Rebuilding the Iantha Branch, again.

Thanks as always for the feedback Keith.

My plan had been a 2% grade to make the 6" climb. I generally run 3 or 4 unit consists, so 2% isn't bad. I guess I should mock up a shelf at 6" before I go through the trouble of assembling all this.

I did discuss grades with Rick last time I was at his place. I think he said he was at 6% now coming in and out of Tulsa if I remember right. I could push to 4% to make a 12" climb.

I'll mock up some trials and report back.

 

Keith is absolutely correct. Six inches of vertical clearance is not nearly enough, especially if there is more than one track on the lower level. Your hand will not fit over what ever is in front of what you need to re-rail. You need at least a foot, and that assumes you don't have to reach in very far.

GS

 

I set up a trial of sorts today to test out different heights. I set up some sections of track 2" apart from each other on a 2' deep bench and alternated between Tri-Level Auto racks (tallest thing on my layout) and flat cars (the shortest). I did lose about 1/2" of clearance due to EZ track having the molded plastic roadbed. Here are my findings:

6" of clearance: As Keith and Greg pointed out, its not enough space. I couldn't fit my arm in between the auto racks and upper shelf. I could reach back to the very back and re-rail the car on the very back track if I moved all of the other cars aside so I could reach straight in. Not a great situation, but one could make it work if they had to.

8" of clearance: With all the car lined up, I could reach all the way to the back and move the auto rack at the very back, but I couldn't reach down to the flat car in front of it.

10" of clearance: I could now reach in and work on any of the cars under the shelf.

After looking at my track plan again today, I was a little short of space to make a 12" climb, but I can make 10" work.

 

It rained just enough yesterday to keep us out of the field, so I got started rearranging the layout. Rosedale yard and Glenn Park yard are both done already. Next step will be to move all of the locomotives and rolling stock back over to that side of the layout and put together the interchange and 19th St yard.

I've already made a couple slight changes to the plan. There is a spare siding on the south half of Rosedale that I'm going to assign some industry spots to. That should add a little bit more to the operating cycle. If I have enough turnouts, I'm considering adding a spur to the MKT lead and moving the elevator spot away from GP yard where there's a bit more room for it.

Hope to have more tomorrow.

 

Quick update as I get cars transferred over to the Rosedale side of the layout:

I pulled out my Woodland Scenics incline sets. I was able to stack my pair of 2% sets on top of each other to create a 4% incline that goes up 8". A little over half of this incline is on a 26" radius curve. Despite the 4% incline on the curve, I was still able to get a train up the portion of the incline that I have completed today. With 4 locomotives in front of 30 cars, there were no issues with the incline.

 

I was lucky to have this weekend off from harvesting. I had enough time to finish the incline and put up the shelf for the upper level "distant" staging, and then finish putting together the rest of the track that I didn't finish last weekend. Hopefully next weekend I can get cars redistributed around the layout and new waybills printed up. Until then, here is a revised track plan and a few pictures I took today.

 

Thanks Jim. I sure hope it works out as intended.

 

I spent most of last weekend programing locomotives for this new setup. I now have interchange power for all the roads I've chosen to represent. This weekend I worked on adding rolling stock to the layout and making up car cards for them. In total I added about 75 cars to the layout. I'll have to see how things shake out after I distribute those to determine if I need anymore.

I reworked the track at the north end of 19th street yard a little bit. I now have a couple short tracks to hold two additional interchanging roads. I've added the Milwaukee Road and Norfolk Western to bring some traffic in and out of Glenn Park Yard for the MKT.

I'm finally close to having an operational layout again. I'll post a few pictures below.

 

Something I failed to do with my previous configuration was take pictures of it operating to save for later. I'm off to a better start with this layout, I've got an album started for it.

http://frisco.org/shipit/index.php?media/albums/frisco-kansas-city-terminal-1980.287/

 

I've decided to restart my old youtube channel and get it going ahead of the next layout build. To get the ball rolling, I made a brief layout tour. This should hopefully be a better quality video than what I used to produce.

 

As they say, all good things must come to an end. We have moved to our new house out in the country. It will be a few months before I can start on the next layout, but in the mean time I have to get things cleaned out to sell our house in town. That includes taking apart the layout I've been using for the past 3 and a half years. I enjoyed my time with this space. I accomplished my goal of trying out different designs and learning different operating concepts to use on my future layout.

So this is the end of this layout thread. The design thread for the next layout is already in progress here: http://frisco.org/shipit/index.php?threads/the-future-iantha-branch.1376

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