Comments on: Track Layout Geometry

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:14:06 +0000

Nope. I’ve seen plastic track made by some Chinese knockoff brand but not with the electric rails.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:18:01 +0000

Hi Bill,

Are you aware of any third-party producer of LEGO-compatible 9V track?

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:36:37 +0000

The height features of Track Designer have never worked well for me. I think there are some bugs there. I just lay one track atop the other and worry about height only when doing it for real. But then, I’ve never tried to cross tracks that way in a layout. Hills don’t work well – the trains slow when climbing and zoom when going downhill – so our club doesn’t use them.

Probably you should be using BlueBrick instead of TD anyway … TD is totally unsupported, and the author doesn’t even have the source code. I keep meaning to make that transition myself, but I have spent too much time in TD. But if you’re just starting out, use BlueBrick. http://bluebrick.lswproject.com/

By: David

David — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:32:45 +0000

In TD 2.0 what does the Z height have to be in order for a normal sized HO train to fit underneath for a crossover?

Thinking of how long a branch line has to be in order to cross back over the figure 8 mainline

By: David

David — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:12:05 +0000

OH YES!

Very very nice, thats exactly what I was looking for. I am trying to get as much switching and track pieces as I can get into this 4×8 layout (realism is not in effect here) mostly to play with and I would like to use standard pieces without having to resort to flex track. I have never been very good at using that stuff.

Thanks so much!

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:07:33 +0000

I exchanged some emails with the commenter and realized what he wanted was more like these:

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:22:53 +0000

LEGO has only one type of crossover, which has tracks meet at 90 degrees. That dictates that the minimum size of the layout would need to be 5′8 by 2′9.

If you let the tracks cross by having a bridge where one goes over the other, you could do it smaller.

By: David

David — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:00:57 +0000

Hi,

I have been messing around with the atlas track designer and I have been having a devil of a time trying to get it to do the layout I want. I feel that it is possible I’m just not doing whatever it is I need to do to get it working.

What I am trying to do I have (crudely) sketched down below. Its basically the smallest reversing figure 8 I can make so I can fit it into the internals of my 4×8 layout. I would like to put a switch or 2 on that reversing section and draw a branch line off around the outside of the 8 but that will be easy once I get the 8 figured out.

If you could please let me know the pieces I need to put in to make it happen I would be grateful. Please email it to me at [email address deleted] it would make my day.

…….____________……
…../……..\…../………\
…/…………\./…………\
..|…………..|…………..|
…\…………/.\…………/
…..\____/…..\____/

note: I dont have to have the center overlap, a simple crossing of any standard degree would be fine.

this would also be acceptable (and preferible if posible) the “oval-eight”

…….____________……
…../……..\…../………\
…/…………\./…………\
..|…………..|…………..|
…\…………/.\…………/
…..\____/___\____/

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:26:16 +0000

Actually if it’s from the 60s it’s probably 4.5v or 12v track, and the geometry is different for those…

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:35:32 +0000

This is pretty cool. I have some little train track bought by grandpa in the sixties. Somehow, I have been struggling to reconstruct it. Thanks for the info. I am sure this will be very helpful.

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:44:08 +0000

If you look at the table where I did the math, with 7 straight pieces on the diagonal you’d have a hard time lining it up with the rest of the track. There’s a lot of slop in the track connections though, so you can get away with a lot of things that I don’t recommend here because of the play in between track connections. However, that can cause derailing if it’s extreme enough, so to play it safe use the tips on this page.

LEGO has recently introduced some flexible track pieces which are 1/4 the length of a straight piece and have a hinge in the middle, so there’s a lot more you can do, but the new track doesn’t have conducting rails so it can only be used with battery-powered trains.

By: Jonathan Steele

Jonathan Steele — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:57:14 +0000

Not owning any Lego or Lego track, I wonder about Real World track fit. In particular, since your criteria for choosing number of track segments for “45° diagonal track” is to choose “integer lengths”, what would happen with 7 diagonal straight pieces, which to me, look attractive. Isn’t a shorter substitution more generally useful?
(from a guy into fudging the fit)

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:17:26 +0000

This page shows some of the techniques you would use to design your layout, but what you need depends on how much space you have to work with. I don’t design custom layouts, sorry. The program I used was Track Designer which is a pretty old program; I think there may be newer ones available now but I haven’t tried them.

By: mathijs

mathijs — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:12:33 +0000

you have to make something like a idea for a big track with two switches, 17 straigts & 31 curves. if you do that than i can build a big city so please design something?????!!!!!

(p.s. what for program do you youse to design these tracks?)

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:58:55 +0000

Larry has posted a blog entry linking here. Since Blogspot doesn’t do trackbacks I’m posting it as a comment manually. Thanks Lar!

By: Bill Ward’s Brickpile: Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks » Blog Archive » My Track Geometry page translated to Italian

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:45:39 +0000

[...] My Track Layout Geometry page has been translated into Italian! [...]

By: Bill Ward’s Brickpile: Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks » Blog Archive » Track Layout Geometry

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:45:12 +0000

[...] Three years ago (on November 21, 2003) I wrote a page on my old site about Track Layout Geometry showing some of the interesting things you can do with LEGO train track, for example, this method for running track on the 22.5° diagonal: I was browsing my favorite blogs today and noticed that the page got mentioned on Mike Walsh’s blog. That prompted me to take another look at it, and I decided it really would be better to put it here on the Brickpile site. So I moved that page to this site, and changed the page on the old site to redirect to it with a 5-second delay using JavaScript. Thanks for the link Mike (and sorry for changing it out from under you)!Technorati Tags: lego, trains, track, layout, geometry [...]