Model Trains & Railways Blog

Having spent a few hours in the garage over the weekend building the baseboard for the new layout, I have actually put pen to paper today and started to plan what I was going to put on the baseboards. Being a very new modeller and eager to see some trains running past, while I sit back and sup my cup of tea, I am going to try and squeeze a two road roundy roundy onto my L shaped boards. Space isn’t too much of a problem so I can expand my plan in any direction really, I just don’t want to try and build a mega 14ft x 10ft monster that I will NEVER finish.

The two things I do want is a) a really nice long mainline run and b) a small stabling point/depot to park my fleet of Class 50’s in - I have about 25 now. As you can see from my layout plan ‘mark 1′, I haven’t included a single point! I wanted to get an idea of what I was shooting for first before adding the interesting bits. Anything to the left of the red line is off-scene and I intend to use this area for storage sidings and for the trains to run through. At the bottom of the plan I am going to fit a small depot in and move the back-scene to create more room. The back scene will be steep cliffs and hills, so I am intending to make the depot ‘cut’ into the cliffs so I can use some retaining walls etc.

Main concern at the moment is those curves! I used xtradcad obviously and the inner curves as you can see top and bottom have turned purple and I am not sure what this means… ? I also have a thread running on RMWeb while I get my plan sorted.

I have taken my inspiration so far from a bloody great book that I just got though the post this morning. ‘Aspects of Modelling: Track Layouts’ by Anthony New. Having bought loads of track plan type books in the last couple pf years - including the legendary  C J Freezer ones (Not a fan), this is by far the best I have come across. Importantly, it is up to date and ‘modern’, it is informative and full of colourful plans and ideas. I have to admit that when I opened it at work this morning, I read a few pages and was instantly inspired to go home and build something! Alas I settle for some layout planning instead.

My Layout Track Plan