Yet another Newbie


H

hamltnblue

Active Member
Hello All
I'm pretty new to modeling and brand new to trying to do it right/good. I ran a dual track N-gauge setup for about a year on a 4x8 and recently decided to go HO. My eyesight just can't handle the N.

So far I have a blank slate with a sturdy 8 x 7 1/2 foot platform. I have a stack of 22" radius turns few turnouts of each direction, some 9" straights and also a bunch of flex track. There is also a 47 piece pier set that rises to 3". All is atlas. In addition I have 2 Woodland Scenics 2% grade kits along with a few boxes of riser. 2 rolls of grass mat is also in the pile.
I have 2 engines from broadway-limited with sound and DCC. One is a modern AC6000 with a pretty wide wheelbase and the other is a 4-8-2. The DCC is and NCE Procab.
So here I am staring at this blank slate with the above pile of stuff. I've been reading around and haven't come up with any good idea's yet. Just stumbled in here and have been reading abit. Any Idea's for a layout this size? Anything to get me started would help.

Thanks
 
Welcome to the forum! Don't be discouraged by the lack of replies. A lot of the guys are on here earlier in the day. I guess I would decide what your vision is first. What do you want out of a railroad? A member here has a link in his signature to an article he wrote. It covers the 'why' of building a layout before you figure out 'how'. He goes by spacemouse. If you go to the search fuction towards the top of the page, you can search by user name. Just type in Spacemouse to find a post by him, then click on the link.

You are on the right track with figuring out what you want before you build. Good luck!
 
Welcome aboard. You'll find Spacemouse's beginner's guide at http://www.chipengelmann.com/trains/Beginner/BeginnersGuide01.html. It's a good five minute read to give you some ideas.

We've all been where you are now although maybe not with as much space. The first thing I'd urge you to do is not build your layout on that big platform. The maximum reach for the average man is 30" so there will be many parts of the layout you can't reach unless you build in some kind of pop-ups, which can be a real pain, literally, when you have to crawl under the layout to rerail a car. Take a look at your walls and see how much space you have run a a 30" wide shelf around the walls. You can bring out a 4'x'4 section at each end of the shelf to give you continuous running with 22" radius curves. The shelf type layout is easier to build, gives you many more scenic and operational opportunities, and your train will probably have more scale miles of mainline track than on a platform. For now, ignore the platform and make a drawing of the space available to you in the layout room. If you can work in a shelf type layout, I think you'll be a lot happier in the long run.
 
Thanks for the link. I'll read that now and keep reading here. I luckily thought of the size of the platform and cut a 22 inch square center off-set towards the back so I can reach everywhere. I have a 12 year old son who will be using it too so I'm not the only kid using it so It'll need some incline, yard space and of course a crossing or 2. Being DCC We'll want to run 2 trains at once as well. I left another thing out earlier. I also have an 18 inch bridge from atlas LOL. For the incline I was thinking towards using risers to get to 3 or 3 1/2 inches to the trestle but then using piers to come back down?
 
Having a 12 year old to do the crawling around to the 22" hole will at least help save you back. :) For grades, the first thing you have to work out is the space you'll need. The basic formula is a 1% grade needs 100" of run. You should try to keep mainline grades down to 2%, so that means you need 50", or about 4', going up to the bridge and another 4' coming down from the bridge. It's important that you plan now how your track will apprach the grade since you'll need about an extra 1' on either side of the grade for transition, when the geade tapers more slowly. Without having a grade transition, you'll get too much slack action going up or down the grade and the train will tend to uncouple or derail.

I'm not clear why you you would want to use exposed (I assume) piers on one side of the grade. Very few railroads used piers to support the railroad up a grade and those that did tried to backfill them with rock and dirt as soon as they could since exposed piers are a constant maintenance problem. I would use the foam risers on both sides of the bridge and then use sheet foam or something like plaster soaked paper towels supported by a masking tape web to cover the risers and give the appearance of the railroad running up a solid grade surface.
 
UP2CSX said:
I'm not clear why you you would want to use exposed (I assume) piers on one side of the grade. Very few railroads used piers to support the railroad up a grade and those that did tried to backfill them with rock and dirt as soon as they could since exposed piers are a constant maintenance problem. I would use the foam risers on both sides of the bridge and then use sheet foam or something like plaster soaked paper towels supported by a masking tape web to cover the risers and give the appearance of the railroad running up a solid grade surface.
Click to expand...
There was no real reason to have the piers on one side other than throwing it out for thought and feedback. I'm near philadelphia which uses piers quite extensively in many areas of the city. A couple of places go from solid grade to piers or trestles which is where I got the idea.
 
OK, that makes sense. If you're going to model an urban scene where the tracks pass over roads and industrial areas, it was cheaper for the railroad buy just the land for piers and then build a longer bridge. The piers themselves still have to support some kind of bridge structure, usually an inverted plate girder bridge. Just having track running from pier to pier is not what you want if you want the scene to look realistic.
 
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That's part of the reason I'm hung up. I want a little mix to keep it interesting for my son with some action with a few switches a yard, roads and a corner tunnel, but at the same time have some scenery. I guess I've been seeing alot of large hills in most of the layouts. Maybe some subtle hills would be better. If I start with the Woodland grass could risers be built on top of it as I go, or would it have to be cut away?
 
Hi, sorry I'm late to welcome you. For a small layout, changes in elevation that permit all but girder or truss bridges are going to look toylike, and will also impose a hefty burden on your locomotives. Grades should stay below 3% ideally, unless you are going to use double-headed power or geared steamers on industrial tracks (logging, mining). Understandably, a grade in the 2-2.5% range won't get you very high before you have to descend..and will it be believable? The only way to get high enough to have a trestle on a small layout might be with a spiral (or a helix...and boy to they hog space!!!), but more realistically and practically it would have to be with a switchback. A series of switchbacks would get you across a single gorge twice, and the second time would probably look quite good with a nice high scale 40-80' trestle. Just a thought for you.

-Crandell
 
What part of the country are you trying to model? That reallly determines what kind of scenery you need. If it's the Rockies, you need big mountains. If it's central Alabama, like me, small hills are all you need. In addition to Crandell's advice, you don't have to have all the big mountains actually on the layout. You can simulate big mountains by having a few smaller mountains on the layout blending into bigger mountains on the backdrop. You can then give your layout a bigger look without dealing with steep grades.

As far as the Woodland Scenics grass, I assume you're talking about the grass mats? If so, I'd urge you not use those. They are a pain to keep glued down and don't look very realistic. You should build all your trackwork before doing any scenery so you can adjustments for the inevitable problems that will show up no matter how careful you are. It is very painful to have to rip up scenery to fix track problems. Believe me, I've done it, and it made me feel like kind of jerk for rushing things to get everything done at once. :(
 
Thanks for the advice. The grassmats went back this afternoon along with the 18" bridge. I'm reading away and slowly picking up some ideas. I also learned today that on atlas flex track one rail is free moving and should be used on the inside of the turn to make it easier to trim. Pretty neat. Good think I found this place LOL. Otherwise I'd probably have a large double oval with grassmat and a couple of preform tunnels by now. I'm surprised I haven't just jumped the gun and threw it together already as I have in the past. :D
 
Sounds like you're on the right track now. :) Take as much time as you can to learn from all of our mistakes (I've made about a million of them and still do occasionally) and you'll end up with a much more reliable and realistic layout. Nothing will kill your interest in model railroading faster than watching trains go round and round and derailing in every other curve.
 
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