That’s one of the necessary evils railroads will use as needed.
A magazine 2-3 months old is still better then a book written xx years ago.
The best we can do is have a yard that would be equal to a industry yard since we do not have the space needed for a classification yard which is miles long and can be up to a mile wide…
BTW…I do have a small library of railroad books covering N&W,C&O,PRR,Southern locomotives and short lines. I have Trains short line guide and Classic Train’s book on EMD’s Geep.
Since I spent a life time around railroads I never found the need for any layout or how to book even though I bought Lance Mindheim’s books on switching layouts simply because as you already know my interest is switching layouts… I have attended a weathering clinic and one clinic on building industrial switching layouts.
My railroad has a 3 track yard on the west end which serves the sttel mill and docks. Going east there is another 3 track yoard serving the Stockton docks and hulett for the ore carriers. The hump yard (Yes, and operating hump yard) is on one side of the center peninsula and all car sorting is done here. On the East end is an 8 track stub end yard used to service all of the industries on the mountian division.
Only if you are modeling 2-3 months ago. If you are modeling years or decades ago a book may have a better insight. Technically Droege is too “new” for me since it was written after 1910 and I model 1900-1905.
The real advantage of a book is it can have a comprehensive discussion on a topic that is all in one spot. Normally to get a comprehensive view it takes multiple magazine articles. RMC published an exhaustive series on signals in 12 or more parts. I’m sure that at some point it will be re-published as a book. I would be willing to bet that given the choice of buying the book with the info collected or buying 12+ issues of RMC, a person will most likely buy the single book.
True, pretty much everything in or on a model railroad is compressed. One of the choices one has to make is how much compression do you want to have. Some people try to fit a couple miles, some a couple dozen miles, some 50-75, some entire subdivisions. Its just a matter of what you want to do and figuring out how to compress it into the space you have.
Before you build read Armstrongs book on planning and think about the purpose of the yard. Also think of placing the yard at or near the end of the scenicked part of your layout.
It may not be about how many industries but about how many spots you have to deliver cars to.
If I were to build a basement filling layout it would be point to point(staging to staging) with a large division yard in the middle. This would be similar to the club layout I was a member of for several years.