Hayden. Bob, ed. Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader (1981)

     Hayden. Bob, ed. Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader (1981) Although this book is now 23 years old, and many of the articles reprinted in it date from the 50s and 60s, the layout designs in it are still worth study. They range in seize from 4x8 or thereabouts to 20x20.
     Many of the most successful plans fit into a spare room or half a garage. All assume that the layout will be operated, and where space permits, continuous run cutoffs allow guests and perhaps the owner too to indulge in mere train watching. The urge to cram in as much track as possible affects the earlier designs, most of which could do with judicious pruning, but use of viewblocks (as advocated by John Armstrong) disguises the bowl-of-spaghetti track arrangements. The later plans have sparser track, and tend towards point-to-point concepts. Staging appears in most plans, but the concept wasn’t well-enough established to have its own terminology: instead we see “layover” or “holding” tracks.
     The language almost always assumes that the builders will be men; a few of the later articles don’t show this bias. The majority of plans derive from actual prototypes, at least in spirit; but several include hints on how to adapt the design to prototypes in other parts of the continent. Several are suitable for adaptation to my 13x13 space, and will be studied further. ** to **** (2004)