Sunday, December 02, 2007

Layout Stats for Emsingen & Talheim - not so useful

I might have mentioned this elsewhere before, I really like Joe Fugate's Siskiyou Railfan Web site. He gave a talk a while ago about layout design analysis.

I wonder how this works for Emsingen & Talheim...

Room Size:
I'm working with 2.20 x 2.40 m, which is 7.2 x 7.8 ft = 56 square feet

Layout Area:
I have roughly 1.05 x 1.10 m of space in the lower left corner (12 sq ft), so the layout covers 44 sq ft.

In other words, the layout will fill 78% of the available space, which is quite a bit. However, since I'm planing an access hatch in the area of the lake, I think I should be fine.

Number of Turnouts:
I have 24 regular turnouts, 3 three-way switches, and 2 double-slips, that makes a total of 31 turnout equivalents.

Track Length:
~82 ft (24m) of visible track, ~75 ft (22m) of hidden track. It's that much hidden track mostly because of the long ramp to hidden staging and hidden staging itself. A total track length of 157 ft roughly equates enough space for 314 HO box cars (2 cars/foot).

Mainline Track:
22 cars in staging yard, 112 cars in main level tunnel and visible track. Total: 134 cars

Passing track:
4 cars in Talheim, 5 cars + 16 cars in Emsingen. Total: 25 cars

Storage Track:
3 cars in Talheim, 9 cars in Emsingen. Total: 12 cars

Service Track:
14 cars in Emsingen. Total: 14 cars

Staging Track:
120 cars to/from staging yard, including loop + staging tracks. Total: 120 cars

Connecting Track:
314 - 134 - 25 - 12 - 14 - 120 = 9

Passing Sidings: 3

Passing Train Length: 16/8/4 (longest/average/shortest)

Staging Tracks: 3

Staging Train Length: 24/21/16 (longest/average/shortest)

All those numbers now may yield some interesting stats:

Maximum Number of Cars: 112 = (storage + passing/2 + staging) * 0.8

Using the regular formula I get 112 cars on this layout. That's clearly too much, and comes from the fact that I counted the hidden main line track into staging as staging track. A more accurate number on my layout would be to only count the loop and the actual staging tracks, and don't include the ramp:
((24 + 24 + 16 + 8) + 12 + 12 ) * 0.8 = 76 cars

Number of Cars Moved in an operating cycle: 71 (staging * 2 + passing + connecting) * 0.4

Trains: 9

What can I learn from this? Nothing really. This was an interesting exercise, but I think that due to the nature of this layout, the formulas don't fit well, and the final outcome is not nearly as useful as I thought it might be when I started this.

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