I am trying to use Anyrail 6 to plan my new layout but I am struggling with the tutorial. This is done by an American and most of it I can follow and a like the result but I am struggling with how to do the initial set up i.e. minimum radius, space between tracks etc. Any advice or are there any better systems that are more geared to English modellers? Rob Orchard
Which tutorial are you using? I am pretty certain AnyRail is not American in origin but European (Dutch or German possibly).
A generic tutorial is unlikely to give you the specific information on 009 dimensions. Also things like minimum radius will depend in part on things like the locomotives and rolling stock the layout is intended for.
I'm a great fan of AnyRail, but I think, as others have advised in the past, sketching ideas on paper, preferably squared paper is a good start. Perhaps even print out track templates (e.g. using AnyRail parts) to get an idea of general dimensions. A CAD package won't teach you design, in any discipline.
If you have questions on designing a layout I'm sure you will find plenty of useful advice on this forum.
If I can make a couple of suggestions to make a start, take a look at the Peco 009 Setrack parts in AnyRail for a good guide on working minimum dimensions. A useful guide for parallel separation between tracks is to put a pair of points in crossover configuration.
Just to add to my previous reply, one thing I did after gaining a bit of experience with AnyRail was to try out a few combinations of track components to gain familiarity with the Peco track geometries as shown in the examples below. They are not intended to be "recommended practice" or representative sensible track configurations. However I did find the exercise helpful in learning what sorts of combinations were likely to fit together. There is some Peco N Scale track shown too as sometimes it is used in 009, suitably disguised. Sections that do not quite meet up give a bit of an indication where difference has to be made up with flexible track.
Playing around like this can be instructive, for example making a complete circle out of points to confirm angles and radii. In estimating the parallel separation of point ladders I made a zig-zag of several of them estimated the overall separation and divided by the number of point pairs.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49902955382_9910334c68_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2j2KG3s)009 Peco setrack point geometry (https://flic.kr/p/2j2KG3s) by Graeme Dunbar (https://www.flickr.com/photos/95337893@N05/), on Flickr
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49902966377_04d0813262.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2j2KKj2)point_geometry (https://flic.kr/p/2j2KKj2) by Graeme Dunbar (https://www.flickr.com/photos/95337893@N05/), on Flickr
Thanks Graham very useful. You may be right about the origin of Anyrail being European but the tutorials are definitely American. RO
I think these are the ones posted by AnyRail themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW6RI1huvFrSiyxmFUy9kpA/videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW6RI1huvFrSiyxmFUy9kpA/videos)
This is all a foreign language to me!
While in most areas of my life I plan things down to the last detail (and sometimes beyond...) I would never contemplate* using track templates* before laying track. I'd just get the track and points out and juggle it all around according to the (sort of) plan I had put together in my head on the baseboard, make whatever adjustments seemed necessary and looked right and then get it laid down.
Funny things, us human beings... When it comes to planning layouts, do we all fall into one of these two groups, I wonder?
David.
(* see what I did there?)
There is definitely something to be said for that, David. I enjoy using the software which is why I do it and have more designs of various stages of incompleteness that will never see real rail but nothing beats setting out real track and trying out stock on it to check it actually works.
I admire the confidence and self-belief (well not really) of people who design a layout in software, then set out to buy some track to build their layout and say they will buy the locos and rolling stock when it is done. I'm not sure how far they get or what the layout is like if it does actually get built.