Rocky Mountain Empire (N-Scale) - Design Stage #6

[Stourbridge Lion]

Completed my 6th major revision to my first ot two proposed retirement projects; still a few years out from really starting...

Looking for constructive feedback (Good or Bad) and yes I know this is not your typical design and thus not Prototyipical and it's also Track Heavy and Helix Centric in design by design. [8-|]

This is for the first of two major layouts I hope to spend my time on in the coming years; this be N-Scale and the other to be HO-Scale.  I already have large rosters of both from years of collecting.

Major Goals:

    Minimum of 2 Independent Main Lines that can be compined into a long single Main Line (Track Heavy)
    Multi Deck (Helix Centric) - Likely limited to two decks
    Has to fit in the ROW that the Wife and I have already agreed too
    Support by my roster that includes Long Passenger Cars and 6-Wheel Engines; and maybe Steam (4-6-6-4)
    Era - Not specific / Various - Let the era be viewed base on the roster currently running (span a century)
    Setting - Rouged Rocky Mountains; Near 2% grades with several tunnels, canyons, river crossings, etc.
    Be capible of Operator-less DC (Let them run) but will look at DCC before finalize plans
    Continuous Loop
    Willness to accept tight radii (roster minimums) with Edge-to-Edge running to maximize space
    Willingness for Duck-Under for hidden access but must be Walk-Around for all viewing, photos, videos

One thing I have found with my presentations as people "Don't Get It" so I have tried to but in more time with details and have broken out the design into 26+ screen shots so I can try to better explain the concept via showing things from Bottom to Top in layers.  The design uses a continuous climbing Figure-8 type path...

OK, with that, let me start posting the screen shots starting with these first two to explain the space and the ROW within it.  Oh yes, the doors will remain as is; part of the agreement with the wife who is already being gracious enough to allow passage through one wall in the basement...

 

Figure-A:  A basement storage room that will become my N-Scale Train Room


 

Figure-B:  ROW

 

To maximize the space I am willing to go down to 30" aisle to get the needed radii for the roster.  Given the doors open into the space and the needed access to a Shelf, the aisles have been set accordingly.  You can also see where the ROW passes through a small wall into the Family Room where it will pass above my desk; limiting to backword to have to be at least 47" above the floor in this section AND leave access to our basement Fire Escape.

The Fireplace is not used so I will build right up against it but not bolt anything into it; the bechwork will be support from below.  To the right of where the layout pass through the wall will be a cabinet that will hide the Helix from view but accessible; see the PINK folding door ways that can be open/closed as well as have access to the interior from below the physical helix...

[Stourbridge Lion]

Figure-C:  Heavy Benchwork


The above layer shows where I think the heavy benchwork will be to support the lower Deck #1 as well as postions to pass upward to support Deck#2.  The brighter Yellow area will be the planned "Hidden Access" areas for the Helix as well as to the Hidden Track from all Tunnels...

 

Figure-D:  More of the Benchwork

 

Given this room is a storage room I have worked in below Benchwork storage areas for storing all the thigs I plan to keep.  For looks these will have cabinet doors on them but will also allow access to the layout above when needed.

Note the heavy 4x4 (or dual 2x4) posts in somw places as well as the "L" girder supports to hold the benchwork over the desk...

 

Figure-E:  Deck #1 (Tunnel & Mining Districts)


 

 

OK, time to place Deck #1 on top of the Bachwork.  Planning to go with solid plywood and build on top of that.  You can now see the location / size of the three (3) Hidden Access holes that will be accessible via two different Duck-Under locations.

Deck #1 is my Rouged Rocky Mountain Tunnel District that includes a deep River Canyon on the eastern section that will have a View Block seperation from the main layout area.  The northern section by my desk will be my Winter Zone with a Mine.  There are planned Lakes and Rivers shown in this diagram as well.  You can also see the 2x4 and 4x4 supports are will be heading up to Deck #2 to support it as well

Also not the Helix is setup the a 4-Track as welkl as a 2-Track; The outer for planned Upward traffic and the inner for downward traffic of the two main lines...

Figure F:  Helix - 2-Track Inner loops


Ok, lets put some track on this beast.  To best explain the concept / design I will start with the Helix that has two tracks exiting the Helix Cabinet into the Mining District just above my Desk

[Stourbridge Lion]

Figure G:  Mining District


As mentioed earlier, you will notice a heavy usage of a Figure-8 through out the design.  Track #1 (GREEN) will be my Primary Passenger Serice track in two train operation mode.  Track #2 (BLUE) thus will be my Primary Freight Train track.  Note Track #2 has access to a Wye that takes you over to a Mine.  Both tracks will drop down 2" in elivation using two trestles.  Clearance will be a minimum of 2" on all track crossings while maintaining grades of 2% or less...

Figure H - Deck #1 (Palmer Lake Siding)


Here begins the madness of this design with both Track #1 and Track #1 passing "through" Helix Cabinet in front to the Helix itself, passing round a lake and then reach seperate sidings for both tracks before passing around the bend into the heart of the Tunnel District.

Figure I:  Deck #1 Hudson Canyon and High Line


Here, my Passenger Liners (Track #1/GREEN) will operate along the bottom of the canyon right near the waterline of the River; same as the D&RGW and other railroads of COlorados past once did.  The Fright Trains (Track#2/BLUE) will actaully be hidden under the steep canyon wall; only poping out briefly over a bride crossing the river.  Access to this hidded track will be the the exterior side.  The "Vew; here is either from looking "Over the Canyon Edge" or fro m "River" level down through the canyon.  A D&RGW type landmark will also be part of this canyon (details later).

It's now the Fright Lines turn to live on the edge along the "High Line" a term folks that know the Durago and Silverton will understand.  The Passenger line will still be hidden until they both reach the curve and beome parallel tracks once again.

Figure J:  Crssing the Delaware Creek / Falls


Once again, both tracks start into a Figure-8 path while making there 2% (or less) grade passing over Delaware Creek into a tunnel and exiting once again up at the Falls passing over another tressle.  Both tracks will then pass around the outside of the mountains in this area

[Stourbridge Lion]

Figure K:  Upper Hudson Canyon


We continue our climb and Figure-8 path cross over the tracks.  This time it's the Freight Train (Track #2/Blue) that enters into the Hudson River Cayon on the far side of the river while the Passenger Train (Track#1 / Green) remains hidden behind the View block.  Note the Freight Train is now passing Over/Above the hidden section from earlier and now several inches above the river.

Figure L:  Deck #1 - Twin High Bridges

 

With both tracks now clear of the River Canyon they will cross over Delaware Creek one last time over two Long / High Bridges and they nearly complete their tough climb up the Rocky Mts crossing over the tracks they once started their climb on.

Figure M:  Deck #1: Far View


With both tracks now beyond the Rough Mountains they make their turn towards to Helix with Delaware Crrek and Falls now in the distance with only one final tunnel to enter taking the trains back into the Helix Cabinet...

 

Figure N: Deck #1 to Deck #2 transition


Both trains now enter the Outer section of the Helix to make a few loops to make the final climb to Deck #2.  This is the only area where it's a Quad-Helix.  On this diagram I have also placed the likely locations of the tunnel portals and you can see that each are accessible from one or two of the three hidden access areas from below the benchwork.  The farthest reach being about 30" but I can easily reach 33" given my long arms while all the rest are within the 24" or less reach range...

 

You can now see both Main Lines of Deck #1 that start and end in the Helix Cabient...

[Stourbridge Lion]

Figure O: Deck #2 - City and North Yard Districts


Deck #2 is know added to the layers.  Nearly the exact same shape as Deck #1 with the exception on the eastern end where it will be shorter allowing vertial views down into Deck #1 River Canyon.  Here too I will note the Hidden Access areas from the Mountain District that will give me access to the Lift_Outs for access to the interior of the City District.

 

Figure P:  Lower City Siding


Here the two Mainline Tracks exit from the Helix and pass through the Lower City siding before entering into the City District...

Figure Q:  City District


No additional track shown but adding in the City and showing that the Lower City Siding sits visable but under the Upper City Siding...

Figure R:  Union Station and Trenchs


In this section, the Passenger Train (Track #1 / GREEN) splits away and breaks into four tracks heading underneith Union Station.

The Freight Train (Track #2 / BLUE) slipts off to enter into a Trench passing under several roadways of the city.  If you look at Figure P above this is the part of Deck #2 that passes between the two Lift-Outs.

Both tracks rejoin their parallel path as they both climb out of their trenchs

[Stourbridge Lion]

Figure S:  Warehouse / Street Runner


With both tracks out of the treches, the Freight line will become a Street Runner while passing through the Warehouse section of the city.  The Passenger line will swing wide as both tracks pass the D&H Manor as they head into the Upper City Siding

 

Figure T:  Upper City Siding


Now past D&H Manor, both tracks pass through Upper City Siding with the Fregiht Line also having access to a Card Yard as well as can head for North Yard (Coming next).  Both tracks now head for the Helix to enter into the Inner Helix loops to return downward to Deck #1 completing the loop...

Figure U:  North Yard


Note the North Yard is setup to be mixed era with both an old Roundhouse as well as modern facilities so depending on angle of view it could be seeing as various eras.  The City itself will be setup with old Buildings such as those still found today in Colorado Montain commnities of Narrow & Stand Gauge RR towns.  So, this will aslo allow mixed era viewing...

 

Figure V:  Lift Outs


This view is to show the three Ligt-Outs now that you have my Deck #2 conceptal design.  Yes, the Roundhouse is sitting over the Helix and can be removed as needed for maintenance.

Note, all Switches/Turn-out are in the open which was one of the major issues pointed out in earlier designs...

[Stourbridge Lion]

OK, last post telling the story of this design I am looking for feedback on...

 

Here is a few 3D images of Deck #1 and Deck #1 to get a feel for how this might look...

 

Figure W:  3D Image #1 of Deck #1


 

Figure X:  3D Image #2 of Deck #1


 

 

Figure Y:  3D Image #3 of Deck #1

 

 

Note the View up the River Canyon

Figure Z:  Figure Y:  3D Image of Deck #2

 

Yes, I know, it's a bit(OK maybe more than a bit) crazy but I am seriously looking for feedback...

[Stourbridge Lion]

OK, lets try this another way...

Using the August 2013 MRR (Page 45) magazine for reference, the HO Layout built by Jim Bonnett is based on Canadian Rockies that is 11x22 feet. It's lowest point is 42" (hidden below the Roundhouse); the Roundhouse itself is at 48". This is a Continuous Loop design using a "Figure-8" loop through a Mountain with the high point being at 57". Behind the Mountain is a Staging Area that is at 52". Maximum Grade in this design is 3% and there are 5 Tunnels / 10 Portals; mostly in the Mountain Zone.

I have a strong interest in a N-Scale, 2-Deck Layout in which I want to incorporate this concept (not a direct copy) as one of the two decks.

The major modifications I am looking at are:

    Drop the "Penticton Harbor"
    Place the Roundhouse on the other Deck that will be more of a City design built in the late 1800's that has maintain it old look and feel into the Modern era with a large Union Station to hold several passenger trains
    In the place of the Roundhouse place a Helix to transfer between Decks
    Convert this from a Single Main Line to a mainly parallel Dual Main line were 2 trains can operate in separate Continuous Loops and potentially allow the two Continuous Loops to operate as a double size Continuous Loops such that a single train would travel one-way on Loop #1 and the opposite direction on Loop #2
    Use the Staging Yard and View Block to hold a Deep River Canyon such that Loop #1 would be at the bottom of the canyon along the river edge and Loop #2 be up near the canyon edge.
    I envision that both Main Lines would climb the mountain in that same "Figure-8" loop style (same as many old RR's did in Colorado during the Steam era) and rather than decline back down the outside edge, would continue the climb along the outer edge until both tracks reaches the helix to transfer to the other deck

OK, what would be the technical issues I would need to watch out for in such a modification?

Something like this given my ROW space

[Stourbridge Lion]

Any feedback?

[Chris333]

I thought you were a D&H man?  My only advice would be to keep it simple.

[pjm20]

Your plan seems a little all over the place. As Chris said, a simpler plan would allow you to do your mountains more justice. It might also help your feedback count if you just made a track plan, instead of showing everything at once. Good Luck.

[GaryHinshaw]

To be perfectly honest, this is not the style of layout that you commonly see here, and with 26+ screen shots to digest, it's takes a lot of time for people to absorb it.  I suspect most readers who saw this just skimmed through the figures and saw your open-ended "any feedback?" question and thought to themselves: I don't have time to study all of this, and the Northlandz-style concept is not that interesting to me, so I'll pass on providing feedback. 

I don't mean this in a negative way at all - you should definitely build what you want; it just takes time to cultivate an audience for a layout thread.  It can be helpful to ask more specific, narrowly-focused questions that people can respond to in 5-10 minutes, rather than asking them to spend an hour or more studying.  That said, I have been very fortunate to get some excellent feedback from this group and my pike is so much the better for it, so it can be worth the effort.

To keep things going, here are some specific comments:
* Do you really want to build such an ambitious plan?  Specifically, do you have the time, stamina and money it will require?  The answer is quite possibly yes, but this will take a long time to build and you should be confident going in that it will hold your interest.

* There are lots of loops and hidden track in the mountain area, and the upper deck doesn't really let this section 'breathe' in a way it deserves.  But that's just my opinion, and you may feel very differently about it.  I also don't care for track at the very edge of the benchwork, because it looks unnatural and it is kind of begging for a disaster.

* Build the pike in stages in such a way that you can run trains and gain some experience with the concept.  I would suggest building the mining area first, and devise some temporary track in place of the helix that could let you run trains.  Then lay a temporary shelf over it so you can get a sense of how this will look and feel when there is a real upper deck in place.  Then move on to the rest of the lower deck, again with temporary connections between the mining area and the rest of it, in place of the helix.

* Make sure you work out a detailed plan of execution for the upper deck.  Building a multi-deck layout if this complexity requires some significant engineering, and you can easily find yourself with something that is almost unbuildable.  Your first few figures suggest that you have thought this through, but 3-d is quite a bit different from 2-d.  As an example, I've had to get pretty creative with some of the benchwork in the stacked staging are under my Techachapi Loop:



Some of the beams that support my upper deck had to be formed as a hybrid of 1x3 and plywood pieces to avoid obstructing lower deck roadbed.  Happily it is all working out, and trains now run reliably throughout this section:



In the process of converting electrons to wood, expect to encounter many problems that will require clever solutions. Hopefully you find that prospect appealing!

In any case, build it, and the audience will come.

[Specter3]

I have seen you run through the permutations elsewhere. This is one of the most elaborately envisioned roundy round layouts I have ever seen. I understand your desire and your list of wants. But you will be seriously truncating any kind of mountainous terrain with the second deck above it. I wont say it isnt doable as your explanation and section by section approach has made it clear what goes where now(plus I am viewing it on an Iphone) so that is not an issue. But it is not the type of layout I would build so I have very little to say about the plan beyond two issues I see. One is that your liftouts are under the middle of the city. Unless you are planning on foam buildings those are going to be really heavy to lift across the area between them and an aisle. I could see having a system that would allow you to push them up and lock them at a height that would allow working from beneath them but what I am imagining would be pretty complicated. Secondly, there is no staging that I see. You mention collecting for a long while, so I assume(always dangerous eh?) you have quite a bit of rolling stock that you would like to see wandering the bridges and canyons of your empire. With what you have shown you will have to manually assemble each train on the layout when you want to see it.

Your plan seems workable as you have described it and you have thought out the construction of the benchwork that makes me believe it can be constructed as shown. I am just not sure that the mountains under the  city will be the effect you envision. Now switch the two and put the city on deck one and the mountains above it with room to soar and be well lit from above and then things get interesting iIMHo. On deck one the core of the city becomes flats (way less expensive)on the liftout structures and the liftouts become lightweight mountain tops(easier to manuver around)

Just my 2 cents.

[C855B]

Dear overly-ambitious layout project person:   (The others will get the joke, you will, too, in this thread.)

A few things, one an impression, two practical observations, and one more technical:

1) This is a lot of RR and scenery in a relatively small space. The overall result of the plan is a big clutter of trying to encompass too many themes. They're all good ideas and convey a vision, but what the viewer would see on entering the layout area is that it's a bunch to digest. Gary's mention of "Northlandz" is a good expression of his impression that you might be on the verge of "too much", and "spaghetti bowl" trackage.

2) 30" aisles are probably going to be unsatisfying. You are nose-to-train wherever you go, and there is little opportunity to stand back and enjoy the scenes. Also, it means you're planning to be operating this by yourself.

3) The removable access hatches are going to be a lot of hassle. Removable scenery bits tend to get damaged or cause damage. As much as we will it to be otherwise, trackwork is never perfect and derailments are going to happen everywhere, so you pretty much need easy access at all points for 0-5-0 operation.

4) 3% grades are steep, especially when combined with small radii. You will find train lengths very constrained by this, and a certain amount of operation frustration.

I think you have a nicely usable space. One compromise you might want to strike with your real estate manager is to move or otherwise mitigate that area in the lower left labeled "shelf", allowing the layout to spread out instead of heaping everything in a big island in the middle. That way you can do a dogbone next to the door and then narrow the big middle peninsula. Whether doing that would fix the steep grades/small radii issue might take a bit more creativity.

[DKS]

This discussion has also been kicked around on TrainBoard, where I proposed trashing all of the current designs in favor of this:





It's designed expressly for the roundy-rounder, with an option to either run four trains continuously (two on each level) or three trains, one each on each level and one alternating between levels. Helix excluded, maximum mainline grade is between 1.5 and 2%; minimum mainline radius is ~17". Massive engine terminal designed to showcase locomotives; freight and passenger yards arranged to display rolling stock (although they can be switched to some degree). Some staging of sorts is provided by passing sidings at the union station and the freight yard. Helix is located to be the least intrusive in visible layout areas while maintaining adequate access. All switches within a ~24" reach, and all aisles are 36" minimum.

One of the other TB members was able to say stuff I could not bring myself to say, but wanted to.

I gotta jump in here and speak my peace. SL, you are being given the best advice by David and the others. I pray you have not begun laying track, as it's near mid-Feb. now ! All those goofy, psychedelic computerized plans have no validity if suggesting a logical, proto-like MRR ! It looks more like a schematic of the inside of a computer chip ! Sorry, I'm the tough love guy around here. I believe in telling it like it is ! You have so much redundancy and angular tangents , 90deg, tight curves with useless, wasteful turntable leads from too many places. There is nothing proto about it ! Six Flags Magic Mountain might have a use for these plans. But, sorry, a 'RR Empire it' ain't. We are all trying to warn you about all your mistakes, yet you keep posting more of those colorful 'blue prints'.. Geesh, and it's tiny N Scale ! I wish I had this room for my HO apartment layout ! We're not flaming here. It's more like stupefied ! There are, in today's world SO, so many treatises in the thousands, from 'How too's' to clubs (+THIS very club), books at stores, magazines, ( I read "Trains" more than "MRRer" to 'see' how they do it ).

For your own good and well being listen to what we're trying to get across to you. A RR has to flow whether you are only into viewing it or displaying it. And, though I don't understand it, it's quite OK if you aren't into running it and may wish too have it run itself while you're (what ?!) watching TV or on the net. But, would you rather watch Salma Hayek going round and round, or Larry King ? It's that simple !

I believe you may be caught in a mind-set. You feel you have the answer for a MRR empire. But what you have, as someone else said, a spaghetti bowl. Except the noodles aren't even soft enough yet for serving ! Snap out of it brother !

The Northlandz comparisons are right on target. I'm not saying my recommended plan is the be-all-end-all, but when Bob Gilmore is moved to remark, "I'm sure that anybody who decided to build this plan AS IS would be completely happy," I must be on the right track.

That said, you must ultimately go with whatever will make you happy. If a totally unrealistic-looking, nearly-impossible-to-build-and-maintain bucket of spaghetti is what floats your boat, then don't listen to any of us.