Since my last post I have installed some lighting and put down foam on the hollow core doors. I have been tooling around with track plans and it has been the most time consuming, an frustrating, thing. I have seeked help for at least two people for ideas and nothing seems to strike my fancy. My issue is that I want to have minimal amount of industries but maximize number of cars and car spots. HOWEVER, I do not have the space I really want for what I want to do. SO it as back to the drawing board.
I narrowed it down to about 2-3 industries. I wanted something unique but fun. First I drew up an idea for a paper plant. Things were looking great. I was doing research, Google Earth, Bing Maps and even some of the Trackside Industries books. IN the one book I found a plan for a paper plant. I was pumped, until I got the measuring tape out. I couldn't do it for the space I had. SO back to the drawing board.
A few weeks passed and I got the urge to try and get something figured out. So I started hunting again. This time I saw a cement plant. I had a number of cement hoppers and I started looking again. I figured the cement plant would be the center focus, with some smaller industries to keep it fun. Issue was that I couldn't achieve what I wanted. This time the space was too big for what I wanted to model.
This brings me to my other friend Google Search. I just started typing keywords for small HO switching layouts. I dug around and found some of Lance Mindheim's blogs. I have read them before but haven't really kept up to date. Well I poked around and did some reading and I found something that fit the mold. It was a simple "L" Shaped layout that had one siding and a major industry that took 3 different car types. (Boxcars, Grain hoppers and tank cars). I read the article some more and it made sense! Keep it short and simple. Easy track plan with Atlas track that can be upgraded to Micro Engineering (OR Hand-laid track). So I went and dug through the cache of rolling stock to see if I had the necessary items at hand, which I did. ( I had been building for a paper plant prior.) So next step was to start looking for a building kit. I knew I would either need to kitbash or scratchbuild. While looking through the collection of building kits, I found a Magic Pan Bakery Kit. With that I started thinking, maybe I need to make a low relief building of this and go from there. So looks like a little more research will be in the works for me.
While looking at the picturs some more, I really wanted to have a cement and aggregate facility as well. (I just recently purchased some Blue Star Ready Mix tractor trailers for gravel hauling) SO I will be modifying the plan I saw, but who knows, I may just keep it short and simple.
Photo from Lance Mindheim's Blog
If anyone has feed back they wish to provide please let me know. I have been trying to have a functioning layout for over 3 years and I just keep getting frustrated over track work and a plan.
Hello!. I´m also designing a switching layout layout. I know how you feel about track planning. I´m building my layout along a 20ft long wall, it´s a modular layout with modules being 3 or 4ft long and 16'' deep. Have built 6 modules for now. I model a branchline served by the CSX in the early 2000s. About the industries theme, my idea is using low relief buildings and I´m scratchbuilding my first industry, a logistics warehouse, it gets food, general consumer goods and paper. Some track has been laid, the mainline and 3 spurs. Other idea is to model only the load/unload track of an industry, it works well for industries in front of the layout, I´ll use that in a bottling plant. There´re some books, magazines and websites very useful when designing a layout. http://www.ldsig.org/publications/journal
ReplyDeletehttp://www.layoutvision.com/id9.html
and the Lance Mindheim´s blog and books.
Thanks! I have used Lance's book's and the track plan posted is taken from his blog. Thanks for viewing!
DeleteYes, Lance´s books are great. Remember his idea of using multispot industries and where to put the mainline track. Think in small shelf layouts works better to put the mainline in the middle on the shelf.
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