Sidings on layouts

[Sir E Fullner]

I'm thinking about getting a set of RC points for my railway. That made me wonder, how many sidings do you have on your line and where do you have them, inside a circuit or outside?

Please feel free to post your comments below.

Always entertaining, always pondering, always:

[Carefree_Dude]

I'm thinking about getting a set of RC points for my railway. That made me wonder, how many sidings do you have on your line and where do you have them, inside a circuit or outside?

Please feel free to post your comments below.

Always entertaining, always pondering, always:

I always enjoy having at least 5. 4 for the train to take different routes, and 1 for a train/cars to park. you may need more if you want to do complete loops that are seperate from one another.

[rriggs]

I always enjoy having at least 5. 4 for the train to take different routes, and 1 for a train/cars to park. you may need more if you want to do complete loops that are seperate from one another.

I have a single loop of track (sort of long oval shape) for trains to drive around with six sidings feeding into it. The sidings have a a mix of station platforms and cargo handling accessories for the different trains. In the space I have this gives me the best mix of a drivable section of track (the loop) and room to park all the trains without having to physically take them on and off the rails.

Cheers

Rog

[Itrain]

The problem I have is the common one of too many curved track pieces and not enough straight pieces.

One solution I have thought of but not yet tried out is to make the sidings curved but to alter the radius of the curve for each track by using different amounts of flexible track in between each curved piece. Hopefully in that way you could build 3 or 4 curved sidings close together.

Has anybody tried this or something similar ?

Cheers

iTrain

[CarrollFilms]

I use use 9V, anyway, I use 7,4 for switch trains, and 3 for parking trains and it is quite useful. but feel free to get as many necessary

[hoeij]

The problem I have is the common one of too many curved track pieces and not enough straight pieces.

One solution I have thought of but not yet tried out is to make the sidings curved but to alter the radius of the curve for each track by using different amounts of flexible track in between each curved piece.

Even without flex track you can place a 90 degree curve between two switches to make a curved siding.

In my 9V layout I use 12 switches. Depending on how you set the switches, you either get one long loop with 6 sidings for trains to park, or, two loops with fewer parking spots but this time with switches to go from one loop to the other. This way you have one layout which can function in two different roles (one long loop, or two shorter loops). I use the switches to start/stop the trains, the voltage on the track stays pretty much always the same (except if trains are about to collide, then I shut down the electricity by using a remote controlled AC outlet).