I recently got this email from Rick:
Scott,
Why re-invent the wheel? I was looking for inspiration for my Richlawn RR V2 and purchased Lance Mindheim's "8 Realistic Track Plans for a Spare Room". I don't know if you have that book, but all of the plans are based on a 12ft x 11ft room. Now my room is 12ft by 10ft, but I found a plan starting on page 20 that would work very well in my room even with leaving the one French door to swing in. I would have to sneak some space from the isles / layout to squeeze the layout in my room, but I believe it will fit once I re-position the lift out bridge.
The plan allows for lots of landscape and towns. In addition I believe that I can fit "Buck & Loretta's" place and Hoovertown (or part of it) on the layout. I've attached a rough edited plan showing the layout. What do you think?
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God bless,
Rick & Midge Wade
God bless,
Rick & Midge Wade
Plan by Lance Mindheim called Appalachian Coal Branch Line. I highly recommend Lance's books as he is a true innovator in the hobby. You can buy them on Amazon. A couple of them have been reviewed on my blog.
Let's analyze the plan:
What I like:
- Works with Rick's windows and doors in the room
- Backdrop divide on the peninsula
- Continuous run option
- Leaves the room open
- Simple and clean
- No elevations to deal with.
What I don't like:
- It doesn't lend itself to the kind of scenery work that Rick is an expert at, mostly mountains and deep scenes.
- Stub ended yards on both sides.
- No interchange
- Aisles are narrow, but tolerable.
- Lots of coal mines, but no customers for the coal, or interchange to ship it out.
- Would be extremely hard to double deck this plan
- Very long removable bridge
I'm going to get out the CAD system and do some sketch work. Be right back!
Scott;
ReplyDeleteI'll just address the "don't like" side of things, if you don't mind.
Many mountain areas don't have deep scenes. Typical coal country in WV is river, railroad, mountain side.
I also like double ended yards, but there isn't a lot of room here. You might want to eliminate Town C and combine it with Town B and make it double ended. Turn Town A into another (possibly large) tipple.
This layout has two interchange tracks! Both ends of the connector when you feel like operating instead of watching trains run.
It doesn't seem plausible to have coal tipples and customers both on a layout this small, but you could have a processing plant and have operations similar to the Interstate RR in VA.
Best option for double decking is to cut the connector track and gain elevation as you go around the room. You then have more stuff below the left side and above the right side (or vise-verse). This doesn't allow the continuous running.
The lift out section doesn't have to be that long, only as wide as you are provided the bechwork on either side clears the door swing.
Hope this was some help. :)
Tim