Getting Started

I'm just getting started on an On30 layout.  This is a free lanced narrow gauge line serving the mining industry in the Rocky Mountains during the early 1920's.  I plan to use Arduinos to control sound and animation at several areas around the layout.  Train controls will be with RF using hand held remotes.  There will be no power on the rails (dead rail) which will make wiring the layout and track maintenance pretty painless.  There's a lot I want to do but I'm limited by the size of the room, 11' X 12'.  Still, I think I can get a lot in a small space and have plenty of fun doing it.

The first thing I did was draw up a track plan on paper.  I quickly realized how time consuming this was so I bought a design program (AnyRail) and started all over.  I set limits for track radius (18") and grade (5%).  The three engines I have right now are a Gilpin style Shay, a 2-6-0 and a 2-8-0  and I'm confident they can handle these limits.  I'll do some testing when I start laying track just to make sure.  The AnyRail program turned out to be a good investment.  I could design on separate layers, save parts I liked and redo others.  I was also able to make scale footprints for some structures I already have and could create reasonable ones for buildings I hope to include later on.  I intend to build most structures from scratch so I won't be tied down by predetermined sizes.

As I started laying out a design with the program I found that the room size was really limiting me.  I was using Micro-Engineering flex track and turnouts available through the software.  There were some places where I really needed something different though and nothing else was available in the narrow gauge O scale library.  Since HO scale uses the same rail width as On30 I looked in their library and this was where I was introduced Fast Tracks.  Fast Tracks makes templates for hand laid track and this opened up a new door for me with all kinds of possibilities.  Using curved turnouts I could fit a lot more into my small room.  I decided then that hand laid track was the only way to get what I wanted.  Something else that helped me expand was adding a helix to get to a second level.  And I also expanded the room by using the 4' X 8' closet.

I came up with a design I liked and reworked it until I was really satisfied.  I then downloaded a program called TrainPlayer that simulates running trains on your layout design.  I was able to set out and pick up cars at mines and industries and work through all the shuffling to see how things operated.  I made a few small changes and decided I had a good design.  The next step was to start construction.