# Hand Drawing Track Elements



## fotoflojoe (Dec 31, 2011)

Not sure if this post belongs here, or in "Beginner Q&A"...

After playing with XtrackCad and SCARM, I've decided that until I have a much more complete and solid idea for a track plan, I'm going to draw them by hand. The above programs are excellent, however, my low skill level doesn't allow me to experiment with a design by "doodling" in them yet.

Seems much quicker to ink in my bench work on graph paper, then scribble away as ideas come to me.

For hand drawing, I'll work in 3/4" to the foot scale. 

I've got a firm grasp on straight track (ruler) and curves (compass), but I'm not completely sure about turnouts.

When drawing a "#X" turnout, is it really as straight-forward as: measure X units along the straight from point A to point B, measure over one unit from point B (either right or left as appropriate) to point C, then draw the diverging leg as a line between points A and C? 

That seems logical to me, but I'd like to be sure - I don't want my drawings going off into fantasy land. 

How might one draw other elements, such as a wye or curved turn-out?

Can anyone point me toward a link that would have this information?
When I googled for it, the only results that came back were for full-size track templates, and track plans that the user had hand-drawn.
My search-fu has failed me... 

Thanks for reading!


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

What I did was purchase turnouts of the various sizes that I was going to use and measure them. I used those lengths and marked a small line at each end of the turnout on the paper so I knew which dimensions were fixed. 

You'll need:
Overall length of the main route, 
length of the diverging route
point of intersect. 

Most diverging angles of turnouts can be found online, or do as you stated with measuring 4 units down and 1 unit over for a #4, etc. 

Just realize that there is a curve in the turnout to smooth the angle of the diverging route.

Or you can always shrink down the full-size templates. (1.15% of original size - which is 1/87)

FYI....You can trim the length of some turnouts to make them work in you're layout, just stay away from the areas near the frog/turnout end.


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## Blade3562 (Mar 13, 2012)

marklin actually made an "engineering" style tool. It was based on your scale there was n,z, ho etc, and it told you which part number was associated with which stencil. so you could draw your layout on a 8x11 sheet of paper then build the track. It's pretty cool.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Did you try Anyrail? You can lay 50 pieces of track with the free version. I think once you try it, you'll see how easy it can be to use a track layout program.


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

Joe,

I forget if you're working in HO or some other scale. NMRA has a very detailed set of dimensions / drawings for turnout of various sizes. Here's HO ...

http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/rp12_3.html

Here's other gauges ...

http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/consist.html (see sections 12.x )

Cheers,

TJ


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## fotoflojoe (Dec 31, 2011)

Yeah, someone mentioned NMRA RP 12 on another forum.
Why it didn't occur to me to run right their site, I'll never know...

Thanks!


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## fotoflojoe (Dec 31, 2011)

gunrunnerjohn said:


> Did you try Anyrail? You can lay 50 pieces of track with the free version. I think once you try it, you'll see how easy it can be to use a track layout program.


Holy cow!

Anyrail is certainly the most intuitive tool I've used yet! So far, it beats XtrkCad and Scarm by a country mile. Within seconds of installing the freebie, I was able to do the "doodling" that I referred to in the original post.

I need to play with it a little more, but as long as I don't run into any gotchas, I'll definitely by coughing up for the full version.

Thanks for the tip! :thumbsup:


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I had the same experience, and I'm a guy that has programmed for most of my life!  The interface was just so easy to pick up.


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