Tom Tee--you are an adventuresome soul! Multi-layers, 5 turntables (!), 112 turnouts, NO track plan--and the wife hasn't yet run from the house screaming! Not too shabby. I thought I was risking a lot having no plan and just laying track. But my layout is only 16x17. You have it going on!
Don
@Tom Tee posted:Never did a track plan but the layout is hung from 219 linear feet of walls with 8 peninsulas of various sizes using ???? feet of track with 5 turntables, 3 levels of 2 rail and 2 levels of 3 rail with approximately 112+? turnouts. Most turnouts are hand thrown, Some Tortoise, several sprung, some free floating which are aligned by through traffic.
The layout carefully follows the exact prototypical representation of a large elongated multifaceted linear hairball.
My planning consisted of stretching out my arm, sticking up my thumb and eyeballing what might give rise to purpose and fitment. It's been fun, but the wife is concerned about the end game.
Just be concerned if you hear a locking sound the next time you head to the basement. 
My layout is 16’ x 14’ with one extension, 11’ x 30” for a freight yard. In total, I have 20 switches, all but 4 are command control. Basically, my layout has 3 loops. I have 2 crossovers (four switches each) so you can pass from one loop to the next.
There is a center island in the layout which has my six track engine yard. In total, there are 8 switches controlling access to the yard.
Finally, the four track freight yard extension has 4 switches.
@Bob posted:My layout is around the walls of a 28x52 foot room with a 10x12 extension for Horseshoe Curve (under the breakfast nook upstairs) and staging yards in an adjacent 10x18 foot area. Overall dimensions are thus 40x70 with 151 turnouts.
And we have a winner!!
15x48. 12 turnouts. Less turnouts, less problems
With regard to "Turnouts per Layout Size", my O-27 layout is pretty dense at 25 turnouts in 12'x6'6". They are all 1122 & 1122E.
The layout is 24' x 42' with 73 turnouts.
My layout is 25' x 50' with 40 turnouts
This is not a very good poll question imho. How many turnouts per layout size depends a lot on what the layout is. It seems like a lot of comparing of apples and bananas. For example in my yard area about about 12 feet by 3 feet, there are about 11-12 switches. But if I consider the main around the walls of the room, it is about 6 inches by 80 feet, there are no turnouts. In the first case that is 1 per 3 square feet, in the second case that is 0 for 40 square feet.
Now the whole layout area is about 23x47 feet and has about 75 switches. It also has about 380 feet of single track mainline and about 1000 feet of track total. That is 1081 square feet and 1 switch per 14.41 square feet.
I'm not sure those measurements are guidelines for anything.
I have 58 turnouts on a layout that is approximately 10 x 65.
Interesting information.
Would be great to see some schematics. Are these on the main line for passing sidings? From one main line to another? For diverging routes? For industries? For/in yards?
Here is a schematic of mine since you asked.
Interesting poll question.
Got me thinking about (now-departed
) Roadside America and the trains layout therein. It had an area of a tad less than 8000 square feet...probably of the XXXXXL-size.
Not a single operable switch/turnout therein to my recollection.
But, as a kid viewing the layout 65+ years ago in total awe, my epiphany du jour was seeing dozens of fake switches leading to sidings on which sat railroad cars in perpetual load/unload or patient wait for a train that would never show up to take them on a journey to.....?
In later years I saw this ruse used in a handful of other display layouts. Siding track rails would be bent to blend toward the mainline. Sometimes...usually in a foreground situation..., the fastidious would fashion pseudo wing, point/closure, and guard rails to add to the credibility. And why not? The expense is minimal. Maintenance and operation problems are non-existent. If switching maneuvers are not to be part of the layout's operational magic...as is more usually the speedy passing of a glitzy passenger train or the steady crawling of a long mixed freight train...then why bother? If the reliable performance of an operating trackside accessory paired to a railcar is only certain if the car is precisely located, and that tedious maneuvering dance of the railcar into position might detract from the accessory's overall performance...then why bother?
I spent a lot of time learning the ins-and-outs of designing a large 'elephant-sized' layout for the basement using RR-Track. Coming up with the circuitous mainline and the freight yard and passenger terminal (both dead-end appendages) was relatively easy. Knowing where to precisely put turnouts leading to accessories or trackside industries scattered here and there was, well, ...frustrating...and stymied getting started on the overall layout! Until I actually began placing accessories and as-yet-unbuilt/unpurchased buildings on the layout for best viewing and/or accessing, seeing how terrain contours might have to be accommodated/limited, etc., etc., blah, blah, how was I to know where other track...and the turnouts to provide access... would occur?
Then I recalled that day at Roadside America...that ol' 'switcheroo' wrt non-turnout turnouts
. And I thought of all the $$$$ I might save in adopting the ruse.
So I happily began placing more orders with 3rd Rail for some of their Works-of-ArtScott, instead.
Just some random ruminating...
KD (a.k.a., Lucas Gudinov)
No permanent layout yet (floor loop, zero switches). When I do build something more permanent, I want to incorporate two stations on the Phila. - Paoli portion of the PRR mainline in an around-the-room type of layout. One of these stations would be Bryn Mawr station and interlocking. This will need 13 switches. On another side of the layout, I want to have a small yard (about 10 more switches).
Want the Bryn Mawr section to be on a 12' long straight section (2'-3' wide maybe?).
Working on a 9x11 and has 9 switches.
I'm pretty sure I have over 50 on my 31' X 15' first stage. I need to add them up in RR-Track.
This includes the freight yard, diesel yard, turntable, crossovers, passing tracks, and a couple of industries. Yes, this is a switching/operations oriented layout.
Not having much to do for the past 20 minutes... the average is around 1 switch per 13.6 sq ft. As Ron pointed out... switching/operations oriented layouts start to get pretty dense below 10 sq ft.
Low density / High density
Hiram has 1 switch per 31.25 sq ft
Rob has 1 switch per 3.12 sq ft
If anybody has the time/skill/interest/etc. to post, this could make an interesting scatterplot. The x-axis could be layout size (in sf), from about 30 up to about 8,000. The y-axis would be number of switches, from 0 up to 151. Everybody's layout would be a dot somewhere on the graph, and we could look for patterns.
Two obvious examples that I would expect to see -
- A spike at 32sf corresponding to a single sheet of plywood/foam/etc.
- A generally positive correlation between layout size and number of switches
Here is the data for my layout from above. It is an around the walls plus a center peninsula in a 350 square foot room. The actual layout size is 250 square feet, there are 45 turnouts and 700' of track. The data points are 250 square foot layout, 45 turnouts, 700' of track, 5.6 square feet per turnout and 15.6' of track per turnout. The highest density of turnouts is in the freight yard, second highest in the passenger yard.
11' x 24' with 42 switches
32 sq ft layout (4 X 8)
2.13 turnouts/ sq ft.
Bob
Approximately 32X22 switching layout with 30 turnouts at present.
20 turnouts in an about 7'x14' space. The red is a spur I added as I was finishing the track work which is why it's not on this plan.
17 on the main rr stretching along the wall, around 50 linear feet, a return loop to return loop set up. A mixture of ross and gg. The streetcar loop has 2 027 turnouts.
Layout is 35’ x 12’
zero switches now; have already purchased 12 Ross switches + 2 Ross Double Cross-Overs (8 switch machines for the 2 cross overs).
so total will be= 20 switches
Carl J
12x12 16 switches
My layout is 11x8 walk-in with a 3x2 extension off one corner; roughly 45 square feet. One side has two levels with turnouts. I have a total of 13 turnouts.
5x10 , 8 turnouts
An interesting way of measuring this is turnouts per square foot. For example, 8 divided by 50 square feet means I have 0.16 turnouts per square foot.
Oh, yes, Mine is 13 divided by 45 = .29 per square foot
So who will have the highest density of turnouts? It sounds like a contest!
My money is on Rob (25 / 78) @ .321 per sq ft... although, Mark is nipping at his heels!!!
all right I have to go count mine
@Dennis-LaRock posted:My money is on Rob (25 / 78) @ .321 per sq ft... although, Mark is nipping at his heels!!!
LOL
I have 6 switches on my 4x8.
@Madockawando posted:An interesting way of measuring this is turnouts per square foot. For example, 8 divided by 50 square feet means I have 0.16 turnouts per square foot.
This will probably confuse things, but to my mind the reciprocal of this (square feet per turnout) makes more sense. It would be easier to compare because it would almost or always be greater than one and it would better convey a sense of how much space was allotted around each turnout.
I am voting with long hair. What if speedometers read in hours per mile. Or even worse, fortnight per furlongs?
In my post above I gave my data as square feet/turnout. I have never built a layout that has one or more turnouts per square foot.
@Long Hair posted:This will probably confuse things, but to my mind the reciprocal of this (square feet per turnout) makes more sense. It would be easier to compare because it would almost or always be greater than one and it would better convey a sense of how much space was allotted around each turnout.
Actually, what you are saying is exactly how I first calculated mine, then realized everyone was doing the opposite. So mine is 45 divided by 13 = 3.44 square feet per turnout.
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