This month I have become a 1st time home owner! And of course I've already called dibs on part of the house for a layout. This is my 1st large layout, meaning it doesn't fit under a bed (I've done that with both N and O, once each.). It'll be an against the wall layout in an L shape. The room is about 19'x13'. As a mechanical engineer, I have SolidWorks at work and during lunch breaks I've been modeling something up.
I really like watching the trains run round and round, but I also like some action and purpose, so I've tried to include a couple of industries. I'm leaving on vacation, but before I do figured I'd post what I have designed so far and see what you all have to say when I get back. In the past I've tried to cram as much track as possible with little thought of the scenery. This time around I wanted to add more depth to it, so let me know how I've done.
The plan is to run conventional with two locomotives powered at a time (More if I time things right.) There is an outer main line and an inner branch line, a couple of spur yards and spurs. There be a good transfer for boxcars, flatcars and gondolas, oil pump and storage for tank cars, and a grain silo for covered hoppers. I also have a passenger station, and will have the yards to shuffle odd cars in and out of trains that'll go around. I'm not into realistic details or prototypical operation, I just want something that looks nice and will be fun to drive trains on with my sons, so the NPH&ARR is 100% fictional. I run all road names, so my UP Big Boy will be right at home next to my NH EP-5.
Right now I'm pretty sure I have the track how I want, and am going to spend part of my vacation trying to figure out how to do the blocks and where to put uncouplers. If others want to chime in on where they'd put either, that'd be grand. It's going to be out of Lionel FasTrack. I do plan on replacing some of the 10" straights with 30" straights where I can, but I left them as 10" for ease of designing.
Sorry if the image is kinda on the large size.
