I think you might be confusing radius with diameter. If you have 19" radii track, that yields a 38" diameter loop. radius x 2 = diameter. 15" radius would yield a 30" diameter (or just under three feet as you say). 11.25" radii put together would yield a 22.5" loop. Diameter is measured from the center of the track--midpoint between the rails.

Thanks for the response. Yes, I was running way too fast.  I've already taken down that layout and used my 3'x4' layout, and got it lit. Can put two loops in that, but still nothing fancy. After christmas, I want to experiment more. Switches are always tricky things for me. Unless it's just a siding. I'm taking down the bigger layout too for Christmas so I can put up my tree (small apt here), so might just put a 24" oval around the tree, lay it on white, wire it for lights and rather than a train, put a couple of trolleys in. trolley's look better on a small loop anyway, I think

a lot of stuff in a small space--unfortunately, just a loop
http://www.youtube.com/v/kOGnNecDs9I&rel=1"
Hope that link works

Would Bachman consider making an N scale version of the passenger car set that they already have for HO?  Very hard to find lighted passenger cars--I have a couple of old N scale Bachman Santa Fe lighted passenger cars I got from E Bay and like them very much, but would like to see Bachman make them again--with different roadnames

Amtrak Crescent today

Passenger cars parked on siding at Meridian Mississippi--a Southern and and L&N

Some pics from my Crescent trip
I believe this is the same station that was in the last Southern Crescent pic that started this thread

Just as a follow up, arrived back in new york an hour early, so all together, it was not bad at all

In New Orleans:
Arrived 1/2 hour late.  Food not as good as 20 years ago when I rode the Crescent before, but slept well.  Beautiful through Mississippi, passing through Meridian. Since Katrina, they don't use the GulfCoast portion of the old run.  I took some vids of passing through Mississippi and across Lake Ponchatrain--will upload later

IMHO, I think as gas prices get  higher and higher, if the railroads were to develop more fuel efficient ways of powering, they could present a more economically and enviromentally advantageous option.  Since the government now runs the passenger trains, there's no incentive in that direction.  The basic network is there--what is needed is a way to move the trains more efficiently. I believe the Japanese used to use their rail infrastructure pretty good with the high-speed trains. Amtrak tries that with the Acela, but they still haven't found a way to make it profitable.
The return of old modes of travel may come about after all. Here in New York, following 9/11, a lot of ferry service started up--you saw more boats in the water around NYC right after that than I'd ever seen before. Now, there is a lot of ferry service here--there is a market for it.  The key is to make the market attractive, then the investors will come.  It may be instructive to read some of the trials and setbacks that the original entrepeneurs that made the American Railway and take lessons from that. It was a hard sell for years to get investors

Thank you kindly--just a regular Bachman operating crossing gate--I've seen the fancy ones where the crossing lights flash--even semaphores--love that, but haven't gotten to that point yet. Little steps--it's a hobby and I enjoy it

On that, I used grass mat for the mountain over styrofoam pieces cut into tiers with Woodland Scenics trees and their lichen in spots.  For the modules, I would use 1/4" foamboard and for the town part, place each building on a "block" I would make with another 1/4" of foam board on top--making "curbs" a uniform 1/4" high--which is in scale for HO. While it was not hooked up, under each building is a light with the wires going underneath the foam board but on top of the base board.  These wires are designed to run underneath a highway rather than punch holes in teh baseboard and run them underneath.  The wires would then be connected to several Atlas switches, chained together and fed into the AC port on a separate power pack. For the one you saw, I didn't add the road, but I have plenty of period vehicles (1948-1960 or so) to populate it with. All of this material was either from Bachman, my LHS or Ebay

Thank you for your kind comment.  Due to space limitations in my apt, I had to make the decision to do the scenery in sort of a modified modular layout--most pieces are designed to be set on curves, so using standard curving, they would work on any size overall layout. I can move the modules around, changing the appearance.

Here's some other pics of L&N passenger cars I found online

Another Pic from the last run of the Southern Crescent 1/31/1979. My g/f and I are taking the Amtrak version to New Orleans next weekend. Her first overnite train trip!