Staging Spacing

[Haggis]

Hi there,

I am planning an ON30 layout for my Attic, and i was wondering what the spacing between the tracks should be for a staging yard?

Can anyone help??

I will post a layout plan when i have one done for some comments.

Cheers

Alan

 

[MasonJar]

www.nmra.org has standards for spacing between straight and curved parallel tracks for all scales. In staging, it might be wise to increase the minimum to allow fingres in for removing and adding rolling stock to the layout.

Andrew

 

[abutt]

Andrew beat me to it. Definitly leave enough for fingers on both sides of rolling stock PLUS! Unless they make rerailers for that gauge, allow even more for getting car wheels on the track. Fortunately Atlas makes rerail sections for HO track and all my staging tracks have rerail sections at both ends. If rerailers aren't available in your gauge, you can take the time to glue rail sections inside each rail to act as rerailers. Well worth the effort, I think.

 

[pgandw]

An easy way to mock up the situation to see what will work for you is to put the right number of rows of HO sectional track inside a cardboard box of the approximate height as your planned staging track access and try rerailing rolling stock on the various tracks. This should give you an idea of what dimensions might work well for you. Second the thought of rerailer track sections in your staging area. As long as Murphy is around, guess where your derailments will occcur?

my thoughts, your choices