is much easier to rough in curves and your general design with paper pencil and a big gum eraser.  you don't need to be very exact with your initial sketch and it takes away the overhead of piecing together track pieces in the typical RR CAD program.  also, unless you have a huge screen, getting an overview of the entire room while working on a computer is next to impossible.  B and C size sheets are much larger than your average home PC screen.

again, nothing against any specific computer program, but not to start off.

You can do a large or a small layout with RR-Track, but you should always start with a sketch and some idea of a track plan before you run the program. RR-Track just helps you make things more precise and provides your bill of materials for the layout.

For a room that size, around the walls with a peninsula or two (or three) would give you a good continuous run with view blocks and also allow for point-to-point operation.

Some things to consider:

• Keep your decks three feet deep or less. That will allow you to reach the wall.
• Keep your aisles at least three feet wide. So many of us are abdominally endowed that extra aisle space is required.
• Unless you're designing specifically for kids to view the layout, set the base height around 48 inches, or better still close to eye level. The viewing is a lot better and you'll have an easier time accessing the underside of the layout.
• Determine what you want in your layout. Focus on freight; focus on passenger; industrial; urban vs. rural; etc. With the size you have, you can probably build a combination.
• A lot of modelers focus on a specific time frame, like the transition era. I look at things a little differently. Many railroad routes are virtually unchanged from 100 years ago, albeit the tracks and signals have been upgraded and many of the passenger stations/operations are long gone. Out here in San Bernardino, there are some areas of the old Redlands loop that haven't really changed for decades (the Redlands Depot is over 100 years old and the San Bernardino Depot is nearly 100 years old.) If you can focus on a region and make it somewhat time neutral, you can run modern equipment or older equipment.
• Forget about O-72 except in industrial areas. You have the space to go with 54" radius (O-108) and above. I'd look at 60" and above with that kind of space. Your 3-rail equipment will look great and if you switch over to hard-core 3RS, your 89-foot flat cars with Kadees will run nicely.
• Railroads operate in point-to-point operation -- i.e., between point A and Z with stops in between. You can simulate this very easily in a room this size by having a pair of back-to-back yards on a peninsula separated by a view block. For continuous operation, the tracks can continue around the end of the peninsula or along the wall.
• No matter how much space you have, you can still have too much track. Less is more. Your thoughts on two mains works well.
• Don't try to build it in one day. Doesn't happen even on a micro. I like to study British model railroads and many of them are built over the course of several years even though many of them are not very large by our standards. They're detailed like you wouldn't believe. I've been designing for a layout that won't even be built in the house where I currently live -- looking toward the next house.
• Industries that compliment each other will help. You can even pull off loads-in/empties out with coal or lumber (peninsulas can be used to pull this off.)
• During the scenery phase, don't throw a lot of money away on certain scenery materials. You'll go broke doing a large layout with those small $10 bags of stuff. Use real dirt (sifted and microwaved). Don't buy those expensive small packs of Hydrocal; get it from a construction supplier (about $30 for a 100 pound bag. I have mixed feelings about ballast as Brennan's is a very good product, but you can use construction sand or crusher fines ("dust") from a gravel supplier. Another trick with ballast is using sand as a full, then topping with ballast -- more work, but less cost. For hardshell, you can use paper towels kneeded in joint compound (also inexpensive) over cardboard strips. Rubber rock molds are great, but get your plaster at a home improvement center -- larger quantity at a lower price.

Hope this helps. Now get out the sketch pad.

My thanks to all for the great info and ideas!   I will do point to point, especially for freight, but also have return loops so long trains can run continuously, such as a passenger train.   After reading these and playing with layout ideas, I think I may use Atlas track instead of MTH ScaleTrax.  Atlas has a much greater product offering, and I think I may need some track not offered by MTH.  Also, MTH is a closed system, meaning incompatability with other tracks.  Also, a brass loco I want to run needs the higher rails of Atlas.  MTH sure looks very good, though, when laid and ballasted.  

If you're going to use Atlas track, I'd invest in Ross turnouts. Ross has a greater variety and they work better. You can use regular Atlas track joiners. All you have to do is cut the stringers on the end ties of the Ross turnouts and push the end ties back a little so the Atlas joiner will slip on. That's what we've done on the Atlas track installations at the club.

Since you were mentioning track variety and large curves are mentioned, I would recommend staying with MTH ScaleTrax. Use the 30" Flex track, it's awesome.

with no stretching the Truth, I can bend it easily down to under O-31 or make massively wide easements. True, there are not a lot of different switches, but #4 and #6 are available and are proper for such a large layout.

If you need something odd, Go for Ross Custom, they can easily be matched up with ScaleTrax.

Put std 5mm roadbed under the ScaleTrax and 2mm cork sheet under the Ross Switches. They line up nicely. I have both ScaleTrax and Ross Switches for my next layout and have tested this.

With that combo you have an infinite range of curves and the widest selection of Switches in the market.  And Everyone seems to Love Ross Switches.

Note, the Ross rails are also pretty close to a match with the Scaletrax being only slightly taller and the same shape. The height difference in in the Wood Ross Ties.

Rob,

A great task indeed! I just spent some time searching the web to find layouts filling large spaces. A few things stood out to me.

1. The around the room with islands seemed most appealing for construction, maintenance, operating and viewing. Floating it away from the walls for a walkaround was really nice.
2. Using a former or existing railroad to model, or pieces from several, would provide design guidance. You already mentioned those areas to service with support cities in between and yards for train staging and service.
3. The quantity of lines and switches were not as appealing as those that were somewhat closer to the real thing.   This was pointed out by Kerrigan and my observation of various layouts confirmed that point.

The concept and theme part of the design is perhaps the most difficult and is done with the mind and sketching on paper. When you are satisfied with those elements, that's were the software tools make it easy.

Take a look at Big Boy 4005's 2000 square foot room plans and journey. 

Enjoy the adventure and be sure to post your progress.

With small yards I woould be sure to have hidden staging tracks to store whole trains when not in use,  I learned this lesson after I built my present layout.

Try to not run your tracks parallel to the edge of your tables.  It's move visually appealing if you throw in a small curve every so often.

Use the resources of the web.  There are a lot good sites out there.  The Layout SIG is one.  http://www.ldsig.org/

Jan

Our layout, the Cabin Lake & Western tried to incorporate a lot of these "play value" features, like the stub yard.

The construction of it, from bare room to today, is photo-documented in the HiRail group of Yahoo in the folder "Construction of the CL&W" ... if anyone is interested viewing our approach as a "one man show" ...