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Here's one of the plans for a layout we built. It's a 10 x 12 layout in a little out building behind the client's house. It's basically an out and back double decker with a steam engine facility, including a 130 foot turntable for those really big guys, a yard, two 'show loops' and double track mainline running. The 'show loops' allow two trains to run opposed without operator intervention and act as staging for the yard operator. The layout is very tight but given the space available and the client's desires, it's 'what fit'. 24 inch radius, 2 % grades, #4 turnouts, and traditional cab block control wiring. GML remote Rover throttles are used for the 4 cabs. Cab 1 is the main yard, cab 2 is the mainline engineer cab, with 2 show loop cabs for continuous running.
The yard master makes up a train and the mainline engineer takes it uphill to show loop one. The yard master makes up train two. The mainline engineer starts train 2 uphill and takes train 1 from the show loop and turns it on the reverse loop around the engine terminal. The train 2 goes on to show loop one and train 1 goes on to show loop two. The yard master make up train 3. The mainline engineer starts train 3 uphill, starts 1 downhill, takes train 2 from show loop one and turns it and puts it on show loop two. As train 1 arrives back at the main yard, the yardmaster has train 4 ready to go. And the process repeats itself over and over again. Not much in the way of industrial switching (our favorite), but given the tightness of the curves, the grades, 4 or 5 car trains and two operators this is a busy pike. Visitors that are not familiar with model trains and their operation are allowed to run the show loop trains. The GML Rover throttles are powered from a microphone type jack and multiple jacks can be wired into the same throttle. This allows for multiple operating points for the engineers.
The pictures below show the layout operational before any scenery was applied.
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