Track planning question.

[cteno4]

Sascha,

 

Subway is something you can always add later, as we discussed in your other thread, a drawer idea would be easy to mount under the layout table later.

 

Speaking of the drawer idea it did occur to me that you could suspend the drawer track from the layout bench with just 4 small vertical brackets at the corners of your drawer from the underside of your layout so you could have both the front and back areas visible (if your subway spanned all the way to the back of the layout) and also an end if one end of the subway were at one end of the layout.

 

Also with the sectional track there is no need to feel locked into a track plan. Come up with something basic and reasonable, start with that track and play some and then evolve from there and don't set anything in stone until you are happy with it running. Some never fix down track and only do drop in scenery bits so they can keep morphing, evolving or totally changing their layouts over time!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

its always nice to see a subway being swallowed by the ground and re-appearing somewhere, however space is a tough hurdle to overcome. Achieving 2% grade means a 8 footer long incline and due to the thickness of your ground level material its possibly longer.

 

One option which you can do is actually have the scenery change elevation across your layout. So on the right side of your layout, you might have a "surface" 4 inches above the baseboard, but on the left side it's 1 inch above. The subway emerges from a tunnel and the surface commuter rail line becomes elevated.

[cteno4]

Great idea mudkip! Under ground end could have a cutaway station.

 

Still always the issue of buried tracks to make sure you can get good access for trains, track cleaning and other fixes.

 

Jeff

[The Next Station Is...]

One option which you can do is actually have the scenery change elevation across your layout. So on the right side of your layout, you might have a "surface" 4 inches above the baseboard, but on the left side it's 1 inch above. The subway emerges from a tunnel and the surface commuter rail line becomes elevated.

A bit like this, but maybe not quite so crazy?

 

[katoftw]

I got a crooked neck try to look at that. haha

 

But in all seriousness.  The multi level isn't a bad idea.  you have regular ground level.  And on one end of the layout, tracks drop 30mm and go underground.  And other track raise uphill 30mm.

 

Raising and falling 30mm doesn't require long ramps. 4x 248mm track pieces instead of the regular 6x to go up 50mm.

Edited October 15, 2014 by katoftw

[kvp]

I think Tokyo is a good example of a level track with subways and elevated lines. The Ginza line is a good example. It runs underground at a relatively shallow depth. Just a bit before Shibuya station it surfaces without a ramp when it enters the Shibuya river valley. The end station is two levels above ground, at around the same elevation as the station before it. This is visible on streetview when you look from Omotesando towards Shibuya and see all the streets slope downward.

 

Another good example is the elevated tracks from Tokyo station towards Shinagawa. The elevated lines slowly become ground level between Shinbashi and Tamachi, because the surface level gradually rises up. This transition is actually planned into the hjmtc modular club layout, where we try to build the elevated lines around Shinbashi and then move up the surface level on a curved module to create a compressed version of the Shinagawa yards as a storage yard.

 

On a home layout, there are 3 general options for a subway:

-a completly independent subway layout placed under the surface layout

-a two (or three) level layout conneced with ramps

-a flat layout with some parts in a tunnel/subway

 

The options for access:

-clip under (the subway is fixed under the table surface, could be hard to remove for maintenance)

-slide out (the subway is in a drawer under the table surface, slides out for maintenance)

-lift out (the subway is on the table surface and anything above it can be removed, except areas covered with surface or elevated tracks)

-side access (the subway tunnel is reachable from the side, this can by tricky)

 

I think the flat layout with the lift out hill is the easiest, as long as there are no surface and subway lines that are running completly parallel. Crossing lines are ok, since they will look like an elevated line crossing a ground level one when the ground and the buildings are removed. This is also the common method for hill and tunnel construction on european home layouts.

 

ps: Another good trick is to elevate one line half the required height and sink the other one half the height. On one side, both lines run at the same level, one ramp goes up, the other goes down and on the other side they have enough clearance to cross each other. This cuts the required ramp lengths in half, but both lines will have ramps.

[Mudkip Orange]

ps: Another good trick is to elevate one line half the required height and sink the other one half the height. On one side, both lines run at the same level, one ramp goes up, the other goes down and on the other side they have enough clearance to cross each other. This cuts the required ramp lengths in half, but both lines will have ramps.

 

Of the myriad plans I've designed for a continuous running layouts with a hillclimbing branch line, probably at least half of them have a mainline 2% downgrade parallel to a branchline 4% upgrade, or vice versa. Cuts about 1/3rd of the distance off just having the mainline flat. My current layout (which is, not surprisingly, a continuous run oval with a hillclimbing branch) I may or may not do this depending on how I assemble the next three layers of foam.

[Sascha]

I had to read trough this a view times till I understood what y'all talking about, but now I think that it is a great idea,. It seems a lot easier than running the Subway just underground. Y'all gave me a lot of new ideas to think about. I'm glad that I can be a patient person. : )