Andy Sperandeo’s article in the June issue "13 tips for freight yard operation and design" is the kind of article I always wish was twice as long. Very useful stuff.
One photo he used to illustrate the article really surprised me. I can’t count the number of model railroaders over the years who have mentioned this wonderful photo and how influential it was in their own track planning. It is an “aerial” shot of Whit Towers’ Alturas yard, from his large Alturas & Lone Pine layout. Originally it was printed much larger than it is in Sperandeo’s article so you could really study the track plan and how it figured into Towers’s overall operation. It warrants careful study.
I even remember the name of the original article, “Ride a Sierra Into the A&LP Enginehouse” but I cannot seem to find it in the website’s index for model magazines – and Towers was an extremely prolific author back in the 1960s. His kind of long articles on operation and dispatching – pages of prose with no photos – are not going to seen again I suspect.
If you can somehow find the citation (I’ll look for it) this is one old issue that is worth digging in those smelly boxes of old magazines at a swap meet to track down. Thanks to Andy Sperandeo for reminding me of that yard and that photo. A great motivator.
Some old index notes that I’ve kept hint that the July 1966 issue might be worth a look. It probably would have been in the photo section, and thus doesn’t show up with an article title.
I could not agree with you more, excellent article must have read it four or five times now. Funny thing is thats exactly what I’m working on the layout right now so it’s perfect timing. Funny thing is my wife saw the cover and said hey they are finally writing about something your working on, so this way you don’t have to go and rip out what you did and do it over…lol
A lot more truth to that then I would care to admit…
I wonder if the AL&P video is still available?? I don’t think it was ever transferred to DVD, but it’s pretty neat to see the trains running in nice color film footage.
I found the issue with the original full-sized photo of the Alturas yard, reproduced in Andy S’s article: December 1962, and I had the title slightly wrong: “Ride a Sierra Into the Alturas Enginehouse.”
It may be heresy, but I have to admit I don’t see a special appeal for this yard versus other well-designed model yards. For its era, certainly, well ahead of its time. But for today, maybe not so much.
It seems to me the most interesting element was the yard’s placement near what amounted to staging on the A&LP: the WP interchange connection via a reversing loop. That, along with the very idea of live interchange, was clearly innovative in its day.
The mix of double-ened and single-ended tracks is also interesting, but my sense is that the yard may have been developed over time and there might well have been a more efficient way to arrange the ladders if starting from scratch in the same space.
In any case, Sperandeo’s Freight Yards book is excellent and has much to recommend it, including looks back at Towers’ Alturas Yard, Colbert on Ellison’s Delta Lines, the Reid Brothers’ Shomo Yard, as well as much, much more on modern best practices in model yard design.