Shortly after my last post [yes, about 9 months ago] a good number of you provided some valuable suggestions, ranging from software to use for planning [using “PAINT” here] to moving/removing walls to a specific plan.  Though some of the suggestions are not readily doable in my lifetime, all of the feedback was helpful and very much appreciated!! and has opened up my thinking.  The only actual “progress” has been the removal of the doors from the room and the closet entrance.  One of the uphill battles is to clean up the TV room area, the train room and the closet as well as the storage room.  When moving up from Lynchburg years ago, STUFF was just dumped wherever so its going to take some time to thin, discard and organize all of that STUFF to make room to begin building and there has been some slow headway made there also.

Knowing that my “druthers” are more than can be achieved in the available space, as a starting point I decided to see might be the maximum size layout in the space utilizing approximately 18 inch benchwork against the walls and approximately 4 ft. aisles in the room and 3 ft. aisle in the closet.  The red semi-circle "blob" is nominal 24" radius so track would have to be 22" radius.                  

                                                                                                                                  

     


Another consideration is for the “around the room helix” to take the lower track up to the 56” nod-under at the room entrance on the upper level.  In the diagram below, each wall is conservatively marked with the length of run [in feet] against that wall.  Going clockwise, if there is a yard on the 12 foot wall, there is 11 + 10 + 4 + 10 + 6.5 = 41.5 feet [or 498 inches] of run to go from the lower level to the nod-under at the door.  If the grade is 3% that would mean 15 inches separation in the run.                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                   

The idea would to have a lower level around the walls of the train room and the closet, an upper level above, and an around the room helix connecting the two.  

Diagram E below shows a bit closer [but exaggerated] to what I am thinking with the track coming out of the closet having some room to make the curve into the train room.  The yellow area just above the dashed line are two potential 6-8" wide staging areas [one for the lower level and one for the upper level] connecting into the closet for the top and bottom levels and at mid elevation maybe a 10" wide switching area/branch that would connect with the around the room helix approximately at its midpoint in the closet.

It has taken me HOURS to learn how to get the correct size of the figures, add dimensions, and assemble them so will post before going much further to make sure I don't loose it. 

 ALL feedback is gratefully encouraged.