3x6 point-to-point experiment

[scott]

Yes, it's Episolde 12 of "The Modeller Who Couldn't Work On His Layout But Kept Designing More Layouts...."

This week:

Here's another attempt to design a layout using the leftover track I already have. This one's a little weird, but the only new items would be the two turnouts. There's also room for a passing track somewhere along the way in the future. So far I haven't put in any scenic ideas or tunnel locations, but that's next. Obviously the station to the right would require some custom-made platforms....

Pic 1: Trackplan view
Pic 2: RailModeller 3D output

[disturbman]

That's an interesting plan but maybe, just maybe, you should start to play around with your track. See what you want and like. Anyway, I think this could look good in some sort of a very dramatic mountain landscape.

[KenS]

Yes, it's Episolde 12 of "The Modeller Who Couldn't Work On His Layout But Kept Designing More Layouts...."

There are worse things, I'm sure. 

So, what do you see as the character of this layout? Rural? Village? Urban?  The trains? Freight? Interurban? DMU?

Are the two sets of tracks stations, or is one a yard or interchange with another line?

It's hard to really say anything about the track plan in a vacuum.  It could be anything at this point.  What do you want it to be?

The green makes me think "rice fields, a few trees, and a one or two-car electric rumbling through the scenery", but that's just free association triggered by the color and some of the videos I've seen recently.

[scott]

Probably small-town/city outskirts on one end, end-of-the-line mountain village at the other. All passenger, as usual. :-)

The two ends are stations. For now, they're just terminals, but they could connect off to hidden yards or visible extensions.

[Toni Babelony]

You could try a scenic devider or something like that so you can simulate a trip from one area to another, rather then having passengers at one terminus seeing the train arrive at the other end.

[scott]

Yeah, that's what I was planning on doing next.

[KenS]

I'm not so sure a scenic divider (in the sense of a large vertical wall) would be a good idea.  There's very little space between the front and rear tracks in most places, so there'd be little left over for the back/right-side scene.

I'd be more inclined to go with disturbman's suggestion of mountain landscape, and use a grade to separate the front-left from the front-right (perhaps with some buildings or trees at the front of the layout to serve as a partial viewblock as well. You have nearly 10 feet of run between the two back-right track segments, so you could easily get 2-3 inches of vertical separation.

And you could do more if you put the upper line in a tunnel where it was close to the rear line on the right-hand side.

Actually, you could just use a tunnel without a grade to do that.  I just dislike the "sheet of plywood" school of scenery. 

Which is not to say I dislike flat layouts. Urban scenery in particular is often quite flat. And Japanese table-top layouts where the scenery is implied more than actual can look quite good. But if you're going to all the bother of doing real scenery, it's something of a cop-out to leave it flat as a board, unless you're modeling Iowa.

[cteno4]

Scott,

fun idea. Enoshima has me thinking of something like this, maybe modular/sectional.

i agree with ken, some dramatic hill in the middle might be a better way to handle dividing the two sides. i find backdrops/skyboards dont look right up close, like on ttrak or even n trak. you need some depth to get the effect of a backdrop or it looks just like a wall with a picture on it.

cheers

jeff