Are layouts designed with too few passing sidings?

I was recentrly rereading John Armstrong’s Track Planning book where he encouraged the use of passing sidings.

It seems to me that most new layouts proposed for review often either squeeze in double track mainlines or are single track with no means of having trains pass one another. I think just a couple passing sidings would make the track plan much more adapted to having multiple trains while making room for longer mainlines or spurs by having only single track.

Passing sidings would not only allow trains in opposite directions, trains of different speeds in the same directions, but wayfreights switching near the siding. Even the large club layout I’m in has double track and few passing sidings.

I thought Frank Ellison’s The Art of Model Railroading preferred passing sidings over double track and meets at those stations to create drama during operation.

And—if you model the Penn Central era, you can use them to store mainline trains whose crews have run out of time while they wait for their relief crew to arrive.

Charlie

Greg,

I gotta agree. Passing sidings are pretty important. I designed them in, but found myself extending them at six different stations. Usually, this netted me only an extra car or two, but in every case they helped make the RR more flexible. So I would add that adequate siding capacity should be a sub-goal of paying heed to the need for sidings.

Which opens up a can of more worms, because then you also need to pay attention to train length. A few trains mixed in that are longer than most sidings isn’t too big a deal, but when all you have are trains that won’t fit into the sidings built as planned or added, it’s an example of how thinking right about their use is equally important.

Like everthing else on our layouts related to trackage, there’s a lot of selective compression going on with sidings. Then there’s the fact of too short runs between stations. Throw in a fast clock that doesn’t allow realistic times over the line, operators and dispatchers who are inexperienced, and folks who like being at op sessions, but “just want to run trains” and it gets complicated…[banghead]

[(-D]

I wish people wouuld work a little harder at making meets happen, because I sure have worked at getting the infrastructure in place to support them.

Save the meets![swg]

I also planned my layout with passing sidings, even though I operate with DC and there’s only ever one train in motion at a time, as I’m the sole operator. Because operations take place sequentially, it allows me to run multiple trains in different directions and at different times, too. When all of the track is in place, a day’s worth of operations on the layout will take numerous real days to accomplish.

Wayne

I agree that passing siding create alot more interest and need for co-operation between train crews than double track would.

Passing sidings also are a place for local freights to run around to start home and complete switching as trailing moves.

The Alaska RR a few years ago had a passenger train wait in a siding for a unit tanker train to meet it. The tanker train was much to long for the siding, and would have been much more expensive to stop and start even if the siding was longer.

If you model high traffic mainlines with no switching, things would be different.

Dave

Leaving trains on passing sidings to wait for a fresh crew or wait for space in a yard is still very common and a good prorotype for leaving things in the middle of an operating session, especially solo.

When I added Phase 2 of my layout, I carefully planned a passing siding to be halfway around the layout from the passing siding on Phase 1. This gave me the ability to run trains in opposite directions pretty much continuously.

Of course, it was all I could do to manage this, as the layout is small enough that I must pretty much devote full time to keeping the trains on the right tracks and at the right separation, but I still do it now and then.

Well, as somebody who loves Timetable and Train Order, passing sidings are where it’s at, baby!

Single track with no passing sidings means you can only run one train at a time, and double track under TT&TO is boring as spit.

Did those authors talk about modern shortline based layouts?..because I don’t have passing sidings I have runarounds. And only 2 because most layouts have too many of those, IMO.

Since John Armstrong wrote his book in 1963 and Frank Ellison died in 1964, take an educated guess.

I have neither too many nor too few, but exactly as many as operating to my prototype’s timetable requires.

Of course, with the density of traffic that ran there movement between the end of double track and the passing siding at Haruyama has to be coreographed like a stage production. Even helpers drifting downgrade light have their designated timetable slots.

Making meets and passes doesn’t necessarily require a double-ended passing siding. One of my busier stations has four single-ended spurs (one of which serves a three couples and a dog coal mine’s loading bins.) It would be entirely possible to have three trains in the clear there while a unit coal train came through. OTOH the unit will never stop there. It wouldn’t fit in any spur.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

As Armstrong discusses in some detail in Track Planning for Realistic Operation (TPRO), there are reasons to prefer either single-track-with-mainline or double-track-with-crossovers – all depending on the era, locale, purpose, etc. of the layout.

Note that most people posting designs here have not read Armstrong, and certainly have not studied track planning in depth. So I wouldn’t expect those designs to reflect best practices.

When space is tight, double-track-with-crossovers can sometimes work better, since there just isn’t running length for sidings and a reasonable length of single track between each of those sidings. Simply cramming more sidings into a too-short single-track mainline does not improve things.

The same is true for double-track with judiciously placed crossovers.

As usual, it depends. There can be plenty of “drama” with trains negotiating double-track-with-crossovers. If the desire is for more trains operating at once, then some method of meeting and passing is needed, via sidings and/or double-track-with-crossovers.

[quote user="da

The book may have been originally written in 1963 but per reference in Amazon

I designed and built my current layout before DCC and never dreamed of running multiple trains. I built one hidden siding to store my passenger train while running freight. Not having multiple sidings was a major mistake on my part . . . . sidings are a must!!! I’m too old to start over and my layout is built so that adding a siding or two isn’t possible so I’m stuck.

He who is starting out with a new layout MUST plan on multiple sidings or he will surely be sorry down the road!!!

Mel

A passing siding. Let me look out my window. Yes, there there is one in Taylor, ND, it is over two miles long. And yes, yes, there is another one at Antelope, more than a mile long. Gee! they are only 10 miles apart.

So on a well run, busy line, 3/10ths of it is passing siding. That is a lot of siding to model, even with nice compression.

LION has no passing sidings on the layout of him, and he wishes he had them. Even so the route of the LION has a four track mane line. But it would be nice to have some pockets to put trains into when not in service, and ot park the money train or the trash train so that revenue trains can keep their time.

Oh Well…

ROAR

you’re not suggesting that these new layout postings with double track mainlines are avoiding the problems of having too few passing sidings because they have double track mainlines?

are layouts with double track mainlines designed with too few or poorly located cross-overs?

Mel,

I agree it’s always best to plan things like sidings in the first place. I tend to leave some slack in my designs to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. Here’s an example of one such situation that might let you ad a siding where you thought there wasn’t room.

Durango is where there is a big narrowgauge terminal and transfer. There’s a lot of dual-gauge and narrowgauge track. But less so the standard gauge. A SG passing siding on the far side of the main from the station worked well enough, but I needed someplace else to hold loads and MTs.

As it turns out, if I moved the existing siding just a fraction of an inch toward the main, I had enough room to add another track. Here’s an early pic showing this spot’s potential.

There are crossmembers underneath it all, with a layer of foam, then a final covering of Sculptamold. I used more Sculptamold to build and even roadbed. I sprayed the ballast with 91% alcohol to loosen the matte medium, then slid a putty knife underneath the ties to gently loosen the spikes. I think it needed to move about 1/4" toward the main, so easy enough to do.

Then I painted the Sculptamold and laid cork roadbed, gluing it down.

Adding ballast blended in the track I laid.

Usually I don’t lay track on Sculptamold. Here, there was plenty of support, as there often is close to the edge. Speaking of that, yes, it is awful close to a quick drop to the floor, plus people bumping the layout there, etc. I had the local plastic company fab a piece of plexigalss to act as a guard, well worth the investment.

The one that stands out to me in my observations is that no one (and I mean NO ONE) seems to devote any space to the randomly placed set-out tracks for bad ordering equipment.

It occured to me because one of the B&LE passing sidings near my childhood home has one of its switches pulled and now is a set-out location for bad ordered hoppers and pre-positioning ballast hoppers during MOW campaigns.

I haven’t noticed track plans that seem to have no; or, too few passing sidings.

What I am saying is that there is no reason to say that single-track-with-sidings is the only way (or a superior way) to design a layout. Again, it depends on the era, locale, purpose, and vision for the layout.

Many of the layouts posted by newcomers to design have not thought through those issues, so the track plans reflect that.

That can be true, it depends as noted above. In many cases, there are multiple problems with these track plans just because the posters don’t have the underlying background in layout design. Single-track vs. double-track is just one issue of many. [Model railroad CAD doesn’t eliminate these mistakes, but it does render them quickly.]

So yes, a well-designed double-track-with-crossovers track plan can work well.

Yes, quite often, unfortunately, IMHO.