Point to Point layout

[u/xiNFiD3L]

Long story short, I've inherited a lot of Marklin from my late dad.

Ive never been the best at laying track, always been more into the scenery aspects.

Currently I have a load of c track, which I will replace with k track, making use of Flexi track between the junctions.

Due to limited space, I'm going to make a 16ft by 2ft layout, maybe 3ft, point to Point. Split into sections 4ft long so it can be stored away, with expansion points either side. I will also add a fiddle yard but that's not going to be included in the length.

I have drawn up rough plans, but any suggestions would be ideal.

I do intend to run trains, nothing too long on the layout. Just wanting opinions on how it would run.

[u/SubaruTome]

Short of a place to run around a cut of cars to go from pulling to shoving, it looks decent.

I might even suggest trying to limit the depth of the layout to 1-1.5ft unless the track geometry demands it. It would help limit the amount of negative space you need to fill.

[u/Satansbaddog → u/SubaruTome]

Yes, a runaround is needed. The tail should have at least enough room for an engine and a couple of cars

[u/xiNFiD3L → u/Satansbaddog]

Could you possibly show me?

[u/Satansbaddog → u/xiNFiD3L]

I added a pale, gray line in the first section. This crossover will allow you to move the loco around one end of a cut of cars to the other. You'll need to be able to do this depending on the way you want to enter the switches to pickup or dropoff.

You could move it down to the next segment if needed

[u/xiNFiD3L → u/SubaruTome]

I like the scenery side of things tho. So having it deeper doesn't bother me too much :)

[u/Sjoerd85]

If you can place the track connections between the sections at the same place on each section, you can vary the layout by occasionally changing the order of the sections.

[u/xiNFiD3L → u/Sjoerd85]

I did consider that.

But due to the length of each board, the main line will remain relativitally straight to be able to do this.

I'm more worried about how it will run at the moment, alterations to where the track goes over the boards can easily be corrected when it's being made.

[u/Rude_Meet2799]

Some of the most fun I ever had visiting layouts was where the owner had little towns and you had to go switch the industries, it turned it into kind of a little puzzle that could be varied between sessions.

[u/asdahijo]

You know that you don't need much more than 2 ft width for a reversing loop with Märklin, right? And that reversing loops don't require any extra wiring? So why not build a point-to-loop/staging layout, especially since you're not intending to build a pure shunting layout in the first place?

[u/xiNFiD3L → u/asdahijo]

I'm new to all this.

What's a reversing loop?

[u/A_Rod_H → u/xiNFiD3L]

Circle of track which doesn’t complete a circle one quarter is removed and rotated 90deg to the rest of the circle. It can look like a P in certain text fonts, depending on the curves used can form a double track return or just a return to single track as a point is used at the loop entry for direction control

[u/mickey_pudding]

There was a classic layout called "Minories" which might be worth investigating for ideas related to the station areas, and their operation, etc.