Blank slate.

I have no specific era that I want to model. It will probably mountainous as I can't get enough of the mountains. I love the White Pass and Yukon, Alaska, and Union Pacific railroads. I have steam era to modern era equipment, and even diesels I have made myself.

I have no giant articulated engines but I'm not opposed to them at some point in the future. I don't have DCC, DCS, Legacy, or TMCC. But again, I would like to head toward command control in the foreseeable future. Right now, I want somewhere to run trains so that my kids and I can enjoy them.

Hi Tom....Is the car going beside this space ? If so in the back you could make a loop, go over the hood of the car. Have someplace for on track storage turning loop.

Tom,

I am in a similar situation to yours, I have some more in width and length but a narrow space non the less. you might consider some thing like the thread a few steps below yours, looks like some good ideas there. I don't know if you might want to put a divider down the center as I did but it may be something to consider. There is something to be said for having access all the way around a layout.

I will add my track plan and though it does not show the elevations you can see that it gives a fair amount of track for a smaller space.

http://www.americanflyerclub.o...s.htm#Members_Videos

I have not been able to come up with the layout drawing that I later made but did find a Scarm project that I did. 
This shows the layout and is very close to the actual layout configuration, it does not show elevations however. - Ray

Ray

clem k posted:

Hi Tom....Is the car going beside this space ? If so in the back you could make a loop, go over the hood of the car. Have someplace for on track storage turning loop.

No car next to it. But I think I could put a staging yard along the wall to the right, under the window. Great idea!

I'd consider an around the room design with perhaps a lift-bridge to walk into the center.  This allows you some continuous loops and also solves the issue of reach.  If you make the width a maximum of 30", you'll still have five feet in the middle.  You might be able to do a narrow center section with three yard tracks, and still have aisles of 2 feet wide on each side.  Another thing the around the room offers is larger curves, you can accommodate at least O72 so you can run bigger equipment.

My personal preference is like what John said.  I would do the same, but I have this giant sliding glass door on one wall with another door on the adjacent wall.  Take a look at the U shaped plan in my topic in my signature line.  My room is about the same width, but yours is longer.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

I'd consider an around the room design with perhaps a lift-bridge to walk into the center.  This allows you some continuous loops and also solves the issue of reach.  If you make the width a maximum of 30", you'll still have five feet in the middle.  You might be able to do a narrow center section with three yard tracks, and still have aisles of 2 feet wide on each side.  Another thing the around the room offers is larger curves, you can accommodate at least O72 so you can run bigger equipment.

I'm liking this idea the more I think of it!

Mark Boyce posted:

My personal preference is like what John said.  I would do the same, but I have this giant sliding glass door on one wall with another door on the adjacent wall.  Take a look at the U shaped plan in my topic in my signature line.  My room is about the same width, but yours is longer.

Mark, reading your topic has given me some great ideas, thanks!

I like your idea of setting stuff up on the floor to figure it out first. The boy and I have some work to do tonight.

Tom, That is good you have him to help!  Even when I was little my dad told me I was helping him by just getting the particular tool he was asking for.  It is getting harder for me to do stuff down on the floor these days.  I crawled around on my knees all the time when our girls were little; also crawled around as a power and telecom technician.  Now my knees are talking back again big time.    It's a good thing I have a desk job now!!  

I hope to start my build topic after New Years so we can see all this planning start to come to something in three dimensions.

Dear Tom:

Congratulations!  You have a great space!

Before you start arranging track to fit space, ask yourself:  Who is this railroad (name)?  Where is it?  What will it be doing?  What will you and others be doing to interact with it?

Will this be a toy layout? Accessories? 

Will it be a display layout?  Toy or realistic?  

Will it be an operational layout?   

The track arrangements will vary greatly depending on your choice.

What is your favorite railroad?  Train watching place?  Do you prefer running a main line or switching?

What is your desire and plan?

What do you want your layout to be when its done?

I would recommend that you plan involvement for yourself and others in the layout.  People will be more interested if you give them something to do which involves interaction with the trains.

You need to DESIGN a plan versus doing what 99% of folks do and start laying track hoping for the best.

Shortly, people will start sending you track arrangements.  That's fine and dandy, except for anyone to design a track plan they would need to know specifically what your desires are.  

Don't limit your fun by running lines of track that serve no purpose and offer no participation.  The BEST most satisfying layouts have purpose and offer participation.

I don't know what your experience level is but I respectfully suggest that you read books/articles about model railroad design versus looking at just fitting track to space.  Trust me, in the long run, you will be very glad you did.

You have a lot to think about.  Take your time.  This is not a race.  Careful design planning will give you success!

Best Wishes and good luck!

John

Since you have SCARM, don't limit yourself to one brand of track just yet. They all have different curve sizes and other pros/cons.  Sometimes the GG O42 vs FT O36 makes a big difference in look/feel. Then there is Atlas O45 which looks even better. However, if you move up to O54, then most brands have those, so then it becomes a matter of which looks better to you. If you are concerned about noise, then that becomes a factor. Even though you'll be in the garage and won't disturb others, noise can still get to you over time. My RealTrax is loud and I intend to move to GG or Atlas. I prefer Atlas because they make sectional curves that work best for me and I'd have to manually end GG to match the curves or downsize to O42.

When it comes to around the room designs one question you need to consider is do you want to be able to change directions? If you do, then reversing loops dictate how large the curves can be and if they are tight enough, they can limit the length of trains you can run. Here's some 10x17 samples using O36 & O48 curves and O36 switches to illustrate. You can probably see that as you increase the size of the curves, the aisle will get narrower and will require one of the reversing loops to be moved (2nd photo).

DoubleDAZ posted:

Since you have SCARM, don't limit yourself to one brand of track just yet. They all have different curve sizes and other pros/cons.  Sometimes the GG O42 vs FT O36 makes a big difference in look/feel. Then there is Atlas O45 which looks even better. However, if you move up to O54, then most brands have those, so then it becomes a matter of which looks better to you. If you are concerned about noise, then that becomes a factor. Even though you'll be in the garage and won't disturb others, noise can still get to you over time. My RealTrax is loud and I intend to move to GG or Atlas. I prefer Atlas because they make sectional curves that work best for me and I'd have to manually end GG to match the curves or downsize to O42.

When it comes to around the room designs one question you need to consider is do you want to be able to change directions? If you do, then reversing loops dictate how large the curves can be and if they are tight enough, they can limit the length of trains you can run. Here's some 10x17 samples using O36 & O48 curves and O36 switches to illustrate. You can probably see that as you increase the size of the curves, the aisle will get narrower and will require one of the reversing loops to be moved (2nd photo).

That second layout mockup is what I have in mind. I was thinking about a round house at the bottom and a storage track extending out the wall at the top beyond the loop. Or maybe out the center on the left.

Tom M posted:

That second layout mockup is what I have in mind. I was thinking about a round house at the bottom and a storage track extending out the wall at the top beyond the loop. Or maybe out the center on the left.

Roundhouses and turntables take up a lot of space, so you need to figure out the size you'd buy/build to see what fits because that will affect the rest of the layout. If you use GG track, then I suggest you use Ross switches with it. They have the largest variety and arguably the best reputation. Also, since these examples were done with FT O36/O48, I'd suggest upsizing to O42/O54 and not using O32 if you decide to use GG.

When it comes to using a center peninsula for storage tracks, the roundhouse will impact that also and possibly limit it's size to where it won't be practical. You could have a small reversing loop on one end and the larger with the roundhouse on the other end, they don't have to be the same size.

Tom, I second Dave's comments about the turntable and roundhouse.  Since you looked at my topic, you may have noticed discussion about 1/3 the way in where someone made a good suggestion of adding a turntable, and Dave helped with adding it to the plan.  I don't think I took any photographs of that mockup, but when I did it, I decided I didn't want to use that much space for a turntable.  And I am settling for a one stall enginhouse. 

Watching a video of one of our good Forum contributors just yesterday, he was describing what he wanted in a layout when he started building his mostly complete layout.  He said "everyone wants a turntable and roundhouse".  Well he had a large basement, so it was no problem for him. 

You and I have to go through a list of what the late layout designer John Armstrong called "givens and druthers".  Givens-what do I "have" to have in a layout.  Druthers-what I would like to have, but if we can't squeeze it in, then I can do without.  For me 072 curves, a turntable, and roundhouse were druthers, that we threw out the window early on.  

Tom/Mark, here's a 5-stall turntable with roundhouse using the Atlas turntable in SCARM's Atlas library. As you can see, it pretty much fills a 6'x6' space. You can shrink it some by shortening the tracks going into the stalls. I made the exposed and covered tracks 20" each, but the exposed tracks could be shortened to 10", though it would still take up most of the 6'x6' space. That's a lot of real estate in a 10' wide area, not to mention the need for access all around.

Dave,

Looks to me that if you cut two stalls (lower right) out of the roundhouse and move the remaining structures slightly to the northwest, you can change the footprint to about 3' x 5' without removing any track.  Now, take one of your reverse loops and change it to a "reversing oval" (using one switch) of about 4' by 7' and you have the space inside for the turntable and roundhouse without narrowing the aisle too much.

Chuck

A transfer table & sidings can compact things to a longer narrower area. With turnouts and run around abilitly, a very long loco yard , but few legs, seems to me like it would be a very workable storage solution.

Chuck, there's no doubt that things can be done to reduce the footprint. But just for the sake of illustrating my point a little further, here's an 18" Ross TT with a 3-stall Roundhouse, 24.8" whisker tracks and GG O32 reversing loop inside a GG O42 oval. The Roundhouse would cover almost all of the whisker tracks and there is nothing but the TT/Roundhouse. Personally, I think an 18" TT is too small and 3 stalls with no other normal facilities are too few to justify expending the time and money, but that's just me.

Granted, when you add the 2nd reversing loop and outer loop you still have a 24" aisle, but I think you can see that moving up to a 24" TT means expanding the outer oval to 54" and that might shrink the aisle too much and require moving the 2nd reversing loop to the left. I also wouldn't use O32 curves, too tight, so that also means expanding to O42/O54. As you can see, there is already a "reach" problem because the TT/Roundhouse is almost 48" wide. Expanding will only add to the problem.

Bear in mind too that none of these photos were designed to be part of a design process, I just threw them together to illustrate my thoughts. If Tom wants to pursue something along these lines, I'd be happy to help him with SCARM.

I like the idea of the 6x6 area for the turntable. My idea is to have the reversing loops offset to allow access to the center.

I have o-36 now but I plan on going to o-54 to allow for larger engines in the future. O-72 on the outside loop.

Tom M posted:

I have o-36 now but I plan on going to o-54 to allow for larger engines in the future. O-72 on the outside loop.

I was afraid you were going to say that, but I'll change my example to see how it fits.

And here's a couple versions I came up with using the O54/O72. Unfortunately, there's no aisle.

DoubleDAZ posted:

And here's a couple versions I came up with using the O54/O72. Unfortunately, there's no aisle.

 

Would it help to extend it to 10x20?

Of course.

Tom, 

I have to warn you, before you know it your train layout will be taking up the rest of the garage.    LOL!!!

I would do your homework.  Many have done some very nice jobs with much less space than you have.  There are some very creative people on here and on youtube.   Think about switching and operation so your layout has some purpose.  Select some industries and figure out how your railroad will service those industries.  Incorporate that into a scheme that also has the ability for continuous running and you'll be happier and less likely to be tearing it down and starting it all over because you failed to consider something.  

Congrats on the new home and your nice layout space.  Good luck with your brainstorming.  Keep us up to date on your progress.  

Tom;

Hope you don't mind a few more comments/ideas... 

You mentioned closing off the train area. If the car portion of the garage will be used to store cars (as opposed to extra storage), you should consider that the exhaust and it's aroma could be an issue over time. 

I would not consider a full wall to wall layout - without a central aisle or an aisle on one side or the other, the only viewing area would be nearly 20 feet from the furthest point on the layout. The first two suggestions from Dave could work if you make the single track on the right end of the diagrams a drop in bridge section. And as someone who is bit older than you, I assure you, the day will come where crawling under the layout will become rather problematic 

As I mentioned on your original post, if the single bulb is the light source for the layout, I would strongly suggest adding some additional lighting (such as track lighting) before you start building the bench work.

Finally, depending on the weather in your locale, you may wish to consider relegating the cars to the driveway and expanding into the unused portions of the garage... good luck with that one   

Be sure to keep us posted on your continuing adventure.

DoubleDAZ posted:

Of course.

 

I love it!!!

Apples55 posted:

Tom;

Hope you don't mind a few more comments/ideas... 

You mentioned closing off the train area. If the car portion of the garage will be used to store cars (as opposed to extra storage), you should consider that the exhaust and it's aroma could be an issue over time. 

I would not consider a full wall to wall layout - without a central aisle or an aisle on one side or the other, the only viewing area would be nearly 20 feet from the furthest point on the layout. The first two suggestions from Dave could work if you make the single track on the right end of the diagrams a drop in bridge section. And as someone who is bit older than you, I assure you, the day will come where crawling under the layout will become rather problematic 

As I mentioned on your original post, if the single bulb is the light source for the layout, I would strongly suggest adding some additional lighting (such as track lighting) before you start building the bench work.

Finally, depending on the weather in your locale, you may wish to consider relegating the cars to the driveway and expanding into the unused portions of the garage... good luck with that one   

Be sure to keep us posted on your continuing adventure.

 

I plan on putting in a lift bridge. And I plan on having the center open as an aisle. I plan on doing track lighting but I wonder about putting in a drop ceiling...

Boo Man posted:

Tom, 

I have to warn you, before you know it your train layout will be taking up the rest of the garage.    LOL!!!

I would do your homework.  Many have done some very nice jobs with much less space than you have.  There are some very creative people on here and on youtube.   Think about switching and operation so your layout has some purpose.  Select some industries and figure out how your railroad will service those industries.  Incorporate that into a scheme that also has the ability for continuous running and you'll be happier and less likely to be tearing it down and starting it all over because you failed to consider something.  

Congrats on the new home and your nice layout space.  Good luck with your brainstorming.  Keep us up to date on your progress.  

I plan on putting in a morton salt factory and possibly a mine. Also passenger service.

I want to reiterate that my examples are not designs for a working layout. They are simply to show the spacing that will result given Tom's comments. AFAIK, he intends to have a lift-out entry to the aisle, but that won't be shown until he decides how he's going to go forward. My intent is just to illustrate how much room the TT/Roundhouse, O54/O72 curves, reversing loops, peninsula for a yard, the 30" reach, etc., will need if Tom wants to include them. And the TT/Roundhouse still isn't close to being large enough or complete.

Tom M posted:

Boo Man posted:

Tom, 

I have to warn you, before you know it your train layout will be taking up the rest of the garage.    LOL!!!

I would do your homework.  Many have done some very nice jobs with much less space than you have.  There are some very creative people on here and on youtube.   Think about switching and operation so your layout has some purpose.  Select some industries and figure out how your railroad will service those industries.  Incorporate that into a scheme that also has the ability for continuous running and you'll be happier and less likely to be tearing it down and starting it all over because you failed to consider something.  

Congrats on the new home and your nice layout space.  Good luck with your brainstorming.  Keep us up to date on your progress.  

I plan on putting in a morton salt factory and possibly a mine. Also passenger service.

Tom,

Kalmbach has some good books on lineside industries and on operations.  Study the industry to understand what types of cars will service that industry.  Youtube has a ton of vids that show some really nice O Scale switching layouts.  I'd watch some of those and incorporate some of the track configurations of those into your track plan.  You want to have facing and trailing point spurs and run around/passing sidings to allow for some interesting switching maneuvers.  The passing siding would also allow for single mainline operations where you have to put one train in the hole so the train from the opposite direction can pass.   Where you have spurs or sidings, make sure to have leads to allow for switching without fouling up your mainline.  You can then do continuous running and switching operations simultaneously. 

The more you think about your layout now will make you much happier in the long run.