Masterplan Junctions
TRIANGULAR junctions
Track plans to get you thinking in three dimensions
Few railway junc tion layouts grab the at tention like a triangle, especially in model form. Design hero Paul A. Lunn offers a range of ideas for layouts large and small.
Artwork & photography: Paul A. Lunn
Triangular junctions may, potentially, demand a lot of space and complex electrical circuitry, especially where traditional analogue control is concerned. This design was originally intended to be built beneath a circular glass top, as part of a coffee table. Add-on fiddleyards were envisaged to allow for operating sessions, at all three exit points.
In my early days as a layout designer, I tended to avoid triangular junctions because of their complexity. About ten years ago, however, I was approached by a client who asked the question, “what’s the smallest space you can do a triangular junction in ‘OO’ gauge rigid geometry track (Peco and/or Hornby)?”.
Without wanting to raise expectations, but thinking it was going to be large, I set off with paper, Hornby quarter-scale templates and a few bits of track, anticipating that my answer to him would be disappointing. Not so, as it turned out. In fact, it was surprisingly small at 1ft 10in by 2ft 8in. The issue was not with the triangle itself, but what you do with the three outer track ends, all pointing in different directions! More of that later.
SINGLE TRACK
Single track triangles lend themselves more easily to the formation rather than double track and can, I suspect, be increased in size to almost anything you need. This modest increase, from the previous example, to 2ft 2in by 2ft 10in, provides us with a slightly longer and partially straight track section along the bottom edge – ideal for a small halt platform.