Planning & Designing Your Model Railroad
The
layout is the heart of your railroad system. The arrangement of the
tracks, switches, crossings, and uncouplers determines what you can do
with your trains to make their operation a source of never-ending
fascination.
You
can make the rails curve, go straight ahead, lead into a siding, branch
into an alternate route, tunnel through mountains, pass over bridges,
circle through an earth cut, or thread through a maze of switches at a
terminal or freight yard.
Where
your train goes and what it does is up to you, and you're limited only
by the space at your disposal. Even if your space is quite small, you
can make your train duplicate almost everything that real trains do.
Choosing
a layout is really a personal matter. No one else can tell you how to
arrange your model railway. All that can be done is to show the meaning
of various space limitations and to suggest some of the many
possibilities that you'll adapt and combine, according to your own
wishes.
Never hesitate to try out your ideas to see if they will work, even if you can't find them in the layout diagrams in any book.
Before
you are through you'll without a doubt choose several layouts,
discarding or changing one to make another that appeals to you more.
And you won't be satisfied with that one for very long...
You'll
invent a new plan or will become more interested in one aspect of
railroading than another and change your layout to suit that interest.
You
may prefer switching operations, running multiple trains, or timetable
scheduling, and you'll plan your railroad accordingly.
You will add another table, an extension of some kind that increases the potential immensely.
The Basic Building Blocks
Along
with your train set you have at least a circle of track, consisting of
twelve curved sections. In S gauge this is forty inches in diameter, so
you will need a space at least forty by forty inches.
Whether that space is on the floor, on a sheet of plywood or on a tabletop will be up to you.
Some
train sets also have a few sections of straight track to make an oval,
which is really just a lengthened circle. If you have two sections of
straight track and put them in your circle at opposite points, you will
have an oval forty by fifty inches.
Four
straight sections, two on each side, will give you an oval forty by
sixty. Six straight sections, along with the twelve curved, make the
longest oval you can put on a 4' x 6' board.
Going Beyond the Basics
Now,
a simple circle or oval doesn't really imitate a real railroad all that
well. After all, a real railroad's reason for existing is to travel
from point-to-point, not simply to go around in circles.