Just a few Thoughts On Layout Design.

[Ron S]

Re push/pull through turnouts. I guess if trackwork & stock is up to scratch , pushing through slowly should be no problems. I remember an old Railway Modeller article in the 1960's in which the owner built his own trackwork and to prove all was good, ran his trains backwards at speed and if things derailed, find & fix.

And of course when shunting, one has to push/pull though turnouts in both directions.

[RSR Engineer]

Thanks, Ron, I'll bear that in mind.
Cheers,
Artur

[Mountain Goat]

Not sure some of today's nem fitted close coupling designed stock likes being pushed. Old Lima coaches can be pushed at speed. Any track issues will be found by pushing ones stock.

[RSR Engineer]

Good point, MG, thanks. On the old layout I never had any trouble pushing shunting wagons with closecouplers. On some older East German wagons (produced before closecouplers were invented) the bogies are mounted quite sloppily and would sometimes tilt under the pressure of shunting and swing round and derail that way. As we've said before, I'll just have to test everything thoroughly and not use any rolling stock that's unreliable.

Cheers,
Artur

[Walkingthedog]

I find I can push all my wagons with narrow couplings without derailing, but, I only push them very slowly. At speed I reckon I’d end up with a wagon mountain.

[RSR Engineer]

Under normal working conditions I also would only shunt my hidden sidings at low speed, Wtd. During testing, though, I do intend to try imitating no. 6220 arriving at Crewe to show up any errors and inaccuracies (of which I'm sure there'll be enough).

Cheers,
Artur

[Mr Bones]

The biggest issue I have with track design is "monkey see monkey want". I've had to be really strict with myself. I see a turntable, I want one. I see a postal depot, I want one.

After a lot of thought I made a list of what I really needed (not what I wanted) and have tried to stick with that. No easy when there is so much potential with a new layout.

MG your tip about not overdoing the track work is also one that I have had to rein myself in on. Good advice.

[Mountain Goat]

I agree that we buy so many things over the years in the hope that they will fit in the space we have. In the past I have bought all sorts of things I have never used.