The Plan

As promised, here's an idea of the eventual goal.

Briefly, the STRR lives in a 9x10 foot room, with a five foot wide closet (in the SW corner in the drawing) and a recessed window (in the NW corner). The plan is a basic twice-around, with a double-crossover between the two loops. (For those who are interested -- and if you're not, why are you reading this? -- the plan is adapted from an unnamed pike near the end of John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation.) This allows me to operate two trains independently on the two loops, or to reverse the crossovers and run a single train on the twice-around. Sidings shown are representative -- the actual sidings will be laid out in 1:1 once the benchwork is in place. I expect to have fifteen to twenty industries to provide extensive switching operations.

I've left clearance for the entry door in the SE corner of the room with a curved swinging gate (shown in green in open and closed positions in the 3D view.) Reach is no more than 30 inches to any point on the layout, which is critical, as I've set the layout height to 52" from the floor.



Benchwork is 3/4" hardwood plywood ripped to 4" wide, using pocket-hole joinery. The outer edge of the benchwork is attached to the wall with 3" screws in each stud. The swinging gate will be masonite spline construction -- strips of thin masonite laminated together to form the precise curvature of the gate.

So that's the plan. Please feel free to make comments, suggestions, etc. Now would be a great time to discover a fatal flaw, rather than a few months from now.... Thanks for reading!