Layout Design Help Needed

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Yea, what SANTAFEJIM said.....Really ?   

You have a nice amount of space to deal with, lucky you.  There are some questions we all have for you.  To start, what type of layout would you like to build, scale, tinplate, post-war, etc. ?   

SantaFeJim posted:

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I'm afraid I have to agree with SANTAFEJIM.

IBREWTOO; I think what SFJim is saying(tongue in cheek, I think) is that if you(forum members) don’t have the scarm program a scarm file here on the forum looks like the attached.  Best to save your Scarm layout image as a .jpg or .pdf and post that as an attachment or inserted into the body.  Plenty of answers here, the experts will help.

Main Room

Back Room

The box is the full space 31' by 12'.

Jan

Here's what I got when I combined the 2 sections and tried to figure out the grades/crossovers. The blue tracks are at 0" elevation and the green tracks are at 5.5" elevation. The purple tracks are up/down grades and all but 1 is way too steep, so this design is not going to work if this is close to accurate.

I agree with DOUBLEDAZ... Killer Grades.

Hello IBREWTOO!  I opened your topic when you wrote "DESIGN."  All I see here are track arrangement possibilities. 

You are very fortunate and blessed to have that much area for a railroad!  You have GREAT possibilities that others don't.

My first question is do you only want a display layout where you just watch the train loop?  

Or do you want an operational layout where you and others can interact with the layout which is much more engaging?

If you are interested in discussing design ideas I'd be glad to give you some guidance and ideas.  If you are running a display have fun!  :-)

Apologies for not posting in jpg or pdf and thank you to JAN for making that posting for me.

Thank you Dave for the update on required grades. As I suspected but didn't have the patience to get there. 

Jon/Dan/others, my list of ideas for my layout:

High rail is probably the nearby description. I'd like to have scale and detailed features with o-72 or greater radius but I don't see myself switching to two rail or changing to kadee couplers. While I hope that my son (6yo) and I (46yo) will enjoy building and enjoying this layout with train operators, my other hobby and friend constituency would be more inclined to enjoy the fruits of my other hobby. With that said, I'd like to have a round table/house, industries (farm, brewery, distr.), yard and town for operations. And, I'd like a couple of loops while enjoying the other hobby. The double crossover is slick but might be complicating. I like passenger trains but plan to keep those at 18 inch and I'm a fan of GG1's. If you've been to York TCA meet, you might have seen my Virginia license plate I'd like catenary but not the whole layout and it doesn't necessarily need to be electrified.   

I've been pondering and doodling for quite some time on this and its proving a bit challenging. Brewing great quantities of good beer is so much easier....haha. Thank you for any of your helpful insights, recommendations or track plans.

Garrett

Just a note to say don't give up because of the grades. There are ways to lower them to more reasonable levels by placing the lowest points at 0" elevation, the bulk of the main track at 3" elevation and the highest points at 8.5" elevation. To get a 5.5" rise, some tracks can go down 3" while other go up 2.5".