Chadbag's "temporary" layout planning

[chadbag]

So, I am starting to design / plan my first real layout.  I call it temporary since it will last until we move at the end of 2020.   I am using my 4'x8' foamboard table. 

 

The goals are to drive trains, evoke a Japan feeling (maybe some Europe/Germany feel in one corner 🙂 ), and have fun.  There is no attempt to model anything prototypical, or have fancy operations / layouts, etc.  Some loops, a yard, a station or two, etc.

 

I want to have a two levels of track -- one elevated double track that is elevated all around track and then the rest at the "ground" level.  I have some ideas to scratch build the elevated track piers and supports using blue foam, microballoons/glue, paint, styrene, etc.  I'll start a thread about that once I get that far.

 

Now figuring out how Railmodeler Pro works (well, mostly still doing KiCad for PCB layout for the DIY lights, but have started looking at the SW in anticipation).

 

 

[cteno4]

Rail,odeler works well, but the track pallets suck. I end up leaving a spread of the usual track pieces I’m using and I just clone them to add stuff.

 

take a look at the old v1.0 of our club layout as it had some interesting ground level ideas in it of a folded figure 8 to Mix things up. It was 12’x4’ then 14’x4’ but some can be shortened and maybe some ideas. Also Kato’s plans have a number of layout around that size.

 

http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/layout/layout.1.0.html

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

 

[chadbag]

Thanks, I'll take a look!

[Sheffie]

SCARM also has issues with its palette of track. I spend a lot of time scrolling through track pieces. Scrolling the screen seems harder than it needs to be, and moving bits of track about is tedious (Ctrl-X,V,drag???), and rotation is worse 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Sheffie

[MatrixFY]

I use XTrkCad, which is obtuse until you know the shortcuts

 

Move? Select the pieces, hold Shift, and drag

Move and Join? Have the section you want to move selected, CTRL-J, hold shift, click to 2 ends you want joined together.

Join touching pieces? CTRL-Shift-J and click the two joints

Rotate? Shift-Ctrl-R and move the mouse

New pieces joining at the wrong end? Shift and click

[cteno4]

Obtuse is a very good word for xtrakcad! Once you have the shortcuts down make sure to write them down as I find when I came back to it a month or two later the obtuse interface flummoxed me in remebering and recreating the shortcuts again! Notes really helped!

 

railmodeler is more graceful, but the track pallet is just obtuse... but is meant I don’t have to keep xwindows a other bits updated so xtrakcad will run after Mac OS updates.

 

jeff

[MatrixFY]

30 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Obtuse is a very good word for xtrakcad! Once you have the shortcuts down make sure to write them down as I find when I came back to it a month or two later the obtuse interface flummoxed me in remebering and recreating the shortcuts again! Notes really helped!

 

railmodeler is more graceful, but the track pallet is just obtuse... but is meant I don’t have to keep xwindows a other bits updated so xtrakcad will run after Mac OS updates.

 

jeff

 

Yeah. I hadn't touched it in a good, long while, and had forgotten everything. I like xtrkcad, though, as I'm a Linux+Windows guy so any software I can use that runs on both will be the one I pick 😛

[cteno4]

Yeah it’s been kept up well. On the Mac it requires a few tweaks to get it good and I’ve kind of gone to keeping the main Mac stable for other things. For the little track planning now I just use the railmodeler. If I had a lot I would look back at xtrakcad cad again on the Mac.

 

jeff