New house, new layout

I plan to "flex" everything except standard curves and turnouts even though I try to make things in my design "fit" with standard track pieces. IMHO, the problem with using too much flex in a software design is making sure everything conforms to your desired minimum curve radius, especially coming off the turnouts. Some of us spend too much time making things fit in SCSARM or RR-Track. I do it because I like to use the simulation function in RR-Track and things need to be aligned in order for that to work. I don't see any problems with your design, but it would have been nice to see the misaligned design before the flex was added to see just how far off things are.

Thanks for the quick reply, I do have some areas of concern with the flex track and the minimum curve (trying to keep it O54). I've circled them in green and I'm going to try and 'massage' the flex track a bit without having to shorten my boiler room storage yard

Dear Sir:

With the greatest respect, I suggest to you to re-consider your track plan.  I may not have a good understanding exactly with respect to where the aisle way and access areas may be but what I'm seeing here is a lot of ducking under and my back is in agony just looking at this drawing.

The best advice in the world with respect to duck-unders is simply DON'T DO IT.  Sooner or later you will be sorry.  To clarify, there is a huge difference between an operational duck-under and an access duck-under.  We all probably have access duck-unders to simply make adjustments to scenery or clean track every once in a blue moon.  That vs. an operational duck-under which is in routine use.

You have a decent sized room, 16 x 14.  Just with respect to the placement of the yard, I would suggest an area without a duck-under at all because there will be more issues in yards, i.e., derailing, bumping into other cars, more so than anywhere else on any layout.  You need to be able to freely walk up and down the area in front of any yard to operate and maintain it. 

You might consider "removable" layout sections vs. duck-unders and/or I've seen layouts where there are long bridges that connect sections of benchwork allow the bridge to be raised so that people may simple walk "through" that portion of layout without having to crawl or hurdle.

That's my two cents that's probably closer to ten bucks.    

I could be wrong, but it appears that you designed major sections and then tried to make them fit together with flex. For example, it looks like you put a lot of the left side mainline together with standard pieces, added the yard with standard pieces and then tried to connect them. I just took out the flex coming out of the yard and added an O54 curve to see how far off you are and I can see why you are concerned. Much of the lower layout needs to be moved to the left so the yard lead lines up with the main along the left side. That will mean a lot of adjustments elsewhere to get things to connect "in the software".

The other areas you marked don't worry me because again you're trying to connect standard pieces using flex. In the mid section there, you are coming off the lower turnout with standard straight pieces and then trying to connect to the upper turnout as you get close to the turnout. If you simply use flex from one turnout to the other, you shouldn't have much of a problem. The turnout for the reversing loop would fit together at some point if SCARM included the makeup pieces for the turnout and you allowed enough room for the O54 curves.

Some suggestions:

Change the Tolerance Distance setting in Tools/Settings/Edit from 0.02 to 0.15. The 0.02 is for HO scale and the 0.15 is for O scale. This will eliminate some joining errors. Even so, just getting close with the 0.15 will still be good enough when laying actual track.

Try using curved track overlayed with straight track to make sure you don't infringe on the O54 minimum radius, see the tracks I added for examples. Then you can overlay flex track on top of those to make things join properly.

I did not look at your design from the standpoint of access problems and the other things John mentioned. I figured it went without saying that you can't reach all your tack without allowing for some access hatches, but I agree with John that crawling to the boiler room is not going to be fun. If it were me I'd forget about that room and come up with something like a hidden yard beneath the main level.

As far as buying RR-Track, I don't believe it would make much difference with your design. While it does have the makeup up curves, that is not your real problem. The reversing loop is too large for the space, though as my example shows, you can make it work if you are willing to cut track. Since you will be using flex, I assume you are willing to cut. The makeup curves would let things line up a little better, but I think the size of the individual pieces of track are too large for the space you've allowed, so cutting will be necessary. GG simply doesn't make the small fitter pieces that other brands do.

John C - you're 100% correct about the duck unders. I extended my basement in Paint to give a better idea of the space I'm going to utilize. I'm thinking on the left side I'll need an access portal for exactly what you mentioned (cleaning track, derailments etc). The yard is going to be in the boiler room which I can get into easily. Removable sections is a good idea and I went back and looked at the pictures of the room and noticed the electrical panel is in the lower right part of the train room. I'll need that right loop section to be removable for when the panel needs to be accessed.

DoubleDaz - Thanks for cleaning things up for me that is very good advice. I'm going to play around in scarm some more

I don't like the yard on the left side, it is more like a proof of concept or place holder until I get a better vision in my head of what the area will be used for. I'm thinking the right side of the layout will be industry and the left side can be resedential while the center is just hill country. 

Shame the wife won't let me make the laundry room smaller. It is downright massive and I wanted a collapsible bridge for another train storage yard. My last layout was only a 4x8 so whenever I wanted to run something different I had to take everything off the track and put it away

Thanks again!

Another option for you:

At each point you use flex, go to the other end of the straight stretch, Use Flex there !

Changing the angle of the long stretches lets you line up with much smoother curves.

And remember, Real rail lines flow side to side to maintain grade much more than to run a straight line. So flex is Prototypical, Run with it !!!