What is a drill track and how is it used? Does the forum have a glossary?
No glossery, but I did write a short article explaining it.
What is a Yard Lead? aka Drill Track
Double ended yards often have two drill tracks, one on each end. Make it longer than the longest yard track as Chip said.
Thanks guys - seems straightforward and obvious. I should say “I knew that!”[:D]
obasher (O-b)
Making the drill track as long as the longest ladder track sounds good but is not always practical. My longest ladder track is 25 feet long which is the A/D track. The longest classification track is still over 20. To create a drill track that long is not practical especially if you have one at each end of the yard. 4 feet is about all I can spare. It just means the switcher as to make a few more moves when breaking up or making up a train. Not a bad thing on a model railroad.
There is a glossary, but no entry for “drill track”.
Drill track used for sorting/ classification of the cars whether in the yard to be made up into an outgoing train, or breaking up an inbound to set on respective tracks.
It is great to have the yard lead/ drill track as long or longer than the longest yard track, but as mentioned most times there just isn’t enough real estate to be practical. Longer trains may have to be made up and placed in sections.
Some layouts may allow for this track to extend beyond the yard even the layout through a portal to some other area even under portions of the layout. Not always a good idea to have much of the lead buried or on a grade, but if you need it ,it can be done.
What that (the link) doesn’t say is why it is called a drill track. It is called drill because just like soldiers drilling on a parade ground, all the switcher does is go back and forth and back and forth on it. This is also why recently I’ve been calling working a yard “drilling” while working an industrial area is “switching”. Is that a valid distinction, I don’t know but operationally it seems a huge difference. The only run around operation that might have to be done in a well designed yard is for caboose placement. Many model railroads I operate on don’t even do this but make the road crew pick up their caboose as their first move just before they depart the yard.
Many prototypes intentionally put the lead on a grade. This allows them to hump the cars into the yard tracks rather than having to place each cut. The BNSF (former CB&Q) yard here in Denver is designed that way. The loco’s in the photo below are drilling the yard. Just to the left of the bridge out of the photo is a sharp drop off (about 2.5% for 500 feet or so). The heavy smoke is because they really have to work hard to get each cut up to the bridge level so they can coast them back down on the the appropriate track. The locomotive doesn’t need to drill so much, often only moving backward only 1 car length at a time.
