Inglenook or tuning fork ?
- Thread starter Bellwald
- Start date
GuilfordRailman
Well-Known Member
I would recommend making the layout at least 1 foot wide so you can have a rail-served industry or another structure of some kind. Unless you plan to just do a little bit of scenery and nothing else…Finally, I'll try to build a very small tuning fork layout with Peco track (dimensions: 3' x 3"3/4).
No guaranteed results...
View attachment 181258
Although….you could probably have a background building or two with the proposed width of 3 and 3/4”, if you are set on those measurements.
Bellwald
Well-Known Member
My mistake ! The dimensions are 4'x 3"3/4. I built it and I'm very pleased with the result so far. All your comments and advices are welcome.
Old 97
Hogger
Plenty of daycare survivors have no idea.What’s that black thing with the circle and numbers?
William Burg
Member
Maybe not a mistake: just build a background flat to serve as your industry. This could be a 3-D plastic, wood, or cardstock exterior wall of a building, or even just a picture of an industrial loading dock of appropriate size. Put whatever you'd like to the left, depending on the setting you want--an adjacent building, another part of the industrial building, or some sort of backdrop/setting. Is it wired up to operate yet?
William Burg
Member
Keeping in mind that more track doesn't always equal more fun, the question for the "double fork" is, what does it do besides let a locomotive with a car on either end spot each car on the same spur & move back to the main? While there are situations where this track layout exists, ordinarily trains have a locomotive on one end instead of in the middle, and when faced with trailing & facing point spurs, run around the car they have to spot into the facing point spur via a passing track.
The single fork actually has more operating variety, despite its simpler layout, by allowing the loco to shuffle and reshuffle multiple cars onto the spur, and simulate setting out & picking up cars on the spur or returning them to the main line. A layout with both facing and trailing point spurs becomes a lot more fun if it's big enough for a runaround track (in HO, that can be as small as 4-5 feet depending on car length), so a train can enter pulling multiple cars, run around a car to push it into a facing point spur, or even reverse the direction of the train and end up with the loco on the other end, simulating the end of a branch line; of course, that requires 4 turnouts (or at least 3 for an end-of-line). Layouts without a runaround track can be fun if you have 2 locomotives, allowing you to spot different cars in different directions, either with this sort of double-fork "K" track plan, or a switchback plan, in either case using 2 switches.
If you've got a power pack, time to start connecting some wires and do a little switching! Like Frankenstein's monster, a little electricity helps bring your creation to life so it can start rampaging around the countryside. It's still an experiment, just a slightly more diabolical one.
The single fork actually has more operating variety, despite its simpler layout, by allowing the loco to shuffle and reshuffle multiple cars onto the spur, and simulate setting out & picking up cars on the spur or returning them to the main line. A layout with both facing and trailing point spurs becomes a lot more fun if it's big enough for a runaround track (in HO, that can be as small as 4-5 feet depending on car length), so a train can enter pulling multiple cars, run around a car to push it into a facing point spur, or even reverse the direction of the train and end up with the loco on the other end, simulating the end of a branch line; of course, that requires 4 turnouts (or at least 3 for an end-of-line). Layouts without a runaround track can be fun if you have 2 locomotives, allowing you to spot different cars in different directions, either with this sort of double-fork "K" track plan, or a switchback plan, in either case using 2 switches.
If you've got a power pack, time to start connecting some wires and do a little switching! Like Frankenstein's monster, a little electricity helps bring your creation to life so it can start rampaging around the countryside. It's still an experiment, just a slightly more diabolical one.
GuilfordRailman
Well-Known Member
I’ve always liked modeling the end of a branch line! My 1 x 6.5 ft inglenook layout is modeling the end of a branch line. I have a very small run around incorporated into the track plan to allow such an operation. It only holds three 40 ft cars but works great!
William Burg
Member
I stumbled across this photo from an old presentation of my third layout experiment circa 2004 (the first was 2' of track with a building flat on a 24"x6" board, the second was a 3x6' double loop with 9" curves in HO), a 2'x6' switching plan designed for expansion that I later abandoned and built the "timesavernook" above. It has 6 switches, creating a runaround track, an interchange (technically where the belt line connects to another interurban route), two industrial spurs, and some main line to move cars in & out on. Most of the buildings were relocated to the current layout and the 44-tonner rewired for DCC. (Maybe I should just start my own thread, but wanted to share an example of an early test layout; tests aren't mistakes, they're progress!)
William Burg
Member
Longer tracks, or shorter trains! Generally, operation works best when you're at about 50% capacity--so if you have room for 8 cars on the layout, use 4 cars, which gives you room to move things around. But longer tracks also helps a lot!I did several tests and discovered that these two tracks are too short.
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GuilfordRailman
Well-Known Member
Just for future reference and to help you save time and money, build a mockup of your layout in SCARM which is a free track planning software. You can test your layout and operations using a 3D view and computer controlled train to see how everything will work.
