Have had another look at your layout plan. This is not at all bad. There is a few things I would consider tweaking, but the basic plan seems reasonably sound.
Some suggestions:
As Paulus pointed out - is there a wall along the left side - if so, you might need a little more aisle space along the left side of the peninsula - try for 24" aisle here (and 36" aisle elsewhere).
I would try to make the staging tracks longer. You now have quite a bit of yard space - four tracks of about 4 feet each - call it a max of about 8 cars per track at maximum - a yard capacity of about 24 cars when 75% full. You have over 30 car spots at the industries before you even start with the paper mill. Staging tracks seem way too short to supply a sensible number of inbound cars relative to yard capacity and industry capacity.
Try to make the staging tracks about twice as long, by making them branch out along the rear at the bottom. If necessary, I would go with two longer staging tracks instead of three shorter, but that’s a judgement call, and depends on how you imagines your “work day” on the layout.
Maybe move crossover C down a foot or so, allowing you a longer straight stretch on the A/D track to couple a switcher to cars on a straight stretch instead of a curve.
I’d add an extra crossover over to the track by the freight (like the spelling, btw house, to allow access to the team track without having to remove cars from the freight house. Or maybe consider whether you can do the team track in some other way (like maybe redesignating the lowermost yard track as the team track), so it can be switched without a switchback move.
Switchbacks are not necessarily bad on a layout, but having to remove cars from one industry to use the track for a switchback move to another industry ge
Firstly, thanks for all the advice again, very constructive and usefull
Second, yes, the aisle to the right of the peninsula is wider than shown. The door to the room is in the lower right corner, there is a also a closet on that wall which makes it not very usefull for much of anything, so instead of trying to utilize it by making a duckunder/squeezing in tracks etc I just left it alone. With the benchwork dimensions I’ve used the door can open fully.
I did consider lower level staging but the grade/track length required to clear the benchwork and give a decent amount of ‘head’ space for a below level staging yard was too much.
In one interation of the plan I had the staging ladder on the lower shelf; I can’t fully remember why I moved it. I think I was trying to have a runaround track for the tire plant which in the end I realized wasn’t necessary but at the time the ladder was getting in the way.
Good ideas all around. I’ll try to remove the switchback/make the yard tracks purpose more clear on the next revision when I re-arrange the ladder and move it to the right shelf.
Sounds like a good judgement call to me to do a point to point design here and leave the lower left hand corner free of layout - switching layouts are about perfect for point-to-point configurations.
Should it be the left side? The two peninsula’s were drawn because I thought there was a wall on the left side. I have drawn a version with a little bit of tinkering.
All the yard leads are doing double duty. I do not think you need to lengthen the yard tracks, but only the arr. & dep. track, so I drew the second crossover around the corner. It could be a bit more to the north.
I asumed a train coming from staging will have to drop off it cars on yard tracks 3 and 4; and pick up the cars waiting on track 1 and 2, before returning into staging.
Two local switchers were allready waiting to get their job done. While #one is classifi-ing the cars brought in, #two is picking up the outbound cars from the various spurs. If you devide your spurs in four zones, you will need an extra yard track. Some interference or struggle is going on between the two switchers, they need the same track occasionaly. When the inbound cars are classified, #one can switch the mill and the spurs around the yard, while #two switches the peninsula’s. No interference in this part. When all cars are put on the right spurs the switchers go back to the service track and a wel deserved coffee; waiting for the afternoon train to arrive from staging.
May be the number of spurs is a bit big, but you will reunite the peninsula’s and removing a couple of spurs won’t be difficult. I have been thinking about a larger staging area under the papermill. The track start going down before the road overpass near the tyre plant, must be enough to get your track 5 to 6 inches down.
If you used a wye switch or compound switches on the staging you could gain an extra car or two capacity on the tracks.
You need a run around at the industrial areas, all the tracks break off the same way. You might want it that way, it would be reeeeeaaaaallly easy to switch.
By the way I hope you have the Chicago & North Western Historical Society’s magazine issues (North Western Lines) from 2008 #1 and 2008 #2: largely devoted to Eau Claire, lots of photos and maps. The 2008 Annual Meet was held there.
Paul: Are the squares in that plan 1’ x 1’? Yes, I did mean the door is to the left of the peninsula, not the left. I do really like your plan, especially the yard design. Will probably use at least that in my next revision.
Dave H: Yeah, I’d prefer a runaround but the switcher can push its cut of cars to the plant just as easily.
Dave N: Yup, I have both issues, very useful info.in them.
Alright, I think its really coming together now, thanks in no small part to all the advice I’ve gotten.
Staging and yard tracks are much longer now; the yard arrival track can hold an engine, 11 cars, and a caboose. I wouldn’t say the paper mill tracks are finalized yet but they are close.
Mmm - no. Let your yard tracks go the other way (counterclockwise) around the curve in the upper right hand corner. Otherwise all switching of the yard has to be done through that short yard lead at the very top left.
General design principle for point-to-point switching layouts - try to have most tracks go branch out towards the ends of the layout, not from the end of the layout towards the middle of layout - that way you can (if necessary) use half the layout as a switching lead to get stuff into or out of the tracks, instead of having to use a short tail track as a switching lead.
I did think of that. Problem I was running into is in order to make the yard lead long enough to be worthwhile with the yard flipped its going to be encroaching on the paper mill big time. I will play with the yard tracks more later today now that I have everything else blocked in. As it stands though that short lead might not be such a huge problem, it can hold an engine and 4 cars. I figure switch runs to the plants will be around 6 cars long (incoming transfers will be 8-11 cars, some for paper mill, some for tire plant, some for freight house/team track).
I am not certain how much of a headache it will be having to make two pulls to put together an outgoing switch job. I know ease or operation should trump realism, but if I had to justify the setup I’d say that yard crews apparantly didn’t pull full cuts off yard tracks to departure tracks. I was re-reading the august or september (can’t remember) 2000 MR the other day (the one where Tony Koester presented his new layout plan) and in his trains of though column mentioned how when he was designing his yard at Frankfurt, IN he couldn’t find a yard lead long enough to pull a full cut of cars. When he asked a friend of his who had worked the Frankfurt yard in that era his friend told him they would never pull such a long cut of cars because as they snaked through the trackage it would be impossible for the engineer to see the brakeman’s hand signals, making it a dangerous move. At most they’d pull 10-15 cars at a time and just make up a train in multiple moves.
…Yeah, I know, weak excuse. I wouldn’t mind a bit of a longer lead, even though this one will only dictate two moves to make up an outgoing train. I will play with the plan later. One thing I do see that I need to change though is to reverse the leftmost crossover so that the yard engine can move its cuts of cars onto the departure track, this change should be quit
So you flip the access to the paper mill - so you branch off from the main to the paper mill up along the right wall instead of down along the right wall (from closed to the curve in the lower right corner), and possibly have a dedicated paper mill industry lead down along the main in the lower right hand corner?
The layout features the same operational features as the last one. Yard tracks are plenty long, paper mill, tire plant, and yard all have their own leads so that three people could concievable switch at the same time and not get in each others way…
I really think this might actually be it. Now of course comes the hard part of actually being motivated to build benchwork, etc :).
Oh I see what you’re saying, get it out of the corner…
Hmmm, interesting idea. Really the track can go either way; maybe its something I’ll investigate with cardboard mockups on the benchwork when the time comes.
I really don’t like the yard arrangement, its very cumbersome. I would lose the track between the siding where the car #31 train is and the yard or at least move the crossover in fron to fthe PRR engine one track down.
Why do you have the yard at the end. Why not have the yard one the right wall and the paper mill along the top. The ayrd is getting wadded up and you are losing a lot of space and track bending the leads around a 90 degree curve. Put the yard so the stub tracks are more up in the upper right corner. Then most of the top bench becomes available for industry.
Well hello again, its been a few months but I’ve still got ‘the bug’. I took a bit of time to think over my plan and how it uses the available space and decided to start over. I didn’t like the benchwork layout, I thought the tire plant was too big for the layout (the sidings were much longer than they needed to be), and like the post above I started to not like the yard layout. So, here is the new plan:
As you can see I’ve added a helix to incorporate lower deck staging. I realize a helix is a fairly complex piece of trackwork especially for a first layout but I figure I can save that for last and work on the rest of the layout first. Until I am confident enough to tackle the helix the area labeled as ‘Small Industrial Area’ could be a temporary staging point (different track arrangement of course).
Some notes:
-The proposed helix will be half in a closet, that is why it appears to be off the plan
-The primary purpose of the layout will be switching the two major industries at the top and bottum of the plan (tire plant and paper mill), however, the local I am modeling saw up to 12 passenger trains daily and was a junction point; a lot of express/mail/etc switching went on here and I’d like to be able to model that someday. Also the passenger station would be a very fun scratchbuild
-Just looking at the plan as I type this I already have one or two ideas-one being flipping the yard so the ladder is at the bottum and moving/adding a crossover or two to make industry switching easer. I’ll wait to do that until I get a bit of feedback though
Heh, fair enough observation, that is the plan actually, want to start laying track in the next month finances withstanding. The 8 month break was mostly spent doing homework since I went back to school in January.
house, to allow access to the team track without having to remove cars from the freight house. Or maybe consider whether you can do the team track in some other way (like maybe redesignating the lowermost yard track as the team track), so it can be switched without a switchback move.
