Summary form

If we were going to enhance published track plans with these stats, we can use a summary form, as illustrated here.

If we take the example layouts presented above and condense their stats down into summary form we have:

HO SP Siskiyou Line (Joe Fugate)


          Room Area (sq ft): 810
        Layout Area (sq ft): 689 (85%)
            Number Turnouts: 122
           Total Track (ft): 1078
        Train Length (cars): 44/30/10
               Maximum Cars: 816
                     Trains: 16.7
      Dispatching Threshold: 22 car trains

HO Soo Red Wing Division (12/94 MR)


          Room Area (sq ft): 96
        Layout Area (sq ft): 32 (33%)
            Number Turnouts: 12
           Total Track (ft): 68
        Train Length (cars): 26/9/7
               Maximum Cars: 37
                     Trains: 4.9
      Dispatching Threshold: 10 car trains

HO Alkali Central (12/95 MR)


          Room Area (sq ft): 96
        Layout Area (sq ft): 32 (33%)
            Number Turnouts: 8
           Total Track (ft): 45
        Train Length (cars): 10/9/8
               Maximum Cars: 25
                     Trains: 2.4
      Dispatching Threshold: 1 car trains

I recommend the summary form in published track plans, and it would do a lot to help us quickly analyze a plan's potential if we could convince the hobby press to adopt this as a standard.

article index
page 1 : Find out if your layout will work before you build it
page 2 : The basic stats
page 3 : Operation potential stats
page 4 : Some examples
page 5 - current : Summary form
page 6 : Estimating building time and cost
page 7 : Some additional insights
page 8 : Comments and rating

Summary form

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September 2010

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