Egad, what a CAD

This post is about Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools for model layout planning. The title actually comes from an obscure, one-act melodrama that is occasionally put on by high schools, more commonly back in, oh, say, the 1970s. Don't ask me how I know that.

I managed to avoid CAD for layout design for a long time. I downloaded a few demo products back in 2003 but after realizing they all had steep learning curves I stuck to graph paper, pencil, erasers, a ruler and a compass.

However, after I completed the high-level layout design and made my first attempt at a detailed staging design I realized that I was going to need CAD to complete this layout. I'd been working at it for about 2 hours when I realized that the approach I was taking simply could not work, and that I'd need to shift the entire track arrangement around. Then it occurred to me that this was likely going to happen many, many times given the nature of what I was trying to fit into the space. A tool that would allow me to shift whole track groups quickly from place-to-place, trying to find the best arrangement, was going to be essential if I was to complete the design in the same decade.

There are several CAD tools available for model railroaders. I'm sure I don't have a comprehensive list but CADrail and 3rd PlanIt seem to be the most popular choices. There is also a free tool from Atlas which apparently is acceptable if you are using their sectional track, and I've heard there is a model railroad version of Xtra CAD somewhere, but it didn't turn up in my quick Google search.

Which is the best? Heck if I know. Like almost everyone else I just picked one, learned it, and since it works I haven't bothered to try another since the learning curve is steep for each tool. I've read a few reviews of the various tools in Model Railroader, but they are careful to avoid making any one tool look better than the others.

So, I picked 3rd PlanIt only because when I tried the demo I was able to locate quickly the templates for the N scale switches I was going to use. Not the most scientific approach, but at least I knew it was going to work for me. I've found it a good tool, but if I had to recommend one now I'd suggest you look at CADrail only because I can't get the 3rd PlanIt people to respond to my emails.

The learning curve is steep even if you are adept at computer use and even have CAD experience, say from home design software. Actually I can't imagine how someone who has limited computer experience could possibly learn this tool on his/her own. Yes, part of the learning has to do with getting used to the concept of working with objects segregated by layers -- only some of which may be visible at a given time -- and part of it has to do with getting used to thinking in three dimensions. But most of the learning has to do with getting used to setting up the track and the connections between the track, including topics like easements, parallel track, and connecting track that doesn't align to the nanometer.

In my case I spent maybe 3 weeks getting the lower deck designed, then did the upper deck over the next 2 weeks, then re-did the lower deck now that I really understood the tool.

And once you are skilled at using the tool you'll find, if you compare notes with another skilled user, that your approach and his/hers are completely different, yet both are effective. This is because the tool has so many options that it's likely no two people use it in exactly the same way.

So, thus far all I've said is that I used 3rd PlanIt to design my layout, I am skilled with the tool, and it took me a long time to learn how to use it. But the real questions are: do I consider it worth the effort, and if so what are the advantages? The answer to the first question is an emphatic yes -- I wished I learned it years ago and saved the time I spent doing smaller layout designs on graph paper. The answer to the second question is that these are, IMHO, the advantages of using a CAD tool:

1. Speed. Once you are adept you can put down the initial version of a track section at least as fast as you can using graph paper. After that is done subsequent adjustments can be done in mere seconds or minutes. You can save literally hours or days with a single redesign effort.
2. Precision of design. On paper, no matter how hard you try to be exact, you can too easily "fudge" the angle of a switch or the radius of a curve, and deceive yourself about the workability of a track arrangement. With CAD what you design is what you get. "Fudging" is only possible if you cheat by, say, forcing two tracks together that don't really fit. If you use the standard connect tools that won't happen.
3. Precision of implementation. CAD allows you to know the exact location, down to 1/32nd of an inch if you like, for a given switch or start of a curve.
4. 3D and overlays. It is a challenge to figure out how elements fit together in a three dimensional space using graph paper. With CAD you can easily select which layers to view, allowing you to see how different elements fit together without distractions from other elements. Futhermore, most CAD programs have 3D views so you can confirm it all works.
5. Precise calculations. Will that siding be long enough? What is the exact slope of this grade? What is the exact radius of this curve? All these and more are quickly answered with CAD, but often can be calculated only approximately, and after a lot of work, with graph paper.
6. Easy printing and sharing of designs. A nice side effect of CAD.

In addition, there are other features of CAD which I haven't used, such as testing out scenic views or actual train operations, which many people find helpful.

The only caution I'd give to someone using CAD is that it really helps if you have experience building from CAD before you decide that your CAD design is "final". This is because CAD's extremely precise calculations can mislead you about how the design will translate to reality. My plans, for example, are calculated to the 16th of an inch. When you start working in your layout room you'll find that real life isn't always like that. Floors aren't always level and walls aren't always plumb (in fact, they usually aren't). The peninsulas you build may not be exactly perpendicular from the wall. You may also find that if you carefully plot two locations of a line from the CAD to your benchwork, that when you extend the line outwards it doesn't seem to correctly line up. In part this is because 1/16th of an inch is really small -- your pen mark may be that wide! You probably will need to check measurements again and again at different locations, and also be prepared to adapt your CAD design slightly based on what you encounter on the benchwork. Once you've done this once or twice you'll take it into account when doing your next CAD design, and leave yourself a little slack room in the design.

So, I used CAD for the iNdoor layout design, and then later for the Garden railroad as well. In future posts I'll describe those designs.

Layout Concept - St. Albans Model Railway

So, you’ve sold your house and are positive you will soon move into a house with a decent sized dedicated layout space. But you don’t have the exact dimensions. What kind of layout planning can you do?

This was the situation I was in for about 5 or 6 months in 2005. What you can do is figure out the layout parameters: the theme, era, operations, scenic focus, and design standards. These are all things that fit under the notion of what John Armstrong dubbed your “Givens and Druthers”. That is, what absolutely had to be (Givens) and what the relative priorities were among the other stuff you wanted (Druthers). Some of the givens you won’t know until you know your layout space, but you can still make a lot of progress.

In this post I’ll describe the layout concept – the theme that provides the context for the actual layout design. In subsequent posts I’ll discuss the layout design standards and space, then the layout design itself. For simplicity this post will cover the concept as it is today, which has evolved somewhat relative to the concept as it was before the design started.

The layout is of a mythical Midwestern city sitting on a large navigable river that is part of the Mississippi system, but not the Mississippi itself. The location is necessarily vague, but imagine somewhere to the west of the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois. Needing a name for my city I thought of how U.S. cities were frequently named after European towns and cities, then thought about how my wife and I were married in Harpenden, England, which is a village near the town of St. Albans. I chose St. Albans for the city name, and Harpenden for a suburb that will be featured on the layout.

I chose a freelance theme instead of modeling a prototype for two reasons. First, I tried hard but couldn’t find a prototype that includes everything I wanted. As I was living in the Kansas City area at the time I looked hard at potential prototypes in that region, including cities in neighboring states, but in every case the compromises compared to what I wanted were just too great. For a while I tried a hybrid approach, with a prototype as a base but with modifications, then finally I accepted it would be freelance. Of course, all those Real Model Railroader™ voices in my head went “tsk tsk”, so I assuaged my guilty conscience by promising myself to make the outdoor layout a pure prototype – something that I have done.

Supposedly we freelancers aren’t Real Model Railroaders™ because we can “cheat” any time we run into a challenging design or operations issue by changing the railroad itself. However, as I started the process I discovered a second reason for doing a freelance, and that is that freelancing gives you a whole different type of design fun. You are creating not just a model of a railroad, but also an entire fictional world with its own history, and you can spend as much time developing that world and its history as you want. As an adolescent and even well into my younger adult years I would draw maps of fictional cities, building them up historically over time and photocopying a snapshot of the city map at different points in time for comparisons over the eras. I very much enjoyed incorporating the various factors that influence city changes over time, as well as noting how past influences shape, sometimes in very subtle ways, the way a city looks today.

So, when I started on the St Albans Model Railway that was exactly what I did. The rest of this post covers the fictional history of that city and its surroundings up to the present day, with obvious special emphasis on the resulting model railroad.

St Albans was founded as river cities often were, but was lucky to have had a small number of wealthy leaders who had a bit more foresight than usual. As railroads became a prominent part of the American frontier in the 1830s and 40s (and the Mississippi valley was the frontier then) the St Albans leaders, in contrast to the business powers in downriver St Louis, did not see the railroadsa as unwelcome competition to their riverboat business but instead as an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. They openly courted railroads and, recognizing that future westward railroads and trans-continental railroads were inevitable, pushed to have those routed through St Albans. They built a bridge across the St Albans river, saving critical costs and time for any railroad wanting to head west, and established a local St Albans Municipal Railroad (SAMRR – colloquially referred to as “Sammer”, or “The Sam”) to connect the various railroads in the city area with each other and the river landings, and to provide pretty much any service needed for railroads that were either just getting established in the city or which found it helpful to subcontract the work. The SAMRR still exists today as a very busy hybrid private/government entity.

The business strategy worked. Even railroads which didn’t route their main lines through St Albans found it profitable to establish branches to the city even before their main lines were complete, just because of the interchange trade. A number of railroads did push mainlines through St Albans, notably the Burlington, whose mainline (now part of the BNSF) is the key feature of the model railroad. As traffic grew SAMRR upgraded facilities including double-tracking the main bridge over the river in the 1860s. That bridge lasted for over a century, with upgrades in the 1890s and 1930s to support heavier locomotives, until being made obsolete by a new bridge that opened in 1995. However, that old bridge was kept as a historical landmark, and has been modified to support pedestrian traffic in the trendy center of St Albans. Both bridges are features of the model railroad. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The post-civil war era brought with it a lot of optimism in the city, which through its extensive transportation network had a diverse economy that was better able than most to withstand the frequent economic panics of the latter 1800s. In that era there were many civic-minded groups, some of which had been previously focused on the abolition movement, who were now focused on bettering the city itself. Two universities were founded near the river just north of what was then the city limits and numerous parks were established. As river freight and passenger traffic waned due to the continuous improvement of the railroads, the northern river landings were abandoned and their riverside locations converted to more parks, museums, a concert hall, a large city library and a theater district (many of these paid for by millionaire residents of the city through gifts from their estates). Several festivals were established, the most popular being one focused on Shakespeare's plays. St Albans became a popular regional tourism destination, easily reached via railroad, and the success of the cultural festivals inspired other cities elsewhere, such as Ashland, Oregon.

A few miles to the east of St Albans was a smaller town of Harpenden, situated in an unusual geologic formation (for that part of the country) that made for a picturesque little valley. It was just within reasonable commute distance by train, and soon became a popular place for the wealthier people of St Albans to build houses – either as their main house or a weekend house. The Rock Island built their line east from St Albans adjacent to the Burlington for part of the way, with the two lines separating at Harpenden. As a result, a joint passenger station was constructed at the point where the lines separated – a unique Victorian building that became very well known to railroad photographers and is now a designated historical landmark. A town square was constructed next to the station and it was soon surrounded by rows of Victorian shops catering to the local high-end clientele. That in turn attracted shoppers from other towns, who found it easy to access due to the fact that both Burlington and Rock Island commuter lines made Harpenden a stop for all trains – even the Limiteds to Chicago. As a result the town experienced a growth boom in the last two decades of the 1800s and again in the 1920s.

St Albans continued on a normal growth path for a Midwestern American city through the middle 20th century. Many industries were attracted to the city due to the excellent transportation infrastructure combined with the outstanding cultural opportunities. However, at that time the biggest factor in industry location was usually the proximity to natural resources, and on that count St Albans wasn’t as attractive as some of the cities in the mountains or along the Great Lakes. Thus, economic growth was generally steady over time but there never was a boom time of extremely rapid growth.

Following World War 2 most of America experienced the sudden and rapid rise of the car-dependent suburbs and St Albans was no exception. At first the “Levittown clones” were built primarily in the prairies along the many railroad lines that fanned out like bicycle spokes from the city, and new passenger stations were constructed to serve those towns. But once those areas were used up the sprawl continued to fill any open space near the city. This initially had little direct effect on the city itself except for the increase in commuter train traffic, which when combined with the increase in long-distance passenger train travel resulted in SAMRR adding 8 tracks to Union Station, making a new total of 44.

However, soon the suburbs were filled up not just by new families looking for a place to live but also by long-time city residents attracted to the extra room. More suburbanites meant more cars, and more cars meant freeways. The first short freeway was built in west St Albans in 1955. But after Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Act in 1956, the country went on a freeway building spree in which many great neighborhoods were wiped out by eminent domain. The first interstate through St Albans opened in 1959. Fortunately, unlike many historic city districts in the U.S. (such as the gold country towns of Auburn, Grass Valley and Nevada City in California), both St Albans and Harpenden city centers were spared being split in two parts by freeways.

Progress continued. The first modern-style shopping mall opened in 1962 – the first modern indoor shopping mall opened in 1968. The new St Albans International Airport opened in 1963. However, traffic to the airport quickly became so congested on the access freeway at rush hours that the city council approved building a commuter line extension to the airport in 1964 – a line that is still heavily used today.

Changes like these were happening across the country, and for most Midwestern cities they took a great toll on their city centers. The term "inner city" soon took on very negative connotations due to neglect, blight, and high crime rates. Cities like St Louis and Kansas City ended up closing down their Union Stations in the early 1970s. Partly this was because long-distance passenger train traffic had become but a trickle. But more importantly very few people still commuted to the city centers for work or shopping, and so the cities didn’t try to keep the local commuter lines running after the railroads gave up running passenger trains.

Fortunately, all those decisions to build a strong cultural base in the city center that happened in the latter 1800s made a huge difference to St Albans a century later. Like Chicago, San Francisco and New York, St Albans still had a surviving, if not entirely thriving, city center in the 1970s. As the class 1 railroads abandoned even local passenger travel SAMRR’s mission was expanded to providing commuting services, and SAMRR received subsidies from the federal, state and local governments to help. The act of combining the individual commuter lines did help improve the efficiency and customer satisfaction of the commuter services in the early years, but only until the severe economic troubles of the late 1970s led to major budget cuts.

The low point in our story comes in fall, 1979, in Harpenden. The Rock Island, in one of a series of desperate moves to avoid the total liquidation that ultimately would consume the line the next year, abandoned the line that went through the town. By special arrangement the Burlington Northern (successor to the Burlington) maintained one track on the Rock Island east from Harpenden to service the freight customers there until the disposition of that segment of the railroad was determined (it would ultimately be sold to a company that ran several short lines). However, the line was no longer being maintained for commuter traffic, and in fact years of maintenance neglect had caused several expensive, but fortunately not fatal, commuter train derailments. SAMRR couldn’t afford to take over sole maintenance, so cancelled service to that line. Worse, from the perspective of Harpenden, the regional bus service, which had run a terminal at the Harpenden train station for connections with the commuter lines, responded by moving to a new terminal at the nearby indoor mall that had just opened. Without the bus service SAMRR also removed Harpenden as a stop on the express line in another cost-cutting move.

Harpenden’s downtown retail district had already been under revenue pressure for years, and to many this looked like the end of what had once been a premier shopping district. But the business and town leaders in Harpenden were known for their perserverance and dedication to their community. Back in 1974 they undertook a major project to eliminate cars from all the streets in the shopping district, replaced the pavement with cobblestones, and turned the shopping district into a re-creation of the 1880s Victorian town Harpenden had once been. This change did provide a boost to the town's revenues for several years. But the 1979 recession, combined with the loss of easy public transport access to the district, combined with a new shopping mall opening up nearby, was perhaps just one strike too many. The town leaders considered building a multi-story parking garage in the spot of the former metro bus terminal, but couldn’t find the funds for it.

That Thanksgiving the town mayor made a trip to Chicago to visit his daughter’s family and his newly born grandson. He vowed not to talk about the town’s troubles at a holiday event, but when his daughter’s father-in-law prodded he told him the whole story. The mayor mentioned the gap in the center of town caused by the abandoned train tracks and the need to get something – anything – to attract people back to the town center.

As luck would have it, the person he was talking to was a director of Burlington Northern (BN) who had been struggling with ways to do a better job of preserving the railroad’s historic legacy despite the very difficult economic times (as the saying goes, when the economy gets a sniffle, the railroads get the flu). The tiny coincidence of this conversation resulted in a massive to the future of Harpenden and St Albans.

The BN director suggested they open a train museum – with real, live running trains including steam engines – right in the town square. They had the tracks, they had a great setting (the Victorian town square) and they had space for a museum building (the abandoned terminal). He offered arrange the loaner of some preserved steam engines immediately, and suggested that they could bring in some trailers and set up some portable exhibits to see if the concept would bring people to Harpenden. If it worked they could make it a permanent project.

The Harpenden town leaders embraced the idea thoroughly – they really had no other option, and it at least gave them something to act upon. They had no trouble recruiting volunteers, and the almost-impromptu “Harpenden Train Fest 1979” was a surprise hit. It was still a very weak retail season, but an improvement over the previous two years and far better than they had expected. As soon as Christmas ended that year their work began in earnest on making this a permanent theme.

At the time no one in Harpenden could know if this plan was going to work. The national mood was very pessimistic, they were fighting against forces that had shuttered city and town centers across America, and no one had tried anything like this before. 25 years later, though, the St Albans Business School published a highly influential study on the Harpenden success story. They identified 11 factors that were important in the project, but 2 that were absolutely critical. The first of these two was that the town setting was already perfect for what they were trying to do. Attempts to make such a town square from scratch would have appeared artificial – and thus been less appealing to customers – and in any event they didn’t have the funds to create such a place artificially. Second was that the volunteer force they recruited was very unusual both in terms of number and dedication. Partly this was because there was a very strong civic pride in Harpenden. But mostly because so many railroad fans from literally across the continent heard of the project and wanted to be part of it.

In 1980 the new Harpenden National Railroad Museum (with special emphasis on the Burlington Northern) was established and in 1984 the new museum building was given a grand opening, with a very large section of the museum focused on trains for children. The entire shopping district complemented the museum with its focus on history and trains. City sales tax revenues in 1984 were a stunning nine times what they had received in 1979. Today this is the most visited tourist attraction in the state, and restored classic trains run between Harpenden and St Albans Union Station every weekend in the summer and during special events the rest of the year. Harpenden is now noted in the Amtrak catalogue as a special stop, and is the destination of occasional railfan excursions from various points in the Midwest and West. Harpenden town square, with the museum, museum yard, and the historical station, all are a special feature of the model railroad.

While Harpenden was very much enjoying the towns revival in the 1980s so was St Albans. 1983 was the first year since 1971 when more people moved into the city itself than moved out. By 1985 the city center was noted nationally as a trendy spot – featured in college travel guides like Let’s Go – and by 1988 the city center had by far the highest real estate prices in the state. The factories and warehouses that made up the area near Union Station had long been abandoned, but were now either being converted to condos or razed and replaced by new row houses, retail, and even a new indoor stadium. By 1992 SAMRR noted that more people were now living in the city and commuting to work in the suburbs than were commuting from the suburbs to the city -- the first time that had ever happened -- and that extra trains to the city were necessary for Friday and Saturday nights and weekends due to the popularity of the city center as an entertainment destination.

By the mid-1990s the freight railroads were again thriving in the city, with a lot of short lines that used to be spurs of class 1 railroads. The railroads had a lot fewer local sidings to service, as factories moved off shore and businesses with low transportation needs opted for trucks. However, the businesses that still used the railroads needed many, many more cars than were needed in the past, more than making up for the difference. If you ride the rails around St Albans you can still see lots of evidence of old spurs and sidings from the past – but you’ll also find quite a few large, modern freight centers.

SAMRR has sold off some of the land it once owned. For example, Union Station now hosts only 8 tracks, not 44. But there are plenty of SAMRR yards throughout the city, including the downtown intermodal yard (if you look closely you can find visual evidence of that location’s rich past, starting as a riverboat landing and later serving as several different kinds of railroad facilities) and the SAMRR commuter maintenance yard. Union Station, the commuter maintenance yard, and all the trackage around that area are featured on the model railroad.

In addition, the various short and regional lines have their own railroad facilities in the city area. The class 1 railroads prefer to locate maintenance and yards in lower cost locations instead of inside cities, but all the class 1 operations still maintain at least one yard in the metro area. The BNSF has a substantial flat freight yard (14 tracks, with the 4 in the center of the diamond usually allocated for arrivals and departures) that is used as the starting and ending point of the metro area local freight runs. These days it that yard is extremely busy, with two drill tracks from one side and one from the other, and often all three are active. This yard is included in the model of St Albans. Also included is about half of one of the short lines, including a factory that makes items from plastics.

The BNSF local freight yard is adjacent to a remodeled bottling plant, formerly used as a brewery, that has some very interesting approach tracks, including two single track bridges dating from the early 20th century. Replacements have been discussed but as the bridges remain safe, no one wants to pay to change them.

The last major influence on the St Albans-Harpenden history started in 1993. The city was again on the upswing, and as such was experiencing lots of traffic congestion The city council launched a study to seek solutions. Often studies such as this fail– either the firm commissioned to perform the study is not up to the task, or the political will to implement the recommendations is lacking. In this case, though, recognizing that St Albans was blessed with two outstanding universities (both with branches in Harpenden) the council asked the universities to conduct the study in cross-discipline fashion, looking at the problem from perspectives ranging from engineering to sociology, and the council specifically directed the study group to consult with the various stakeholders in the city.

The result was a 10 year plan that amazingly was implemented almost exactly as intended and nearly on time. Most of it was done in 8 years, the last parts over the next 7 years. From a railroading perspective the plan had two major impacts.

The first was the creation of a downtown intermodal station. The study realized that a big factor in the traffic congestion were trucks moving to and from the city center, mostly bringing retail goods in, but also for construction, some manufacture export, and trash haulage. The study suggested that a more detailed feasibility study be conducted on whether an intermodal yard would allievate enough traffic to pay for itself, and if so how. Following the second study, and with terrific support from the local railroads, an intermodal facility was set up, run by BNSF with SAMRR support, and with structured incentives for local businesses to use it. This is one of the smallest intermodal facilities by area in the country, but has the highest throughput in world relative to the space occupied, and achieves very fast response times (one of the requirements that came out of the study). It is a key feature of the model railroad.

The other impact was the revamping of the commuter lines. In 1993 SAMRR was doing a decent job running the commuter trains compared to similar organizations in other cities, but there were opportunities for improvement. Many people who used the commuter train said they did so only because traffic/parking was so bad, or because they didn’t own a car (as is true for a lot of city residents). The study suggested that many more travelers could be swayed to use the commuter trains by making a number of fairly simple and easy changes to the train experience. The study suggested the costs of the changes would be paid for by the increase in fare revenue (each additional passenger adds almost no operational cost so the additional fare is almost pure profit). These changes were not surprising: better lighting everywhere (to increase feeling of safety), more cleanliness everywhere, easier-to-understand maps and timetables, better station access, more on-train amenities, easier pay methods, bike carry facilities, and seating areas that made it easier to work (even in 1993 they recognized the early laptop and cell phone trend).

The next recommendation was thought to be much harder to implement: highly reliable schedules. Reliable schedules were considered essential to obtaining a high ridership, but as most schedule delays were caused by conflicts with the freight railroads, thus outside the control of SAMRR, the study wasn’t sure how much could realistically be done. However, what SAMRR found was that the railroads were just as interested in achieving predictable schedules as SAMRR, and were willing to fund at least half of the costs of the necessary changes. An improved traffic control system was put in place, partly to help plan schedules but mostly to have a very detailed set of contingencies so that incipient delays could be immediately recognized and mitigated. In addition, the most common contributor of lengthy delays (those over an hour) was found to be people committing suicide on the tracks – something just about every public agency in the city had an interest in finding ways to prevent. A number of changes were made to help, but the most effective one was to have monitoring cameras identify potential suicides and notify local police before the train comes. They found that most suicides spend some time waiting in the location before acting, and they have learned to identify the warning signs in their behavior. All of these items are factored into the modeling of the commuter railroad, which includes models of Union Station, Harpenden station, two intermediate stations, and a part-time stop next to the stadium.

The last recommendation from the study had the biggest impact on ridership, and also has the biggest impact on the model. The SAMRR train network did a great job of getting people from a point in the suburbs to the city – or to points along the line between the two, but not from a suburban point on one line to a point on another. A passenger certainly could do this if s/he wanted to by taking the train to Union Station and transferring, but often this meant waits of up to half an hour on the platform if the trains were on time – otherwise possibly longer. The study suggested that if somehow the transfers could be made instantaneous and painless that usage could more than triple.

The solution required extensive modeling and testing. The concept was that there would be several express trains each day that were synchronized to arrive within 90 seconds of each other at Union Station. In order to make the transfer between the trains simplest and most effective, they would identify pairs of trains most likely to exchange passengers with each other, based on known traffic patterns, and have them arrive on adjacent tracks such that the car doors aligned perfectly. Special ramps would be constructed that would connect between those two cars, avoiding people having to even walk onto a platform to change cars.

Then the trains next on the list of “most likely to exchange customers” would be organized to arrive on the same platform as each other. This way most of the transfer passengers would either go out the door on one side to the adjacent train or across the platform to the next train. For the other trains, SAMRR thought, inter-platform ramps could be created to go under the tracks, but with dual moving walkways (that would be turned on only for the time the trains were in the station) to allow for fast exchanges.

Communication with passengers well in advance of Union Station, then again at Union Station, would be key to making this work. At the suburban passenger stations there would be clear indicators of where each car would arrive on the platform and, if you were transferring at Union Station, which car was best for you depending on your destination.

This was so innovative that it was unclear if it was realistic. SAMRR identified the two trains that already had the most transfers between them and organized a pilot program for just those two. They watched, learned, and adapted, and most importantly were stunned to find that transfer ridership between those two increased by 80% after 3 months based on word-of-mouth alone.

After that the program was extended a bit at a time. Two more trains were scheduled together, with connecting bridges between them, then two more so that all six spoke lines were involved. The next time schedules were reworked a simultaneous arrival for all six was included. After observing transfer traffic for 3 months in this arrangement, the trains were reorganized around platforms so that the most optimal transfer arrangement was included.

The program was still by word-of-mouth only. For the next step SAMRR thought they would have to construct those special inter-platform ramps. But the observers noted that the passengers themselves had already figured out a better approach. A passenger on a train on platform 1, for example, would walk through the trains at platform 2, 3, 4, and 5 to get to platform 6. This sounds like a lot, but really means only crossing platform 2-3 and platform 4-5. plus the 4 intermediate trains -- and that's in the most extreme case of having to cross *all* the trains. Since the doors were all aligned, open on both sides, and at platform level without stairs (the newer “Bombardier” commuter coaches) it was a snap. The only problem would be avoiding major people crunches in the middle trains during the most popular travel hours. This could be mitigated by organizing people to sit in certain cars based on which train they would transfer to at union station. So a publicity campaign was started at the suburban stations – first just for the regulars, then once everyone had adapted, a city wide ad campaign began.

Today the passenger usage on the SAMRR (labeled “The Sammer” on the cars themselves) is the highest in North America per number of cars in use. And while subsidized the Sammer commuter rail system uses a smaller tax subsidy per commuting passenger than do the St Albans freeways. The operations of this special 6-passenger train sync up are (or rather, "will be") both challenging and fun.

With a world class commuter railroad, a terrific cultural riverfront area, loads of great places to railfan, and on top of it the special town square/train museum in Harpenden, St Albans is a railfan Mecca. Every summer there is a Rail Fest weekend that is sponsored by the local railroads and is heavily attended. One of the operations scenarios on the model railroad is for that weekend.

So that’s the concept. In the next post I cover the design standards and how design started.

Design influences: 2003-2005

This is my final posting under the “design influences” theme. I have covered pretty much my life story from a railroad perspective, starting at age 9 months and ending just before the design of my iNdoor layout began in November 2005. Probably I wrote too much, but what the heck, it’s my blog, and in the process I’ve gained some insight into why I designed the iNdoor layout the way I did.

The years 2003-2005 were frustrating for me from a model railroad perspective. I very much had the itch to build, as I was inspired by my new discovery of N scale, but I had minimal space and we knew we were going to move out of California “real soon now”. As a result I put some effort into designing 3 layouts during that time, each intended to be portable to allow for moving them later. None were built, but each of them taught me something that I used in the layout I’m building today.

The first layout design was done in early 2003 with an “Espee” (Southern Pacific) theme covering the line from Klamath Falls to Eugene, Oregon in 1944. I'd been reading from various of the model railroad "Elders" about how Real Model Railroaders(tm) built pure prototype layouts, so I kinda felt I needed to do the same. I was looking for a prototype that would support realistic model railroad curves and was attracted to the Espee because it had been, until recent acquisition, the dominant railroad in the part of California where we lived. The line from Redding to Mt Shasta is great for model railroads, but it has already been modeled by many people and clubs. The Eugene-Klamath Falls line offers tons of tight curves, including at least two horseshoes, plenty of tunnels, and one really cool train town (Oakridge). Since the steam era ended the line has become pretty bland, but in 1944 the town of Oakridge was a hotbed of action, full of cab-forward locomotives. Here's a shot of Oakridge yarda few years later, when it was still interesting.

I went to topozone and downloaded images of topographical maps of the area, and printed and taped them together into a scroll of the line. Then did some research on the line itself and went to work trying to put it into a layout. In the end I gave up the project, although I still have the drafts. The main problem was trying to build a layout with a long, steep climb on a portable platform. I actually tried designing a portable mushroom layout (if you don’t know what a “mushroom” layout out is, just understand that this is extremely difficult to design and build in a fixed location, and probably almost impossible as a portable layout).

I also had certain other nagging doubts about that layout approach. Did I really want to limit myself to a single railroad modeled in a single year? Did I really want a layout that, while a pure prototype, was limited in terms of operational variety? And did I really want to deal with yet another mountain layout with steeply-sloped track? As it turned out the answer to all these questions was “no”.

My next layout inspiration arrived with the October 2003 Model Railroader, which included a feature on Hutchinson, Kansas, including a sample N scale layout. It was so interesting that I went out and bought that month’s copy of the sister publication, Trains, which had more details on Hutchinson.

There is nothing special about that town, and looking back on it now the layout doesn't seem so interesting either. But at the time what made the layout so attractive to me was that it featured two major through lines – the BNSF and the UP, both with lots of trackage -- plus a regional and a branch line, all in a compact city space. The layout featured lots of junctions and operational possibilities, plus the ability to run through trains at full speed. Although it included a one loop helix it could be easily have been modified to use level track exclusively.

I pulled out graph paper, a ruler, and a compass and went to work. I quickly realized that the designer had assumed sharp N scale curves and short consists. No matter, I thought, I’ll expand the space. Realizing I’d need to make the layout portable I assumed a set of 4x8 tables in various configurations, and tried minimum radius standards of 48” then 44”. I had one possible solution that required lots of hand-laid, curved switches, which I was excited about until I bought some rails and ties and found out how hard it is to actually build such a switch. Once I realized the challenge involved I redid the design using Peco code 55 switch templates.

In the end I didn’t build it as I realized it would take a long time and all of my garage space just to assemble just the benchwork and trackwork. However, I did love the idea of a Midwestern city layout with junctions between main lines, industrial districts, and without major slopes. After that time I did not consider any other theme for the iNdoor layout.

So, things kind of idled until the March 2005 issue of Model Railroader, which included a review of Kato’s 1950s era N scale California Zephyr. I suppose it’s the same for all of us – there are certain prototypes that we think are just the coolest thing on the planet, and for me this was one of them. Maybe it was watching the Zephyr fly by the tracks in LaGrange, Illinois during its last, pre-Amtrak months when I was just an 8 year old boy. For whatever reason that version of the Zephyr has always been my favorite passenger train – ahead of even the similar-looking Super Chief and the 1930s era Pioneer Zephyr. I *had* to have it.

So I looked up N scale shops on the web and located Wig-Wag, who has been my primary N scale dealer ever since. I got the train and loved it. Now I needed a place to run it.

At this point the need for a layout NOW was suddenly bumped to the top of my priority list, so I was more willing to sacrifice most of my other layout desires. I designed a 4x12 -- the minimum I figured I could get by with since the Zephyr was nearly 9' long with engines. It was a congested city layout, with dual track in a folded figure 8 (that is, it looked like a 4 track oval but at one side there was a crossover) with 1% grades, one through station, and industrial tracks in the center. I actually ordered some code 55 track, extended the 4x8 in the garage to 4x12, and started the process. Then we very suddenly decided to move immediately and the project was permanently scrapped.

A couple months later we moved to a corporate apartment in Kansas and built a temporary 2x16 layout just for play and to learn about new building materials and DCC:


Only a few months after that photo we were moving into our house in Colorado and I was finally planning my permanent layout.

So what did I learn from this time period that influenced my current model railroad design?

1. Learn to ignore the Real Model Railroaders(tm). Most model railroaders are accepting of pretty much any way to do model railroading. The cliche is: the only rule of model railroading is that you are doing it right if you are having fun. This is especially true of the garden railroading community. Alas, as with most human activities, there is a subset of the group who think that their way is the only "real" way. You are a much happier model railroader once you have the confidence to do it the way you want, not the way the "Elders" think you should do it.


2. A city makes for fun model railroading. In the prototype, I love lots of complicated, congested trackwork. The operations are interesting, the track itself is interesting, and the whole question of how the engineers figured out how to make it all work in that tight space is interesting (and very similar to the challenge we have when we design our model railroads). Throw in the fact that cities are usually places where many railroads -- sometimes literally dozens -- interact and interchange and the modeling options are almost endless. I decided that the best layout design for me would be to focus on a mainline going through a congested city.


3. Simplicity should balance ambition. The first two designs described above were trying for way too much. The third design featured all kinds of compromises in the interests of having something that could be built and running in a shorter timeframe. Of course, the third design wouldn't have been that satisfying by itself, but this was due primarily to space limitations not to the design approach itself. I realized I was going to need to contain my wildest dreams if I was going to come up with a feasible layout design, which meant that things like hard-to-build custom structures and track should be avoided.


4. Subtle grades are a positive. My first layout was absolutely flat, and that didn't look quite right. My next several layouts had grades from 2% to 5%. While these are prototypical in some situations they are also unusual and require special operational considerations. Trying for grades less than 1% is a design challenge, but there are aesthetic rewards. The gradual changes add a clear, if subtle, sense of realism while at the same time not adding operational challenges. I'm not saying steep grades are bad ... I'm just saying I hadn't realized that gradual grades could be cool too.

So that takes us to November 2005, when we signed the contract on our current house and I started actually designing the layout itself. That will be the topic of the next design post.

More about Curves

As an addendum to my post on curves and radii, I took a few pictures of the Kato Zephyr around various curves to demonstrate how the degree of curve affects appearance. Apologies that the lighting/composition is poor, but hopefully they still illustrate the concept. Here is the Zephyr circling the 18" staging loop (about 24˚):


In particular, look to the left of the photo where you see two cars connected at a sharp angle. That just doesn't happen in the prototype.

Here is the Zephyr around a gentler mainline curve of 41" radius (about 10.5˚, still very sharp by prototype standards):


Here is the Zephyr around a short mainline curve of 51" radius (about 8.4˚, still sharp by prototype standards, but now within the domain of a realistic curve):

Problem Log

I've finished cleaning the staging area so that I can now run trains on all tracks and have set up 3 trains to run for testing. As expected problems have been found, but so far *none* with the newly built staging track and switches (I expect this to change as the usage intensity increases).

I've created a Problem Log in Excel to record what needs to be done and keep a record of past issues. So far 3 problems have been noted with the track on the main layout. Two of these are where the main layout connects to upper staging, and will require relaying the track. The other is probably a switch cleaning issue. (Note on my post last year about switch frogs I mention that electric frogs are susceptible to losing electrical contact -- I think that is the issue here.) One intermittent coupler problem has been found between a car and a locomotive. And 3 engine problems have been found -- actually I knew about them before, but rediscovered them when I tried those engines again.

My intent is to use the Problem Log as a means of dealing with issues as they come up. This isn't the same as a preventive maintenance log, which I'll need to start as well. I have a roster sheet and I'll add some maintenance columns to that.

Otherwise this week hasn't been as productive as last week due to distractions from work, starting with a business trip. I was able to use some of the off-time on the trip to write up the post on curves and to start work on the next design posts for the iNdoor layout. I have another business trip next week so hope to complete those on that trip.

However, I do need goals to keep going. By the end of this coming weekend I want to have:

1. Fixed the known track issues,
   
2. Decided on and ordered the power management module (circuit breaker) from Mike Gleaton,
   
3. Sort out the wiring on the south end of the layout, adjacent to staging, so that it conforms with the newer wiring standards,
   
4. And buy and install two more shelves for the power cabinet (it has only two now).

For next week I will install the power management module, initially treating staging as one power district and the rest of the layout as the second district, but with the expectation that this will change as the layout grows. After that is done I should be able to organize the components in the power cabinet into a semi-permanent configuration, with room to grow. Both of those can happen next week and leave time for other stuff.

From there I have a few choices as to next steps, but I'm leaning towards picking up a task I started maybe two years ago and never completed, which is to figure out how to scenic the track on the main layout. There are some special requirements here, which I'll cover in a separate post, and I feel I really should understand the solution before I lay any more mainline track.

A Degree in Curves

What has to be out of scale in even the most spacious layouts? The
curves! – John Armstrong, The Classic Layout Designs of John Armstrong, p. 74.

On my post on my 4th, experimental layout I mentioned that I ran into an issue with curve radii. In this post I’ll describe the results of the subsequent research I undertook on curves.

First, of all there are two types of limitations for model railroad curve radii: operational and aesthetic. Our model trains are designed to be able to negotiate much, much tighter curves than prototype trains, so there has been a lot of published work addressing operational limitations. I’ll cite some of that work here, but my main concern is the aesthetic side.

Operational radii limitations

In his terrific book, Track Planning for Realistic Operation, John Armstrong discusses radii limits on pages 73-77 and provides this table:


Armstrong goes on to define each type of curve by the type of equipment you can reliably run on it. (A much more detailed table is provided by the NMRA, standard RP-11, for those trying to find the absolute minimum curves for their situation.)

In his book John Armstrong also provided a great suggestion for pushing these operational limits, demonstrating that the main issue with tight radii occurs when transitioning from tangent (straight) track to curved track. That is the point where the curve places the most strain on couplers and axles and is most likely to cause derailments or decoupling. Armstrong called that the “coefficient of lurch”, and showed how spiral easements – a section of track that transitions from curve to tangent – can reduce the coefficient of lurch and allow a tighter radius than would otherwise be possible. On page 75 he shows an example where an 18” radius HO curve with spiral easement creates less stress on the train than a 24” radius curve without the easement.

I highly recommend this section of Armstrong’s book for anyone who is trying to squeeze tight, but operationally sound, curves into a layout. Actually, I highly recommend the whole book for anyone interested in getting serious about layout design.

Aesthetic radii limitations

When you are building layouts with curves that test the limits of how tight curves can go you don’t worry about the aesthetics of how trains look going around the curves. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that an HO train going around a 15” curve or an N scale train around a 9” curve don’t look anything like the prototype, with the trucks turned at extreme angles and the ends of the cars hanging far over the sides of the track. You know it looks wrong, but due to space limitations that’s just something you deal with. That’s the situation I was in with my first 3 HO layouts.

At some point you may decide that for your NEXT layout things will be different. That’s how I was with my 4th layout, my first N scale experiment. I was still dealing with a 4x8 space, but now in N scale. A 17” radius curve in HO scale is very sharp, per the Armstrong table above, but in N scale it’s a broad curve. So I built a bunch of 17” curves, and even built one curve to 20” radius just to see how a “very broad radius” curve looked. But as I watched the trains go around it something slowly dawned on me. Yes, the trains did not look as ridiculously toy-like as they did on very sharp curves, but even the 20” curve was still obviously way too tight.

Fortunately, John Armstrong also wrote a lot about the aesthetics of railroad curves (the quote at the start of this post was how he began one article) and that gave me some good information to start my research. First, the conventional measure of how sharp a curve is, at least in the U.S., is degrees of curve, which is how far a curve would go around a circle in a 100 foot arc. For example, suppose you had a circle with a 400 foot circumference. Then 100 feet of arc would cover 1/4th of the circle, or 90˚ (since a full circle is comprised of 360˚).

Prototype railroads naturally try very hard to limit curves – both the frequency of them and the sharpness – because curves add drag to the locomotive pulling a train much the same way that upward slopes do. Many mainlines get by with curves no sharper than 2˚ and in flat country a 5˚ curve may be unusual. The famed horseshoe curve on the Pennsylvania Railroad came in at 9.25˚, which Armstrong saw as the standard for comparing mainline curve sharpness. Finding curves sharper than that on standard gauge mainlines is hard – up to 12˚ can be found in a few areas with difficult topology and/or congested urban areas, and anything above that is rare. Narrow gauge commonly went much tighter – the Rio Grande lines typically had 24˚ as their maximum curve sharpness, and one famous narrow gauge curve in Utah was an incredible 60˚. But narrow gauge trains also typically ran at very slow speeds with very short cars

So how does this compare to our model empires? Well, a 5˚ curve in HO requires an astounding 158” radius—that’s over 13 feet. 10˚ is a little better at 79”, but that’s still over 6.5’ – and if you tried a U-shaped curve with that you’d need a diameter of over 13’. N scale is much better, but 10˚ is still about 43” radius – over 3.5’.

To better understand how model railroad radii compare to the prototype you can construct a simple spreadsheet table. Here is a small sample of a table I created in Excel:


In order to create this yourself, put the radii in the left column (A), then put the following formulae in columns B and C:

=((1200/160)*180)/(3.1416*A[row#])
=((1200/87)*180)/(3.1416*A[row#])

To explain each element in the formula:

1. “1200” is the number of inches in 100 feet. 100 feet is the length of the arc that we use as the basis for the degree measurement. When measuring for large scale you’ll want to use feet as the measurement, so change this to 100.


2. 160” or “87” is the scale you are using, in this case N and HO respectively. Substitute 48 for O scale, 220 for Z, etc.


3. 180 is the number of degrees in a semi-circle. You might think we’d use 360 for a full circle, but because we are basing this formula on radius, which is half a diameter, we cut the number of degrees in half as well.


4. 3.1416 is an approximation for π.


5. The “A[row#]” is the number of inches in the radius. When measuring for large scale change this quantity to feet – and do the same for (1) above.

It helps to create such a table yourself because it gives you a chance to play with the numbers and see the possibilities for your situation. But no matter how you slice the numbers you’ll see why John Armstrong made the statement which started this post – with curve radii the difference between the model and the prototype is just huge.

Out of doors the situation isn’t quite so bad, although it is still challenging. With large scale minimum radii are measured in feet, not inches. If you model the narrow gauge Rio Grande, as I am doing, the 24˚ minimum translates to a bit under 12’ radius in 1:20.3 F scale, which means a half-circle turnaround requires a diameter of about 23.5’. That’s still a lot of space, but doable on many outdoor lots.

For indoor layouts John Armstrong recommended that model railroaders set a minimum radius based primarily on operational requirements, but that they made sure to include one curve of realistic gentleness – 10˚ or less – for aesthetics. This is a good recommendation, but there are also other things you can do with regard to curve radii, and I cover those in the next section.

Dealing with unrealistically tight curves

Here is a short catalog of things people have done, or can do, in response to the realization that model railroad curves look unrealistically tight. These are not independent solutions, as it is possible to use a combination of any or all of these solutions on a given layout for different situations.

1. Ignore the problem
   
   Seriously, if it doesn’t bother you don’t worry about it. We have to make a lot of other compromises in our make-believe empires. Alas, for me this doesn’t work … for me many a picture of an otherwise terrific model railroad has had the illusion spoiled by an curve that is obviously too sharp. This depends entirely on your personal preference.



2. Hide the problem
   
   This is probably the most common solution, other than #1. Put the curve under a tunnel or behind a viewblock. I did this with my second and third layouts (well, that is I would have if I’d completed the scenery) and if done well it can also hide the overly short consists we tend to run on our smaller layouts.
   
   However, this is not perfect. Except for switches, curves are where most derailments occur, so you have to arrange some kind of access to those tracks. Depending on your chosen model theme the viewblocks and tunnels may seem out-of-place (the original Rio Grande was positively allergic to tunnels, for example), so you may be introducing an element that doesn’t look appropriate for the scene. And finally, for smaller layouts, like my third one, hiding all the curve track ends up hiding the majority of track, which may not be as pleasing as you thought it would be when you started.



3. Disguise the problem
   
   This is different than hiding the problem in that you leave the curves out in the open but control the optical viewing angles to make the curve sharpness less obvious.
   
   The most common way to do this is to move the layout to eye level or near eye level, and the second most common is to arrange the track so that viewers can see the train only from the inside of the curve, not the outside. When used together this makes it almost impossible to assess just how sharp the curve is.
   
   The eye level trick, by itself, certainly helps because the viewer can’t look down on an empty track and see how obviously sharp it is. In fact, this also helps disguise unrealistic “spaghetti track” formations because the viewer only sees the side of the nearest track. However, eye level doesn’t help quite so much when the viewer is on the outside of a tight curve, as the angle between cars tends to be a visual giveaway.
   
   Also, eye level layouts are the subject of one of the hobby’s great debates. Proponents love them because “you see trains just as you do in real life”. Critics (and I am one) argue that in “real life” we often seek out platforms from which we can look down on trains and get a better view, so a view from above is actually a good thing. Furthermore, we argue, if you want the eye level view you can still get it with a lower layout by bending or sitting down. Lastly, not everyone has the same eye level, and shorter people and children tend to get short changed with layouts set at 66” or so above the floor. I’ve noticed in recent years a trend away from the eye-level traveling layouts that were prevalent 10 or so years ago.
   
   The view-from-inside-the-curve trick is useful anytime, even from higher levels, although it’s most effective at eye-level. Unfortunately you can’t always limit your layout to only inside-the-curve views – and in many cases you can only build outside-the-curve views, such as with a rectangular-shaped show layout. However, if you have an inside-the-curve view you can take advantage of that to use a smaller aesthetic radius than you use elsewhere.



4. Build layouts that require minimal curves
   
   Tight curves are only a problem if you need curves. A long industrial, point-to-point shelf layout doesn’t need them, for example, except for very short lengths. Or if your layout requires only one or two U-turn curves you can hide those (per point 2 above) and emphasize the rest, including building straight track over the hidden curves.



5. Choose curvy prototypes
   
   Kind of the opposite of (4). Instead of choosing a layout theme that requires no curves, choose a prototype that had lots of very tight curves that you can either match exactly, or perhaps model just a little bit tighter.
   
   Two very obvious examples of this are narrow gauge railroads, which as mentioned above commonly had curves of 24˚ or tighter, and trolley systems, which were made to negotiate curves around street corners. Also popular for modelers are the common industrial short lines of the last century, run by very short steam, diesel or even electrical locomotives, that moved shortish (50’ in length or less) cars amidst very congested commercial districts.
   
   These types of prototypes are popular for many reasons, but certainly one key reason is that they fit into our layout rooms without having to compromise the curves.
   
   The only problem with this solution – as with solution (4) – is that it only applies to certain layout themes. If you want a layout featuring heavy mainline traffic these solutions don’t apply.



6. Convert to a smaller scale
   
   Admittedly this is not a viable option in most situations, since most people have a strong reason for choosing a given scale and often already have a sizable stock of items in that scale. But this can be a really useful design trick when viable. Alternatively, you can use this same trick by forcing yourself to design a layout for your space in a larger scale, then switch to your own scale.
   
   You see, most people try to cram as much layout as they can into a given space (count me as one of those guilty of that sin). Double the space available and few of us will simply expand the same basic concept to the new space, but instead most of us will try to add more towns, yards, and industries. But what if you struggled through a given layout design for a limited space, making the normal sorts of compromises before finally getting a design that you think you could live with, and suddenly someone offered you 3.5 times the space – or even 7 times the space? What if instead of trying to cram more into that space, you decided to keep your previous design but simply apply it to the larger space, using longer trains, more space between towns, and larger radii?
   
   To see what this might look like, consider John Armstrong’s famous personal layout, the Canandaigua Southern. He chose O scale, which was still very common in the 1940s when he started the layout. Here is a map of that layout taken from the March 1971 Model Railroader:
   
   
   John spent a lot of time designing this, a process he described in an article which can be found today starting on page 46 of The Classic Layout Designs of John Armstrong book mentioned earlier. Like all of us, he had to make compromises to fit everything in. He settled on a minimum radius of 48”, which is about 30˚ in O scale, and of course accepted shorter consists and a smaller yard than he probably would have liked. The fact that all track was handlaid meant it still took him decades to complete the line, with only partial scenery, but nevertheless the layout gave over 50 years of enjoyment to Armstrong and the large number of his friends who helped him build and operate it.
   
   Now imagine you had exactly the same room, with exactly the same layout, with curves and towns at exactly the same location, but this time you worked in N scale. That 48” minimum radius now gets you curves of slightly under 9˚! You can triple – or more – the number of tracks in the yard and the length of your trains. Or, if you don’t want to add that much length to your trains, you can increase the apparent distance between towns.
   
   Consider that Armstrong’s personal layout is universally considered a great success. Not just because it was so innovative (which it was – no other layout has pioneered so many influential design concepts as this one did) but because it was FUN for all involved. An N scale layout, in the same space with the same essential design, would generate just as much fun, but the trains would look much more realistic.
   
   So, apply that example to another layout. Let’s suppose you’ve designed an HO layout for your available space but you’ve got some nagging concerns. Now try doing the exact same layout in exactly the same space, but in N scale. Wow. You’ll have the same schematic but with a lot more room. Or, suppose you can’t change scale. Instead force yourself to design a layout for a space of about ½ of what you actually have, then after you polish it, convert to the space you actually have.



7. Set very high minimum radii during the design phase
   
   So, you’ve tried everything else, but you still don’t have a solution that works for you. You care about getting realistic curves (otherwise #1 would work for you) but for various reasons none of the suggestions given above work: you can’t hide/disguise the curves, the prototype you want won’t permit you to use tight curves realistically, you can’t move to a smaller scale, and the trick of pretending to have a smaller space than you really do doesn’t work for you.
   
   If this is your situation, then you are where I was in 2003 and 2004. So I tried something else. Most layout design books will recommend that as an early design step you set some standards, such as “minimum switch size”, “track spacing”, “maximum train length”, and of course “minimum radius”. These standards may vary depending on situation – such as separate standards for mainline, branches, yards, and staging— but within a given category they are the basis for your design.
   
   So, set your “minimum radius” standard to a very high number and see what kind of layout you can design. For me I chose 48” as an N scale minimum and started trying to design layouts using that as a rule. It was enlightening in a way that can only be understood when you actually try to do it – as opposed to reading about it. Consider, for example, an around-the-walls kind of layout. A 48” minimum can easily be used in curves in the corners, but this means that the tangent track between two corners will be a full 4’ shorter than if you use a 24” minimum curve and 5’ shorter than using an 18” minimum. Let’s suppose you have a 12’x12’ room and that you generally keep track at least 6” from the walls. This means that if you use an 18” minimum radius the longest tangent track you can have between two corners is 10’ but that for a 48” minimum radius the longest tangent track is only half of that.
   
   That example describes only one of the early discoveries you’ll have. As you work more with the layout design you’ll discover ways to work with the larger radius curves, such as working switches into the 48” curves. Since 48” is a very gentle radius in model railroading terms transitions from curves to switches flow better, especially with spiral easements. And if you use a switch like the Peco code 55 “long”, which uses a 36” constant radius on the diverging route, or the Peco code 55 curved switch, which has 36” for the outside curve, the flow is even better.
   
   Eventually you may find that your ultra-wide radius is workable AND that the resulting track will flow much more easily. Of course, there will be sacrifices in terms of what you can include – there have to be – and only you can determine if the trade-off is worth it.

My personal solution

That concludes my discussion of options for modeling realistic curves. So what did I end up doing for my layouts?

For the iNdoor layout, after working with 48” for a while I tried 44” and 36” to see the difference in terms of layout planning. I then set up a number of curves with temporary track to view the appearance of trains on the various radii. What I discovered wasn’t surprising. While a difference of 5” makes a huge different in appearance for trains on small radii, such as going from 10” to 15” – it makes only an almost imperceptible difference in appearance in large radii, such as going from 43” to 48”. Once I recognized this I really had to question whether the benefit of going the extra effort for 40+” radii was worth the cost in terms of design trade-offs.

Eventually I settled on 36” as the absolute minimum for the mainline, with the understanding that I’d go above this as much as possible with each curve. This is about 12˚, which is still very good for a model railroad, and in a congested city setting is reasonable. Plus the fact that most curves are wider than that, with probably half at 40” or more, helps the appearance even more.

One other point is that in the prototype there are tight curves in special situations, such as congested yards and industries, and in those cases very slow speeds (10 mph) are required. One of my favorites is the curve leading from the Burlington race track line to Chicago’s Union station that I rode on as a youngster. I remember vividly how the coach trucks would squeal loudly going around that curve. For those situations I set a 24” minimum radius (18˚) and use it only in the approach to Union Station and in two local switching areas. I hope to one day include a sound system that duplicates the squeals of the wheels around those curves.

As you read this keep in mind that my personal minimums are on the extreme end for this hobby. In years of reading about layouts in magazines I’ve never seen any other layout with minimums this high. (One N scale layout in an oval-shaped dining room employed a lot of 48” curves along the curved walls, but also used 12” curves at a wall with a right angle.) Usually featured HO layouts have smaller minimum radii than I have for my N scale layout.

I do have smaller minimums in the hidden track, such as staging, since aesthetics are of no value there. However, I still stick to an 18” minimum in staging to aide in smooth operations to assure that I’ll always be able to run any equipment that I might acquire. (Note that the NMRA standard mentioned above states that 21.5” may be required for steam locomotives with a rigid scale 28’ wheel base. However, that standard is now over 20 years old. I know of no mass-produced N scale equipment built in the last 20 years that can’t run on a radius of 17” or less, so any exceptions are likely to be expensive custom-made brass imports, which I don’t bother with due to cost and difficulty running under DCC.)

For the outdoor layout the situation is different. There will be no staging, no hiding and no disguising. For the outdoor layout, what you see is what you get. Fortunately as I noted earlier my prototype, the narrow gauge Rio Grande, had a standard of 24˚ curves on the mainline so I should be able to duplicate that with an 11.75’ radius minimum. If I have to compromise in one or two spots in the freight yard to an 11’ or even 10’ radius I’ll still be within 28˚, which is also realistic for Rio Grande narrow gauge slow-speed operations. The key factor is that I’ll be running prototype narrow gauge cars from the 1880s, which were very short and thus looked appropriate around curves such as those.

Design influences: 4th layout (my first N scale experiment)

I mentioned that in 2002 we revived the Märklin layout in the garage. This was definitely fun, especially for the kids, as the layout had plenty of track, locomotives, cars, switches, and an interesting main line. But at the same time I had some nagging doubts.

I'd transitioned from a non-active model railroader to a quasi-active armchair modeler in 2000. I'd started subscribing to Model Railroader, and later Garden Railways, and had attended the 2000 NMRA convention in San Jose with my older kids. As I learned more about the contemporary hobby I became interested again in American prototypes and in the finer details of modeling. The old Märklin layout, with it's European prototype and Märklin's tinplate heritage (such as the third rail and locomotive pickup shoe in the middle), wasn't quite what I'd been dreaming about. The other problem was that Märklin is very expensive relative to the competition, and especially so in the U.S.

So it came to pass that on my birthday weekend in 2002 my wife sent me and the kids off to buy $500 worth of Märklin stuff for the layout, which was enough for one locomotive and one freight car. I headed out towards Redwood City, where there was a European train shop and a restaurant with a playground, when suddenly I turned to the kids and said: "You know, for $500 we could build a whole new layout in N-scale, and anything we added to that would be much cheaper." The kids loved the idea (especially my son), so I turned the car around and headed for Santa Clara, home of The Train Shop, instead.

The inspiration to jump to N scale surprised me as much as anyone, but apparently the idea had been processing in my subconscious for a while. There were a number of factors that made this an easy decision:

1. The space advantages of N scale were obvious. I'd first thought of N scale when strugging with the Märklin layout design in 1990. Given the tiny space I had to work with in our California home, N scale seemed like a good choice.
2. I was ready to get out of Märklin, for the reasons stated above.
3. I had little sunk cost in HO, or really anything except Märklin. All my old HO stuff was either really cheap (from the first layout) and out of date, or intended for the early 1900s (second layout) and not what I was interested in modeling now. My son had a very small selection of modern Bachmann HO, but not enough to make me stick to HO as a cost savings.
4. Although N had not held my interest for most of my life, over the prior two years I been reading articles on N scale layouts and about N scale in general and saw a few really good ones. It now seemed viable to me.

At the Train Shop I was introduced to their N scale pro. I'd seen him before over the years, but never worked with him until then. He was extremely helpful. We started talking about track. He asked me about code 55 vs. 80 and I said 80 because I didn't want anything that might make operations more difficult (I regret this now, but then they didn't have Atlas code 55 then). He suggested Atlas flextrack with Peco switches, which is what his N trak club used, and I went with that. He introduced me to Tortoises, and helped me get various Atlas switch boxes and wires, and some cork roadbed. We talked about DCC, but the cost and hassle (they didn't have factory DCC then, and installs were often a challenge) made me opt for cab control He showed me a couple of power packs for that, then we looked at rolling stock.

My son loved the Kato Amtrack Superliner Phase III sets which had just come out, so we got two of those and two P42 engines. We also got an Atlas dash-8 BNSF locomotive (my son loved Santa Fe, I loved Burlington, so BNSF was the obvious compromise) and a variety of freight cars.

I got home, cleaned off my son's 4x8 table, and tried to figure out what to build. I decided it would be a quick-and-dirty, temporary layout with as long as possible a main line (now that I was in N scale I wanted long trains, not the very short trains I was forced into with HO scale), double track, with curves as broad as possible (again, now that I was out of HO scale I was looking forward to curves that were not ridiculously tight). Also there would be very few switches, as they didn't have many at the shop and I figured I could add them later. I would throw in easements and superelevation, two concepts I'd learned about from the magazines and had never tried before. Using scrap wood I got the whole thing complete in less than a week. It was a dogbone schematic, folded over three times into a figure 8 double track, switchbacking it's way up a mountain, and resulted in a main line loop of 120' in just a 4x8 space:


Honestly, it doesn't look like much, but if the goal of model railroading is to have fun (and it is), then this was a great success because we had fun for several months. Eventually we covered it up and moved it to this side to focus on other projects, and in 2004 I tore it down thinking I would start another layout. (That never happened, as plans for moving out of the state kicked in.) But the layout definitely served its purpose as a learning tool and for model railroading fun.

So what did I learn from this that influenced my designs today?

1. N scale is cool. The whole experience was neat. After this there has never been any question that my dream indoor layout was going to be N scale.
2. I like very long trains. You don't need a train to be a full scale mile long (33' in N scale) to look like the train is realistically long -- 12' to 16' is usually sufficient depending upon the viewing angle. This is why my current layout standardizes on 12' trains and supports 16' through trains.
3. This curves thing was more complicated than I realized. I'd always had to build HO layouts with curves classified "sharp" or "very sharp", and now I had a layout that had "broad" and "very broad" curves. But even on the 20" radius curve trains still didn't look realistic going around. This realization led to a full study of the curve problem, and I'll describe this in a future post. It's also why my current iNdoor layout has a 36" minimum radius on the main line.
4. I like modern trains. This was the first time I got into modern container cars, autoracks, etc., and I found them very cool. By contrast 1940s stock cars and reefers aren't so interesting to me. I didn't finalize on the modern era for a layout back in 2002, but by 2004 I had done so because of this.
5. Digital (DCC) control was a must have for my future layouts. I'd never tried cab control before. My first two layouts only supported one engine at a time and my third layout used Marklin digital control. I used cab control with two cabs and common rail wiring. This wasn't hard to set up, but it was more work than wiring for DCC. However, running trains with cab control involved a lot of manual overhead and was something that the kids had trouble mastering. In addition, I missed having the train lights stay on when the train stopped.
6. I like double track with trains passing and lots of traffic. So my current layout is double-tracked with heavy traffic.
7. Good track laying is a must. At first all my locomotives were four axle diesel. When I added a six axle diesel I had to rework many of the rail joints, and then again after I got a steam engine. It's worth it to practice and redo as needed until you get the technique right, and to plan the layout design to facilitate quality laying and maintenance of track.
8. The 2-3% grades were getting old. All my layouts, except the very first with my dad, used grades to gain elevation and to justify having a lot of track in a compact space. I'd begun to just assume that I'd always build mountain railways. However, on this layout more than one item of rolling stock broke because it rolled down hill and fell off the layout. In addition, putting trains on a sloping track can be a pain. So, I'd begun to think about city layouts with 1% or less grades, and that is where I ended up.

After this layout was torn down I spent some time designing possible N scale layouts ... each one helping me narrow down what I'd do for my ultimate dream layout. I'll cover that in a future post.

Design influences: through the eyes of a child

I mentioned before that my third layout was put into storage after I had to give up the space due to the arrival of our second child. Even before that I really stopped any work (or play) on that layout after our first child was born at the end of 1993. Between 1993 and 2002 I did no layout work (with two special exceptions, as noted below) because children just kept coming -- 4 in all -- the last one born in 2000. But just because I didn't have space or time for a layout didn't mean I didn't have time for trains -- only now my train interest was tied in with the children's. Call those my "Thomas the Tank Engine" years .... and although my kids are no longer Thomas fans, those years influenced how I designed the layouts I'm building today.

Kids and trains just seem to go together. Yes, Thomas is part of that, and I read those books to every one of our kids, and watched the videos and bought the toys. The kids also loved other train videos and lots of other train toys:


They also loved trips to train museums, and I was happy to oblige. We saw every train museum or attraction within a 4 hour drive of San Jose, California, with many trips especially to Sacramento. We rode many tourist trains -- from the very authentic to the built-for-tourists, like in Nevada City. We also had "Saturday trips with Dad" every week since early 1996, and once every month or two I'd make that a trip on the Caltrain "double decker train" -- usually to a stop where we could have ice cream and lunch then come back.

For the kids who were really interested (usually mostly my son) I'd make trips to the Santa Clara Depot model railroad and watch any activity in the freight yard. He'd get so excited to see any train go by -- as I used to be at his age.

For toys I focused initially on the wooden Brio/Thomas/copy trains. We still have a very large bin of them in the basement and get them out when we have younger visitors. Interestingly, when I build a layout for the visiting youngsters our oldsters will spend a lot of time playing with it as well. ;)

Later my son's interest in trains was so strong that he asked for, and got, a Bachmann HO set for Christmas. Here he is enjoying that gift at age 4:


He enjoyed it so much that I dug up my old HO trains from my first and second layouts, which I'd somehow hauled around with me for all those years. As i worked with my old HO and his new HO trains I learned that a lot had changed over the years. My old brass rails and couplers were antiques. I visited a train shop to get replacement couplers and parts/oil for the old locos and was amazed that progress in the hobby. I built my son a 4x8 table, as my Dad had for me, and put it in the garage with a dust cover. The layout was easier to set up than my old one had been because of the roadbed track.

I watched as my son made the same discoveries I'd made about trains. The fun, yes, and also the frustrations of a small layout in a dark, dusty environment. We visited the train shop from time to time and began looking longingly at the LGB displays. Eventually my wife bought me a starter set for my birthday and I added a few cars and track, including switches. We put it on the back deck and had fun with it.

A few years later I was given a large gift certificate to the train shop from some co-workers in appreciation of something I'd done, and used it to buy more/better large scale stuff including an LGB Mogul. I still didn't have room for the outdoor layout so we built a temporary one using sections of painted plywood. This worked okay and provided quite a bit of fun. Here's my son playing with it in the back yard:


However, I still dreamed of having the space to build a permanent layout. Alas, while our yard was sizable (9900 s.f.) by local standards, it was 100% full of kid play areas (as the above picture shows).

Eventually in 2002 my son, then 6, began setting up a ladder in the garage and climbing up to look at the Märklin layout that was in storage. He would lift up a corner of the dust cover and sit and gaze longingly at it for hours, literally. After this persisted I called a friend who came over and we took it down and got it going again, moving Daniel's 4x8 HO layout board into the vacated storage spot. Daniel loved it and I had fun with it too. We used it for several months until I decided to start the 4th layout, which I'll cover in my next "design influences" post.

So, what did I learn from all this kid interaction that influenced the design of my current layouts? Two things:

• Remember the COOL factor. Kids like things that are cool, and this is usually what attracted us to the hobby in the first place. But sometimes as adults we forget that.
  
  My son commented that he loved the Marklin layout because of the changing levels, the bridges over tracks, and the switches. He also loved the steam engine best because of the side rods. You know what? That's what I loved as a kid, too. But as an adult I was becoming overly influenced by others in the hobby who insisted on things like fidelity to the prototype and being as realistic as possible. In the process I tended to give up some of the "cool" things, as in: "they didn't have steam anymore in the year I model, so there are no steam engines on my layout" or "I love Famous-Passenger-Train-X, but I can't included it because it never stopped at the city I model". This isn't to say a pure prototype model railway isn't something great to acheive, but there is a balance. Both of the model RRs I'm working on now have plenty of "cool".



• Include kids in the experience. When kids experience joy with something that you have created you experience their joy too. I understand some model railroaders don't want kids near their layouts because kids admittedly can create a lot of hassles, and if not supervised can cause a lot of damage. But I am making my layouts very much kid accessible. Now this won't mean a free-for-all. I've shown the N-scale layout to my kids' friends and made sure they understood the "don't touch" rule before they even enter the layout room. At the same time, I also set up the train control system to make it easy for kids to participate. Finally, I made sure the lower level is at a kid friendly height. My own kids aren't all that interested any more in the indoor railroad (they love helping outdoor however, and 3 of them had a blast at last summer's Garden Railway convention), but they still participate, and will probably do more as we move to the scenery phase.

In my next post on design influences I'll talk about the 4th layout, which was a temporary layout for the purpose of learning N scale.