You can find John Allen’s plan and the Elk River plan in Small
Layout Scrapbook #4:
A more comprehensive list of schematic arrangements for min-
imum space layouts are discussed in detail on the micro/small
layout website:
End-to-end
layouts are
mainly used for switching,
rather than for continuous
running. This can be a very satisfying mode of operation, and a
good switching problem can easily take nearly an hour to work
through, even on a very small layout. These pikes are often
placed on bookshelves or in out-of-the-way corners.
A good example of an end-to-end design is Chuck Yungkurth’s
well-known shelf layout,
Gum Stump & Snowshoe,
see:
and
In both these sample schematics, the turquoise-colored area
represents hidden trackage, sometimes called a “fiddle yard,”
where trains can be secretly marshalled, stock rearranged, and
locos swapped in order to keep traffic moving on the visible
part of the layout.
This is the “backstage” area of the layout, and it’s one of the
tricks we use to achieve railroadlike operation in these small
designs. The hidden trackage represents the “rest of the world”
in minimum space layouts.
Minimum space layouts - 2
MRH-Sep 2014
