Inspiration Nearby

I have long enjoyed designing track plans for various sizes and shapes of layout. And I have a number of track plans available in the Photo / Track Plans section of this site as a kind of testiment to that fact.

But while travelling on the train between our home town and church, I noticed that one of the stations enroute had a simple yet operationally interesting track plan.

While writing some content for an eBook about layout contruction and track planning, I had one of those Eureka moments and realised the potential of this simple yet fun to operate track plan. The prototype provides most of the inspiration for not only the track plan, but also the traffic patterns, which include freight trains carrying grain and containers, and 2 car DMU trains for passengers.

A layout based on this track plan and / or location could be as little as 1 foot deep, with a scenery section 6 to 8 feet long. Staging at each end might need to be about 3 or 4 feet to allow for freight trains, but could possibly be shorter if the scenic section is shorter.