While struggling to find a good length of consist to model with my givens, I knew the only way to get a good idea was to mock up a section of the layout with actual track, locomotives, and rolling stock. The mockup I was getting with 3RDPlanit just didn’t seem to make much sense to me, and I wanted to eliminate any possibility of not getting it right before I continued with planning operations and layout design.

Considerations also include the druthers to model LDE sections with a reasonable distance between them so that consists are not in two cities at the same time.

In order to determine how long a consist can be on the NS-AGS-NONE layout means having to measure a length of track and placing average sized rolling stock and locomotives onto a track section and measuring the results.

To assist in my endeavor to determine minimum passing siding length, I set out to piece together sections of flex track and a #6 turnout. After placing two lines each of 7 sectional flex track pieces linked together, I then set up and connected 2 locomotives and 25 assorted rolling stock, I concluded that near to a length of 22-feet of track would be required to meet the minimum passing siding for my average length trains.

This does not mean I cannot have a consist over 25 cars and 2 locomotives, or in a 2/25 configuration (2 loco/25 rolling stock) it just means that any locals and switching crews would need to be around that number or less. Through freights and manifest consists can be made up of more than the locals maximum limits 2/25 and traverse the layout with priority movements from point to point.

This set of images shows the temporary trial I created to help me establish the consist operations limit, or the maximum passing siding standard for the NS-AGS-NONE.