More than a drawing of your track
Most planners draw the track and stop there. LiveRail also models what happens on it so you can find the problems on screen first.
Every gauge and every brand
This is the track you can lay today, taken from the maker’s own catalogue codes at its real size and split by scale and then by brand. Ranges tagged Preview are fine to build with while I check the last of their figures, and the Pieces column is how many you can lay now, with a share where more than five are still to come. I have left out anything the maker no longer sells.
OO
1:76.2 · 16.5 mm gaugeUKTT:120
1:120 · 12 mm gaugeUKN
1:148 · 9 mm gaugeUKN
1:160 · 9 mm gaugeContinental and AmericanN
1:150 · 9 mm gaugeJapaneseO
32 mm gaugeUK, American and ContinentalHO
1:87 · 16.5 mm gaugeAmerican and ContinentalHOm
1:87 · 12 mm metre gaugeContinentalT
1:450 · 3 mm gaugeUK and ContinentalZ
1:220 · 6.5 mm gaugeContinental, American and JapaneseWill it pull that train?
Every loco has a limit. You normally find it halfway up the gradient, with the wheels spinning and eleven wagons going nowhere.
Set the same train off on a range of gradients at once and see where each one gets to. Then change the loco, or take two wagons off, and run it again.
Where the boards split, the power splits.
Baseboards have to come apart. They go up a loft ladder, through a door, or into the back of a car, and that decides where the joins are.
Every rail crossing the edge is marked, and the bus is drawn over the same plan so its crossings land in the same place.
That is where the connectors go. It is a lot cheaper to find them now than with a wired board across two trestles and a saw in your hand.
Every loco, its address and its buttons.
On DCC the track carries one signal and every loco listens for its own address. Multiple trains can run on the same rails at once, each doing something different.
Each loco gets a handset, with its address, the loco it belongs to, and the function keys that decoder actually uses. Six months later you will not be guessing which button works the injectors.
Shunt the yard before you build it.
The couplings are simulated, so you can test a shunting yard before any of it is real.
Back the train down onto the uncoupling ramp until the coupling sits over the top of it. That is the moment it goes into buff and the couplers open. Drive away, and the wagon stays where you left it.
It tells you whether the ramp is in the right place, and whether the loco can get back out afterwards. Both are a lot easier to change now than with the ballast down.
Get an email when there is a new version
I will send the release notes and what is coming next and nothing else, and every email has an unsubscribe link.
What happens to your address is set out in the privacy policy.
And a few other things
Uncouplers
Ramps and magnets go on the plan at their real size, so you can see what stands over one and what has to clear it.
Turntables
The well, the deck and the approach roads take up on the plan exactly what they will take up on the board.
Switches and point motors
Both are objects you place and wire, so what throws each point is settled on the plan and not on the day.
A track box of what you already own
Put in the track that is already in the loft, and every plan is counted against it first.
A shopping list for what you are short of
What you laid, minus what you own. The list is only the pieces you still have to buy.
Real scale, real measurements
Only the drawing scales. The numbers on screen are the ones you will measure on the board.
A planning aid, not an electrical certificate
LiveRail checks the low-voltage side of a model railway and helps you size wire for it. It doesn't inspect your mains supply, your controller or your soldering, and it isn't a substitute for reading your equipment's own instructions.
All of it is in the free download
It comes with a limit of 100 objects and the wires are unlimited, so you can plan a layout, wire it completely and decide afterwards.