My unusual City train layout

[The Lego Room]

So as you can see, I haven't done the standard loop-de-loop around the City type layout. What are your honest thoughts on this?

[Vilhelm22]

I understand your reasoning and it makes perfect sense - though you’ll need to be more careful with driving trains or integrate sensors to stop it at the ends.  If I were you though, as it’s now just a straight line, in the same way ‘enclosing’ the city isn’t great, it’s now kind of sidelined (pun intended) - maybe try to integrate it a bit more centrally?  I’d also probably put in just 1 curve for a bit of interest...

Loops do exist in real life trains, though I will concede that they are very uncommon.  The two I can think of off the top of my head are the elevated loop in Chicago, and of course London’s Circle Line prior to the Edgware Road-Hammersmith extension.  They have the advantage in Lego that you can have a constantly running train which looks good and doesn’t need constant attention.  

For more inspiration on the single line idea, I’d check out LNUR’s Ambridge and Paxley layout, the only other of this kind I’m aware of.  

 Lastly - I’m not a moderator but I generally hang out in the Train Tech forum and you’ll probably get more answers there - you might want to ask a mod to move this topic to there...

Concluding this unintentionally-essay-length answer, kind regards,

Vilhelm22

Edited June 25, 2021 by Vilhelm22

[azrudy]

This makes alot of sense. I used to want to "complete" the loop just so that I could see it running continuously. After a while it gets quite mundane. Being a blue track (Plarail) collector myself, achieving a complete loop is much more enjoyable on plarail. IMO Lego Trains are a slow burn, the goal is not to complete the loop but to just make some sense out of  the entire train travel/route. 

Of course, if you have an extremely large room and a pile of cash to splurge, then you could just zone up over 80++ baseplates and make a damn good looking town with factories, residential etc.