track planner - getting started

gosh!!! 3 days and not one reply, i am sad.

As an update to my first posting and thinking more about my ideas I came up with the following: (The table sits next to all four walls, opening in the center.) :

Would like to have 6 mainlines so I can run up to six trains at one time. Probably two lines above and four below.

Would like to incorporate some kind of dog bone design so trains are not always going in the same direction.

I plan to have a double track bridge cross the room from one side to the other, a place I will have to duck under to get to the other side. two upper lines could utilize this bridge.

My entrance to this room is in the center of the floor.

Any ideas dna suggestions would be of great help.

My google search only bring up RR track planner. Are there any others?

Thanks and waiting .....

Picked up some gargraves track and now have three lines in big "circles" so i can run threeee trains temporarily.

You might want to read some of the other threads in this forum for some
ideas about what other people are using. Two that have been mentioned
here in the past couple of days are RR Track and Atlas Right Track.

There is another program out there that I've used a bit-- it's called AnyRail. The program is a demo-- you can only use 50 pieces of track before it stops you from continuing. Of course, they want you to buy the full program. RR-Track is the choice of most of us, Atlas's Right Track is also popular, but can only use Atlas track. AnyRail has multiple track systems available, just like RR-Track.

quote:

Originally posted by opticsguy:
Just getting started with my new train room and looking for an online track planner for 3 rail O Gauge trains. I might mix it up a bit with some other gauges also.

Room is 12' x 20' with the bench work 44" deep on all four walls, thus operators and observers are in the middle.

So, any suggestions for an easy to use track planner. Did I mention easy?

Thank you for your help!!

Optics guy,
Try pencil and paper drawing of your proposed layout that would be helpful, put in size curves, levels, industries etc... If you can post he picture here you would get more responses. The other route is to buy rr software o gauge track program.

George

I have an area that I am starting to work on that is similar in size to yours. I had some great help on here with the design. Check it out Here

Good luck and keep us posted.

I will post some pics in a few days of my progress, I am getting some track down now.

If you are planning on building anything other than a simple trackplan, I would strongly suggest you get yourself a copy of RR-Track. Most folks on this forum use it, and from what I have seen and heard, there really isn't any "online" freebie, that is comprehensive enough to do serious layout planning.

When I started back into the hobby about 4 years ago, the first thing I did was to order a copy if RR-Track, and believe me, the planning portion using the software was as much fun as actually building the layout. The program lets you save copies of your different plans so you can tweak each later to see what will work best. Once you get a plan you like, you just press a button and the program spits out the list of all the various track pieces you will need to build it. I must have designed 6 or 7 different plans before I decided on the one I wanted. Even then, I probably revised it 5 or 6 times before actually starting the build.

With the program, you can post your ideas directly to this forum, and there are many highly qualified members that will gladly help you to refine it, and in a lot of cases, save you from making expensive errors, The program sure isn't a lot of money, compared to what you will spend on the actual building part. As far as "easy" I found if you read the tutorials thoroughly, then do a few practice runs, the program is fairly easy to navigate. Like all other electronic stuff today, the program has many features you don't really need to learn, and probably won't even use. The basics are pretty straightforward, and if you do run into a problem, just post your question here.....someone will surely walk you through it.

Take your time in the planning stage, you'll be happy you did.

REV

thanks Revitupfaster, Will follow your great advice!!!

Thanks for the comments here. I was asking a similar question about layout software

 

https://ogrforum.com/d...ent/2415514336678806