The absolute most spaghetti I can possibly get into a 4x8 N layout?

[Olivani]

I have a delicious Bolognese recipe to go with this   


Oliver

[dem34]

Since it hasn't been posted
http://davidksmith.com/modeling/resources/track-planning/compact.htm
A good selection of compact track plans usually with one or two trackwork "tropes" thrown in each. 
Peeling back the index and going through the blogs you will also find some micro layout Philosophy buried within which could help.

Also this guy
http://davidksmith.com/modeling/resources/track-planning/plan_45.htm

[Zack L-J]

Thank you all very much for the great track plans and information. I’m bookmarking this thread for later use when it’s time to build the real layout.

In the meantime I just had to bring the foam board upstairs and see what I could do if I used every piece of unitrack I own. Apparently it’s not *quite* enough for what I was aiming for, so I just bridged the gap with some snap track(not pictured). Please excuse the terrible lighting, there basically isn’t any in the loft.



4x8 is both a whole lot and not a lot of space simultaneously. It’s very interesting. I’m going to furnish an unused portion of the attic to use as my train room, so for now I’m going to just play with different unitrack configurations in the meantime.

[dem34]

That is kinda, nail on the head why its fallen a bit out of favor. A 4x8 is not particularly Space Efficient for Model Railroads especially if you wish to model it realistically. Since if you do a standard, main, roundy round you'll have tons of negative space far from any track. And if you spaghetti you'll have a lot of track in the middle, but its hard to do anything other than railfan anything further than a foot away from the edge.

[Zack L-J]

But if you’re like me and don’t care about realism it’s a lot less of a problem

[wm3798]

Looks like a fun layout to roundy round on.

If scenery is your bag, take the whole shebang and rotate it about 9 degrees counterclockwise, and get that front long stretch out of parallel with the edge of the layout.  It will lessen the likelihood of disaster, and make the scene much more interesting to look at and build scenery around, see @rickb773 's photo elsewhere in this thread.


You might also consider stretching out that tangle in the middle.  The sharp turns and steep climb will make running anything but a short train a challenge.

As a suggestion, you might want to work in a double track main, that stays on a level plane, and a second route that runs over a higher grade above it.  Right now you can run a single train that goes to a lot of places, but a simpler plan as I've described will let you run more trains at once, which is always infinitely more fun:

Lee

[DKS]

http://davidksmith.com/modeling/resources/track-planning/plan_45.htm

[MVW]

Damn, that's some roundy-roundy fun! Would be interesting to see this stretched out to 7 or 8 feet in length.

Jim

[wm3798]

http://davidksmith.com/modeling/resources/track-planning/plan_45.htm

Stretching it out to a 36x80 HCD would soften some of those narrow turnbacks, and perhaps allow for another industrial switch or two.
The runaround track at the front could be lengthened to be more of siding, and the grade from the low line to the high line can be distributed a bit by elevating the runaround and leveling much of it, rising from left to right.
And any of the four corners could be modified to connect to TTrak modules (or OneTrak, or NTrak, depending on your denomination...)

Either way, it's a great place to start for a busy model railroady model railroad.

Lee

[rickb773]

Looks like a fun layout to roundy round on.

If scenery is your bag, take the whole shebang and rotate it about 9 degrees counterclockwise, and get that front long stretch out of parallel with the edge of the layout.  It will lessen the likelihood of disaster, and make the scene much more interesting to look at and build scenery around, see @rickb773 's photo elsewhere in this thread.


You might also consider stretching out that tangle in the middle.  The sharp turns and steep climb will make running anything but a short train a challenge.

As a suggestion, you might want to work in a double track main, that stays on a level plane, and a second route that runs over a higher grade above it.  Right now you can run a single train that goes to a lot of places, but a simpler plan as I've described will let you run more trains at once, which is always infinitely more fun:

Lee

To straighten out a few of Lee’s (@wm3798) "misconceptions":
1)   Outer loop was 19” radius; inner: 15” radius; so I could run almost any equipment including Y6b’s.
2)   Grades were ~ 2% so unlimited train length on the outer loop and 10-15 car trains was easily achievable with a 1-2 engines on the inner tracks.
3)   Two trains can run on the separate lines totally independently without attention. Using DC and a few occasional tweaks enabled me to run 3 trains at a time. DCC would have been even easier.
4)   The lines in the front are already intentionally not parallel to the edge of the layouts (for enhanced visual properties). In the 20 years I had the layout I never put a train on the floor. The back side featured a mild “photogenic” (ala Jack Armstrong) curve around a water edge and the second descending line was mildly curved at elevation.
5)   During serious operations. I ran the layout as a branch line (to the 2 spur mine and the 6 spur local town) interchanging with the PRR and Reading. The Sept/Oct 2012 issue of N Scale Magazine highlighted the multiple operating opportunities on how to run the railroad. Again, if anyone cannot get that issue, I can email you a pre-production .pdf of the article IF you send me your email address (since I don’t know how to attach a .pdf to a Railwire message).

Again, the layout’s main weakness was the lack of a staging (or full) yard. I would suggest a narrow shelf 90 degrees from the lower left.

I really miss that layout (especially when doing maintenance on the 70 (40 year old) turnouts on its 12'x19' replacement). 

[wm3798]

@rickb773 I was showing your layout as a good example of the slightly skewed track plan...  IIRC, it was a 4x8.  My suggestions were directed at the DKS track plan shown in the previous post, which I believe is on a table of only 3'x5', which would benefit greatly by being expanded to 36x80 for a door layout.

All of the benefits you cite are why I really like that old layout of yours. 

Lee

[OldEastRR]

Jeez -- the metroliner sounds like the real thing, even scaled for prototypical sight distance to sound volume level.

[jargonlet]

Has anyone built the grey river track plan?  I like that one a lot. Looks like a great one for z scale as the entire thing is slightly bigger than 3’x1.5’.