Designing my train layout - 1

As a child I grew up with model trains. I was given my first train set when I was just two years old. Later, at the age of eight, my parents bought me a great Triang-Hornby train set when passing through England. Modeling activities stopped in school and college. While attending graduate school at Syracuse University, I bought a small loop of N-gauge track and used to run a train around my computer, much to the amusement of fellow students.

When I resumed active railway modeling in 1992, I started with Märklin, a well known German model train company. One of my best friends had Märklin train set and I always wanted those trains. Photos of my old Märklin layouts can be seen here and here. For a variety of reasons (chronicled in more detail in this article on my web site), I decided on a new direction.

I finally dismantled my Märklin layout towards the end of 2007 and cleared the train area in my basement for a new layout. As such, I had a clean sheet of paper to work with. My layout design was constrained by a few factors:

1. Space: My old layout was just 4 feet by 10 feet. I felt that there was some scope for expansion. After careful measurement and negotiations with my wife, I determined that the actual space available for the layout was was 14 feet by 7 feet. However, there is a furnace close to the layout and I need to ensure that there is enough room around the furnace. Hence, I lost a triangular a nibble from this space.
   Now, 98 square feet is not much compared to the large spaces available to the typical American modeler. However, I felt that even this amount of space would be a bit of a challenge. Larger layouts are more costly both to build and to maintain. Its all too easy to bite off more than you can chew in this hobby! The shape of the available space is shown below. The available space is the area in white with thick borders. The diagonal section on the left side of the diagram is caused by the need to leave enough room around the furnace. Another issue is that this has to be a free-standing layout since I need access to things stored around the room.
2. Operating style: This played a very important role in shaping the design of the layout. The one clear requirement in my mind for this layout is that it must support fully automatic computerized operation. Consequently two sub-requirements became clear:
   a. A continuous run is absolutely essential. A point-to-point layout is simply not suitable for automated operation given the need to switch locomotives around their trains.
   b. There need not be any provision for local switching in industries and freight yards as is common in most American layouts.
3. Carpentry skills: I am not much of a carpenter - I just don't have a very steady hand and am a bit impatient. As a consequence, I wanted the benchwork to be as simple as possible. A major consequence of this constraint is that I decided to go in for a single level layout. Apart from being much easier to build, its much easier to debug computer control programs if the trains are visible at all times.
4. Scale is HO (1:87.1): This is because I have a lot of European outline rolling stock in HO that I would like to run on this layout. Also, a large variety of HO scale equipment is available from manufacturers around the world.
5. Minimum radius for the mainline must be at least 24 inches: This would allow the operation of most modern equipment although even this radius is too small for longer cars like the Amtrak Superliner car which is 85 feet long for example (nearly a foot in HO scale). There will be a fair bit of overhang for the longer cars on 24 inch curves but at least, they don't derail.

After spending a week or so considering these constraints, I updated my copy of 3rd PlanIt layout design software and got to work. In the next posting in this series, I'll describe the actual design process.

The inspirations for my train layout

One of my main inspirations for my model train layout are my memories of train travel in India where I grew up. I have been on many memorable railway journeys in India but the ones that stand out in my mind were in the mid to late 1970s when I often travelled between New Delhi and Chennai (then called Madras) by the Tamil Nadu Express (Click on photo at left to see the original photo taken by by Mick Pope in 1977 on the IRFCA web site).

Newly introduced in 1976, this train had a remarkable average speed of almost 75 Km/h. While this may be low by European or Japanese standards, it was a very big deal 30 years ago in India. At that time, the only trains faster than the Tamil Nadu Express were the Rajdhani Express trains that ran, respectively, between New Delhi and Mumbai and Calcutta. The top speed of the train was 110 km/h which it touched on many sections. My brother and I used to time the trains with the help of a stopwatch and pocket calculator.

Apart from the high speed, there were several other interesting features on this train. The train had five classes of accomodation: air conditioned first class, air conditioned sleeper (one of the first in India), air conditioned chair car (yes, you had sit for 29 hours!), regular first class and regular sleeper. The chair cars had closed circuit TVs on which movies were shown. The train even featured a small on-board book store that sold magazines and novels.

My eventual (very long term!) goal is to model Indian Railways and the TN Express (as of 1977) in particular. Of course, there are no ready-to-run models of Indian trains - which means a lot of scratch building. To be sure, at the moment, I have neither the time nor the skill to scratch build rolling stock. Consequently, to get things started, I will be running American models. However, given that there is a fair bit of American derived running in India, this is not too much of a stretch.

The scenery, however, will definitely have a strong Indian flavor. I would like to capture the look of the Coramandel coast. My area of interest is near Ennore, an industrial area north of Chennai. The main line to the North passes over a backwater of the sea on a bridge and is quite picturesque. The scenery will mostly consist of palm trees and scrub bushes. There will be a big oil refinery on the layout. All railway structures will have to be scratch built. This should not be too hard since railway structures in India are not too ornate.

My model railroading history

I have been a model railroader for a long time. I was given my first train set when I was just two years old and have been playing with trains ever since. My parents bought me a big Triang-Hornby OO set in 1970 when we returned to India from a stay in America. It included a large oval of track, several turnouts and a big lot of freight cars and passenger coaches.  Not much remains of this set except for a Britannia Pacific and a few coaches.

This train set gave my brother an myself a lot of enjoyment but like many modellers, high school and college prevented me from pursuing the hobby. When I was a graduate student at Syracuse University in the 1980s, I attended a model train show by chance at the State Fair grounds and got hooked again. Of course, as an impoverished graduate student, there was no way to build a proper layout but I did manage to get a small oval of N gauge track that used to run trains around my Sun Sparcstation monitor.

I resumed model railroading in a big way after I started work at IBM in 1992. On my birthday, with my wife's encouragement, I bought a small Märklin starter set and and some additional tracks to go along with it. Why Märklin? I had always coveted Märklin trains as a child - my best friend Jayashankar Srinivasan had a Märklin set. Although my Triang-Hornby set was very nice, I felt that Märklin had a complete system that seemed to offer a lot of exciting operational possibilities. In particular, I was fascinated by the possibility of controlling trains by actual operating signals.

Over the years, I built a number of Märklin layouts, culminating in a medium size C-track layout that I completed in 2006. I used an Uhlenbrock Intellibox to control my trains along with JMRI-based custom software that I wrote myself. A video of my trains is incuded below

By 2007 however, I was becoming increasingly unhappy with Märklin for a number of reasons. In particular, Märklin uses a proprietary non-standard three-rail system - there is a central rail that is used to power the locomotives. Consequently, Märklin  is the sole supplier of tracks for this system. The geometries of the track system leave a lot to be desired in my opinion. I created a small switching layout to explore the 2-rail world. This little layout turned out much better than I had expected.

After much thought, I decided to switch to the two-rail system. I then dismantled my Märklin  layout and sold off most of the track and rolling stock. I have started building a new layout based on American prototypes. I will be documenting the construction of this layout in this blog.