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Description
This kinda... I dunno. I had freshly and successfully installed Atlas RTS 7.0 freeware onto my desktop (it's a Windows app running in Linux through Wine) and I decided to screw around with it for a bit.

I had been wanting to build a little three-by-five foot N-scale (prototype to model ratio 1:160) layout for a couple years, so I made a simple rectangle that bound the fifteen square feet of area and started laying track. I started off with a simple main line, which you can see as the outer loop of track.

Then, I added a few spurs (sidings). One of them gained a second track and another ended up growing into the six-track freight yard you can see. Then, I thought that I'd squeeze a little length of passing track in under the freight yard. I ended up going through several iterations for the passing track before I finally settled on what you see there.

So yeah. This layout has a nicely curvy main line, a little passing track, some spurs (including a two-track one for a large industry), and a freight yard for some switching action. Since 15 square feet ain't enough for hidden staging tracks, I decided that half of that freight yard will be the official on-layout freight yard and the other half would be three tracks of staging that I can use to freely swap rolling stock on and off the layout.

What makes this the finalized layout diagram is because I laid out a skeleton track with what track pieces I currently have, and found that there is indeed plenty of room for scenery.

Anyway, I'm looking at almost $200 worth of track. About $165 of that is just in the 11 turnouts.

On top of that, I'm looking at another $100-$200 for all the control devices and electrical wiring (thank God I decided to wire this thing DC instead of DCC (direct current vs. digital command control)); about $75-$100 for the benchwork, and another $100-$300 for all the scenery and structures and etc. So all in all, I'm looking at a grand total of $475-$800 for all this.

My parents were right when they said model railroading was gonna be ex-pen-sive, but I'm tired of spending an hour setting up a cheesy loop on some random table only to run what few trains I have for a little bit and then take it down again. I want something with a little bit of permanence.

So I'm gonna be running this under the BNSF roadname and the trains are gonna be pretty damn short (1-5 cars per), but since there are only two spurs, it won't be a big deal. It'll add operational interest.

Now on to another little technical explanation. Since none of my locomotives are equipped with DCC decoders (special programmable internal circuit boards), I have to wire this layout with the DC standard. That means one rail is positive and one rail is negative, and depending on which rail is what polarity relative to the locomotive, it will run either forward or reverse.

Although it might be hard to see, you can see connections where an arrow points to the right hand track (in the counterclockwise direction of travel). On those connections, there is a plastic insulated rail joiner on the rail the arrow points toward. Those rail joiners separate the layout into "blocks". Through the use of a 'cab selector' (a 'cab' is a locomotive control unit), I can control up to two locomotives across the entire layout. Thus, I can reserve my EMD SD9 (BNSF unit #6108) for switching in the freight yard and my GE Dash 8-40BW (ATSF unit #502) for mainline operations.

What you see here is just what came out in one session. Obviously, there will be small changes made to allow for more scenery of different kinds and such, but this is pretty much the whole shebang.

Description
This kinda... I dunno. I had freshly and successfully installed Atlas RTS 7.0 freeware onto my desktop (it's a Windows app running in Linux through Wine) and I decided to screw around with it for a bit.

I had been wanting to build a little three-by-five foot N-scale (prototype to model ratio 1:160) layout for a couple years, so I made a simple rectangle that bound the fifteen square feet of area and started laying track. I started off with a simple main line, which you can see as the outer loop of track.

Then, I added a few spurs (sidings). One of them gained a second track and another ended up growing into the six-track freight yard you can see. Then, I thought that I'd squeeze a little length of passing track in under the freight yard. I ended up going through several iterations for the passing track before I finally settled on what you see there.

So yeah. This layout has a nicely curvy main line, a little passing track, some spurs (including a two-track one for a large industry), and a freight yard for some switching action. Since 15 square feet ain't enough for hidden staging tracks, I decided that half of that freight yard will be the official on-layout freight yard and the other half would be three tracks of staging that I can use to freely swap rolling stock on and off the layout.

What makes this the finalized layout diagram is because I laid out a skeleton track with what track pieces I currently have, and found that there is indeed plenty of room for scenery.

Anyway, I'm looking at almost $200 worth of track. About $165 of that is just in the 11 turnouts.

On top of that, I'm looking at another $100-$200 for all the control devices and electrical wiring (thank God I decided to wire this thing DC instead of DCC (direct current vs. digital command control)); about $75-$100 for the benchwork, and another $100-$300 for all the scenery and structures and etc. So all in all, I'm looking at a grand total of $475-$800 for all this.

My parents were right when they said model railroading was gonna be ex-pen-sive, but I'm tired of spending an hour setting up a cheesy loop on some random table only to run what few trains I have for a little bit and then take it down again. I want something with a little bit of permanence.

So I'm gonna be running this under the BNSF roadname and the trains are gonna be pretty damn short (1-5 cars per), but since there are only two spurs, it won't be a big deal. It'll add operational interest.

Now on to another little technical explanation. Since none of my locomotives are equipped with DCC decoders (special programmable internal circuit boards), I have to wire this layout with the DC standard. That means one rail is positive and one rail is negative, and depending on which rail is what polarity relative to the locomotive, it will run either forward or reverse.

Although it might be hard to see, you can see connections where an arrow points to the right hand track (in the counterclockwise direction of travel). On those connections, there is a plastic insulated rail joiner on the rail the arrow points toward. Those rail joiners separate the layout into "blocks". Through the use of a 'cab selector' (a 'cab' is a locomotive control unit), I can control up to two locomotives across the entire layout. Thus, I can reserve my EMD SD9 (BNSF unit #6108) for switching in the freight yard and my GE Dash 8-40BW (ATSF unit #502) for mainline operations.

What you see here is just what came out in one session. Obviously, there will be small changes made to allow for more scenery of different kinds and such, but this is pretty much the whole shebang.