# Draft N Scale River Town



## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

Please have a look at this draft and let me know what you think. There is a river running north to south in the middle. The River Town is to the East, and on the West side there is a farm and a logging site.

This is 10 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Each square is a square foot. It's basically a large inverted "U" that will be floating in my section of the basement. So I should have adequate reach from all edges.

The majority of the track is 2.25" in height and is colored the lighter blue. The dark blue section down by the river on the village side is ground level. The green sections are slopes.

The table will be made of Plywood with a 1" sheet of foam for the base. The river will be cut down into this base piece. I Think I'm going to use Woodland Scenic inclines and risers, then fill in the rest of the rolling hills with mesh and plaster cloth.

Hopefully, this is easy to look at and see the elevations and slopes.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

So a nice little layout if what you want to do is watch a train orbit in the same direction all the time. Gives you a couple different choices of directions. Lots of opportunities for nice scenery work, a lot of modeling of terrain and structures. It doesn't look like you have a reversing loop, and your grades are reasonable. It should work nicely.

But is that really going to hold your interest for any length of time (after you're done building it, that is)? There are only two spurs that need to be switched, both of them a simple backing move that requires no run-around or shuffling of cars. You have half a dozen industries there that COULD be rail-served, but aren't. I'm not saying that this is wrong, just have you considered it? Is this your first attempt at a layout? How do you know this type of design is going to satisfy your desire to operate trains? If you're not sure, temporarily lay the track and run it for a while. See if it feels right. I'm not saying you need huge yards, runaround tracks, and multiple spurs to have a layout, but these are the things that tend to keep them endlessly engaging. Watching a train run might get boring after a while and you'll want something else to do. Or not. Only you can answer that question.

A couple of comments. 1) I'm not sure your grade calculations are entirely correct. Estimating exact track lengths from a diagram is tricky, but the slope in the lower right portion looks more like 2.6% to me. If you're planning to use WS risers, though, why not make it an even 3%, and use their incline starters as well, and make the height difference in even 1" increments? Not that custom slopes can't be made, but they're tricky to get right. 2) Why not simply use extruded foam construction throughout, rather than mixing and matching different methods? Again, not wrong, just curious. 3) Your lumber yard is rail served, but your lumber wharf is not, and you have a municipal pier that IS rail served, with nowhere for the train to take those goods. Why not switch the two?


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it!


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

I was trying to make the crossover at the bottom right to be a level mid-point between the ground level by the river and the 2.25" rest of the section, then told Anyrail to "smooth slope". 

I imagine when I actually build it, I will either use 2% or 3% inclines and work forward or backward from the crossover that will be on a pedestal of foam board layers.

Also, the reason I was using 2.25: rather than even 2" increments, is because I have a lot of cardboard and foam pieces that are 2.25" that I thought I could use to save a little bit on cost. I also have a lot of cardboard that is 1/4" so using WS risers and inclines would work if I step up either the beginning or the end of a slope accordingly. Perhaps that is being penny wise and pound foolish?


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

So if Anyrail calculated it, then it's correct, so no worries there.

It's good to use free stuff, so not really penny wise, pound foolish, but consider this: you have 80 square feet of layout space, and perhaps 5 square feet of it (total length of track x perhaps 2" wide) is going to be set to your "standard heights. The rest of it is going to be much more freeform, and you can stack and carve foam or cardboard to your heart's content in the areas between your tracks. I'm not a big fan of cardboard as a construction material simply because most of our adhesives, especially for ballast and scenery, contain a lot of water, and you risk turning it into mush. I would definitely not use cardboard for roadbed or subroadbed. Elsewhere is more of a personal choice.


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

Good point about water based adhesives Maybe I should just stick with foam. I did another iteration and added a spur on the lower left side of the layout to service something in the village area.

I'm also considering making the lower area a little larger and tunneling under the higher areas, but don't want to over-do tunnels because I plan to have a solid table top, so no access to hidden track from underneath.

I like the layout so far, but I see what you mean about having more "jobs" to keep things interesting as I shuffle freight cars around.


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