Delaware & Hudson - Champlain Division

[Philip H]

Brendan,
I think that looks a lot better.  The flow is really nice, your staging is easy to reach, and I think all your preferred LDE's are still in place.

So go print this sucker full size and start cutting lumber.

[bdennis]

Phil,
Thanks for that.. Yeh I think Im now happy with it.
I now need to find a "friend" that has a A0 plotter than can print for me.. lol I think it will take a fair bit of A3 and even more A4 paper to print this one.. lol

[Philip H]

DO you have something akin to a Fed Ex Office/Kinkos shop?  They are walk in photocopy and print places over here - and they all have large format printers.  Not always cheap, but an option.

[GaryHinshaw]

I see you flipped the plan wholesale.  I like this version quite a bit better, but as I think through the people flow some more, I have a hunch that you will find the top aisle becoming very crowded, since you have Whitehall and north staging stacked on top of each other, and both are at the end of a long, circuitous aisle (and these are really the key nerve centers of the plan).  Further, since SB train out of north staging and NB trains out of Whitehall both follow routes that wrap around this aisle, it will add to the congestion.  I don't have an immediate suggestion for how to improve this, but I'll think about it.  I really think your operators will be happier with a modified arrangement there - a wider aisle at the very least, but finding a way to unstack them would be even better.

I really like the way you have the staging arranged.

-Gary

[MichaelWinicki]

I like it!

Much better flow!

I have to agree with Gary, that top aisle is going to be a real problem.

Trying to operate a yard and have folks going in & out with about 30" of aisle-space can make for an uncomfortable situation.

Yeah I get that turnout knobs and stuff will be recessed but you still have to back up from the fascia to see the schematic and figure out where things are.

And I get that most of the operators are slim– but this is apparently going to be a long-term project and are guys still going to be as thin and agile 5 or 7 or 10 years from now?  Or what if someone joins the group who doesn't have a rail-thin physique?  I don't know about that part of the world but it's been my experience that model railroaders in this neck of the woods get a little larger and less agile with age!   

[bdennis]

Michael, Gary,
Thanks for the tips.. I will have another look at the staging and see if I can move the staging that is under Whitehall around to be under Fort Edward. That would remove all traffic to and from staging around the Whitehall area.

In terms of the long runs between the main deck and into staging.. I plan on using the following idea.
It is like a window box that is painted all black and is unobtrusive. So when there is no train it is not distracting. When a operator needs to get a train into staging, he can follow the train around the layout and know where it is at all times.
This is a view of the main deck

This is a view of a train heading for staging.

[LIRR]

Nice work.

[bdennis]

Thanks to the suggestions by Michael and Gary.
I have reworked the location of the staging and removed it from under Whithall.

See here..


In terms of project time to complete this layout.
The shed is built, lined and painted ready to go.
I have a group of friends that will help build the base of the layout that will enable me to get on and building.
One section of staging is already built as I will re use from the existing layout.
Track is on hand (from the existing layout) so I can at least get the staging level underway.
So by Christmas this year, I hope to have the staging level completed and at least the main line for the main deck completed.

(best laid plans!)

Thanks
Regards
Brendan

[GaryHinshaw]

Hi Brendan,

I hope you don't feel like we're ganging up on you.    For your further consideration, here is a quick conceptual sketch of a possible aisle arrangement that might work well for you:



First a legend, then I'll explain the plan.  The overall room is 760 cm x 580 cm (about 25' x 19' for us yanks) and the aisles, as drawn, are all at least 90 cm (~36").  The red circles are 16" radii and the nearly-circumscribing squares are 36" on a side: these are your basic blobs based on your 16" minimum radius.  (The blobs in the corners just indicate the amount of benchwork you need to accomodate the curves, they're not supposed to represent helices or anything.)  The brown rectangles are people: 1' x 2' on a side, to give a sense of how tight even a 36" aisle is.  (1' x 2' is slightly generous, but does include some amount of 'personal  space'.)  The rectangle by the door is the dispatcher's desk and the dispatcher.  Note that he or she will be crowding the door slightly in this position.

The plan schematic: north staging is on the lower level along the right wall.  The transition from staging to the layout occurs by the door and proceeds along the 1st peninsula.  It then follows the peninsulas around in a straightforward walk-around via Plattsburgh, Willboro, and into Whitehall.  Note the the scene across the aisle from Whitehall is left rural so there will not be too much competition for aisle space with the yard crews.  (And the crews leaving north staging are nowhere near Whitehall).  It then proceeds to the south via Saratoga Springs and Corinth.  Note that Fort Edward did not make the cut here.  After Corinth, the track loops back to south staging which is below deck, either along the bottom or left walls.  The two staging yards can easily be joined by a lower-deck track along the top wall, like in your photo.  This plan does produce a mainline run that is about 85-90% of what you had, so there is some loss there.

I also have a distinct handicap here in that I don't know the line well enough to really plan distinctive LDE's, but I tried to sketch something that follows your schematic and joins the nerve centers in a hopefully ergonomic way.   One complication with this plan is that north staging is bisected by a peninsula, but I don't imagine you would be doing much actual shunting there.  Frankly, there is no reason you couldn't run staging all the way around the lower deck.  You can never have too much.

-gfh

P.S. I see you just posted a new plan.  I'll study that now! 

[bdennis]

Gary,
Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into it and see how it works for me..

Regards
Brendan

[GaryHinshaw]

Brendan,

I think your staging rearrangement is better, but it seems to me that you could make them even more accessible by placing them around the side walls, as in my sketch above, without compromising your goals.  You could run the staging around much of the perimeter (left, top, and right walls) if you so chose.

Since I had the elements handy, I took your last plan and added my people and blobs.  Happily, my blobs matched your turn-back curves exactly, so I'm sketching to the same scale as you!   I think your Whitehall aisle can work, but it would still be nice to have a few extra cm in that aisle.  Note that the Saratoga Spring aisle is really tight, but if you didn't have staging under there, that aisle would not be a major traffic aisle, so it might work. 

One thing you might consider is to morph the benchwork a bit, as indicated by the magenta arrows here:



The lower left corner is fairly empty, so you could expand the Whitehall aisle with this set of shifts.  You'd probably have to shorten the Plattsburgh peninsula a little bit, in which case, it would probably make sense to put Plattsburgh on the 'inside' of the peninsula, instead of the outside.   Just more food for thought; no offense taken if you don't like the ideas.

-gfh

P.S. If you place staging around the perimeter, you can remove the lower deck from the peninsulas, making benchwork construction easier.

[bdennis]

Gary,
Thanks for the ideas..
I will have a look at moving things around.
The main issue with moving the staging to the peninsula's is to get the run / distance down from the main deck.
I plan on having 300mm from rail in staging to rail on the main deck and using 9mm ply as the base for the road bed plus 6mm of cork.
In order to get the separation and maintaining a max of 2% grade I need the long run. I am also avoiding the need for a helix.

The idea with Saratoga Springs Isle is that if someone is running a through train then they may not need to enter the isle. They can stand at the entry (if someone is switching in there) and rung a rain through town. Also stand at the same place while running a train into staging. If I use the Fort Edward staging as the South bound staging and the one under Saratoga Springs as the predominantly north bound then the loso's will be on the left end under Saratoga Springs and be visable and accessable from a engineer that is staning at theleft end of Saratoga springs.

The top long wall is only 200mm deep so no room under there for staging.
I need the staging to be at least 2700mm long (in clear) to enable my 2 loco + 20 x 50ft box car plus caboose train lenghts.

I agree that the build of the main struture may get complex as it stands and am concerned about the odd shapes I have. I will look at your sugestion above to see if I can make the isles more straight to make the construction easier.

Thanks again.

Brendan

[bdennis]

Things are moving along on the D&H.
See my blog update.
http://dh2ndsub.blogspot.com.au/
In short, the old layout is now in 1001 pieces and completely pulled apart.
I have cleaned up the shed and marked out where the new layout will go on the floor.

Timber has been ordered and am waiting with anticipation!. (I have a friend that can get timber at trade prices, and that means around 1/2 the price of retail stores, so need to wait for his next delivery).

The plan is largely unchanged as I had posted above.
I have added buildings and names to the plan along with some roads etc.
This is the main level

This is the lower level.


Any comments welcome.

[mark dance]

I realize I am coming in waaayyyyy late on this.  My apologies for not having a drawing program to convey this idea as well.

Have you considered a "spiral" track plan with only a single turn back loop at the end/middle?  This is similar to John Armstrong's Canadaigo Southern. You are nearly there now having gone from 3 peninsulas to two.  I believe the spiral approach has been mathematically shown to provide the maximum run length for a given floor space.  It also is very well suited to narrow benchwork which maximizes aisle space by removing "blobs" and minimizes "redundant scenery"...if you are interested in maximizing operations this may be a good approach.  You might be able to fit another turn into a single long central peninsula with spiralling narrow benchwork.

A multiple peninsula layout (the clearest example being the first Cat Mountain and Santa Fe) provides more straight forward access however it forces a turn back curve treatment for each space-consuming "blob" at the end of each peninsula.  I would also worry that these designs may look dated in 10 years.

Now back to lurking...

md

[basementcalling]

Double check your yard throats. Is there a way to move the crossover from what I assume is your arrival/departure track back inside the yard throat so trains can enter and exit the yard without forcing the switcher to stop working to clear space? This might help the yard operators keep up with the switching load if there is a lot of that in your modeled yard.



As I see it, right now the crossover in question is between the turnout for a caboose track and your yard ladder. Pushing it back to the right would allow unimpeded switching and also lengthen each yard track by a small amount, which may or may not be helpful.

I like how the plan is evolving, but still agree with the advice Mark gave to try a spiral peninsula approach if it works for your town order. When I gave up multiple peninsulas ending in blobs I got much better people flow for the space as well.