Idea's for a switching layout - Model Railroader Magazine

 Btw, since we were discussing ideas for a small switching layout. Today I got Lance Mindheim's newish book "How to Design a Small Switching Layout" (Plus a couple of Pelle Søborg books on landscaping and detailing/weathering) in my mailbox.

 Lance does something interesting - instead of just pouring it on with examples of switching layouts, he discusses the planning principles he is applying when designing a small switching layout.

 He talks about strategic planning - figuring out how much space you can spend and the layout footprint, what scale you want to model in and then what you want to model in that space. Observe that he does not start with what he wants to model, but instead starts with the benchwork.

 Both approaches work, of course. But if you start with the benchwork, you need to be even harder when selecting what to include and what to drop.

 He is also, as anyone who has seen any of his layouts can attest to, a fan of not adding too much track to a scene, and allowing plenty of room for scene breaks.

 He talks about allocating as much as 1/3rd of the layout surface for scenery break rather than for tracks and rail served industries. A pretty tough act if doing a 7-foot layout in H0 scale, of course.

 And he takes a swing at the fairly common practice of having a runaround between two of the yard tracks - instead he advocates (for small switching layouts) to have the runaround where you have your  industry spurs, _before_ you come to the single ended yard tracks.

 Which is pretty much analogous to the principle Byron Henderson advocated e.g. in his Alameda switching layout - placing a runaround centrally, so the tracks that form the runaround is multiple-use tracks - part of the yard lead, part of industry leads, part of a runaround.

 Lance Mindheim also talks about placing the mainline through the scene in various ways and advantages or disadvantages of the various approaches and quite a few other things.

 Most of his planning principles were not all that new to me, but he writes well, and the principles he advocate is worth a study for people who are thinking about building a small switching layout.

 Smile,
 Stein