New proposed layout

I would darn near cry if that happened to all that work!

Well new start ,you must be exited.

Is the room 19x17? Or the layout? Do you have doors into the room?I dont know very much but can give my 2 cents,maybe offer something.

I do believe i went on a rampage and just tore everything up when it happened however the benchwork is still pretty much intact. the room area is 17'deep and 19' wide. The front (looking at it with the 19' running left to right is open there is a 3' walkway on the front to get to the rest of the basement which is where the washer and dryer r so i need to keep this space open. The furnace is on the right front corner and takes up a 4 X 5' area. And yes i am very excited to get started according to my figures it took close to 20 yrs to do the last one and i am 57 now I may get to run a train or two hopefully before i forget what trains are.

I know the  bench work is already there , how about the walls?  Just trying to figure how you enter both sides or other options. What needs moved or is this close. Then i can plug your track into RRT file and hopefully some others will jump in with some options.

You have it almost exact except wall 1and 2  is not there this is an isle way to get to the other part of the basement. The area between the 3 sides is exactly what i have and i have to keep the front open to get to the other side of my basement.  Thank you so much for taking the time to help with this.

Can we have a bridge right at Jrs eye level?  Might be his favorite place to sit. 

1ST LEVEL

2ND LEVEL TRACK

Wow thank you I hadn,t thought of the bridge idea but it looks good. I am going to look these over. I do a lot of scratch building and i have wanted to do a large bridge so this might be what i'm looking for.

Wasnt sure if you would approve of the bridge, but if you do really like it, there are alot more possibilities for the first level as well, with a double decker bridge.One for bottom and top. The down side is that this would sit closer to the floor, less clearance to walk under. The grade is alot less steep than originally posted. May be easier to control the conventional engines  going up and down between levels.Also can run a train on top and below independantly.

If i have some down time this week, i may try another one. Dosnt seem like to many voulenteers  lately for help.

I have no problem with bridges at all I love scratch building and bridges are one of my fav things to model and a double decker sounds like it might be fun to try. My benchwork is 40" from the floor so duck unders aren't really too bad. I am retiring my older 50's vintage engines and i am planning to convert my DC engines to TMCC and will be running trains with the legacy control system so conventional operation will probably not be used. I am trying to get a layout so i can have at least 2 trains running unattended while working a third. I know this is a lot for the space avalable thats why i am asking for help my layout design skills are not that great. The plan looks great  and it looks like i might be able to sqeeze a small yard under the 2nd level on the far right to store cars. I do want work from a plan this time, my last layout was a design as i go. It did have over 500ft of track and over half was buried in the layout with only yards and towns exposed  but the trains did appear to leave for long spells before reappearing giving the allusion of traveling great distances but it was HO. Thanks again for ur help

Gary 

Toymaker, (let's forget the 'old' part)

Patrick is giving you excellent options.

Perhaps you have changed this part already, but I noticed that initially you wrote "...The outside loop is going to decend at a rate of about 1" per ft." That translates to more than an 8% grade, and that is twice as much as the maximum recommended.

Usually around 2% (1 inch per 8 or 9 feet) works best, but many use 3% without problems. At 4%, or about 1 inch every 2 feet, some trains may run well, and others may not. But in my opinion, 8% may be a problem.

I am sure others who know more than I do will chime in.

Good luck.

Alex

I tried to run the grade from the switch to where it needs to get up to safely pass over itself.It is around 290"  If he gets up 5 inches at that point ,it would be Just under 2% grade.Also the grade is up against the hillside as to not interfere with any of the veiw and break up the look of a stacked level.

I know my original plan had a very steep grade thats why i decided to come on here and ask for help. The old plan is now scraped in favor of Patrick,s plan. As i mentioned before i love to scratch build my own buildings and now i'm trying to work in some of the buildings i have on the drawing board. I've also done a little cleaning up around the benchwork and tried to picture how this is going to come together. I am very excited about starting this new layout my wife says i'm acting like a 10 yr old well thats fine with me because my grandsons are 7 and 10 and are also looking forward to see grandpa,s trains run again. I think we will be spending a lot of time together in my basement.

Patrick I was looking at the pics of your layout and must say that is awsome the layout looks like a museum piece.  I don't know how you found the time to do so much in so little time.

I have played with the design a little and worked on the first layer. I also drew in the room and added 2 more feet to the main bench. The grade on the line going up now figures out to be about 2.5%. I have been doing this in Xtrackcad and the track is not exact so this is really just a rough draft.

gary

I ll check it out tonight. You want to move the switches back as far as you can, but yet not under the bridge. Keep easy access to them. But get as much for climbing as possible.According to the RRt the grade is approx 260"  divided by the min 5"  to fly over  260/5=  52". So every 52" you must raise 1"  or 2" for every 104". Just a hair under 2%.

So the 2ft, was that added to the front to back?

I am also pretty  sure aome  of this can be done with 080  and 072 for the mainlines in case you get inspired later for something big.