Here is a small town that sprung up with the railroad as it advanced West. A couple of sidings and the beginning of main street. Like so many railroad towns many factors determined if a town survived or not. One is hard pressed to find evidence of this stop in the Rockies today.
Here is a small town on the West Coast. What was then the Western Terminus of the CPR. Today there is a massive yard just East of this photo. How did this yard grow from this to what it is today? I am sure it grew a track at a time.I am sure the planners never envisioned what now lays there. At some point do the railroads throw up their hands like we model railroaders and tear it up and start over?
As model railroaders we have the luxury planning our yards before construction even begins. There are some people on the forum who will help us plan our yards to perfection, before the first bit of track has been taken out of the box. Like many I had a plan for my yard and service facility before construction even began and it is about half complete.
I had my main line up and running before I started in on my yard. I soon realized I needed parking.
I spend a lot of time looking at historical photo’s of the CPR being built about 130 years ago. I often wonder how a prototypical yard evolved. As they punched through the wilderness they would need advanced staging yards and so a few sidings were put in along the way. Sometimes towns sprung up in these locations that would grow into cities or some would just disappear leaving only a single ribbon of track heading to the horizon.
So I am curious.
Was your yard and/or service facility preplanned or did it evolve a track at a time after the mainline had been up and running for a while?
If your yard was more of an after thought does it work? Is i
Nice question, I’m looking forward to reading some of the answers. My “last” yard, on my “temporary” layout was only four tracks, an A/D track w/ whistlestop passenger station, a combo caboose / engine track, a track to service the coal and sand facilities & house some MOW cars, and a switch lead off the mainline. It “served” the small town nearby. It worked reasonably well for a thrown-together yard. But it really needed a couple of runaround tracks to keep engines from getting trapped. I dealt with it by running trains up past the yard, running around the train at the next station, and then pushing the train back into the yard, along the switch lead, and into one of yard tracks. One thing I did change though was adding a siding at the station to store a mail car, and a second locomotive storage track so the caboose track could just be for cabooses.
My yard was preplanned. This is unusual for me. I used the Kalmach book on Freight yards. I am using the plan that has one mainline, 2 arrival/departure tracks, 4 classification tracks and one run around. Off of the mainline, I have my servicing facilities with 3 tracks. Have built the FSM coaling tower. Will soon install the Diamond Scale ashpit. Then, there is the 130 foot Walthers turntable and 6 stall roundhouse. Will see how this works out.[:D]
When I started my RR, I didn’t have a lot of space. I started with a corner module set that was published in MR many years back. I had modified it to make it deeper, and the addition was at the front of the right hand module. This space was added for the yard. At this time, the yard was dead ended at the right end, and the lead was on a grade to the left. I only have room for three tracks.
When I got more room to expand, and moved the module set, I now had room to make it a double ended yard and gain some more length. The space added was to the right end and allowed the corner module set to become a U shape with another module on the right. I was also able to add engine facilities and a caboose service track. When the yard was expanded, it did have a curve in it, but the yard lead was on the same level and straight.
The intention was to operate it from the Right end. However, during the development of operations, the best way found to actually operate it was to classify from the Left, and cars were ‘pulled’ from the new end (Right). Since my trains are fairly short, about five to eight cars long, this has been working out well.
I guess I could have taken up the original yard and started over, but I didn’t think that I would gain anything by doing that, so that is why I decided just to add to it.
We’ve got 4 yards. All of the overall locations were preplanned. Only one has stayed as it was built. One has been modified some. The two others are the main yards and have evolved over time to help deal with the realities of operations.
I have learned so much about how to do yards that I thought I knew before.
I agree with John. You’ve posed an interesting question, Brent. So here’s a (hopefully somewhat) interesting answer.
The yard I’m working on is both pre-planned and developing. That is, it was pre-planned to develop.
I’m building a sectional layout on hollow-core doors, one door at a time, one door a year. The layout has to be functional and provide operational interest at each level of construction.
I have the track down on my first door. The “yard” is limited to two single-ended tracks, for now. But that’s all right, since there’s only one industry to service, a meat packing plant.
When I add the second table this spring, the “yard” will actually become an actual yard, with two A/D tracks and at least three single-ended tracks.
If all goes according to plan, two years from now I’ll add the fourth section, and I’ll have the two A/D tracks, five double-ended classification tracks, a caboose track, and a small engine servicing facility with roundhouse. Both A/D tracks will have drill tracks at both ends of the yard, so I can make or break trains without fouling the main or bringing the whole yard to a standstill.
Do we build the plaster scenery and then blast thorugh it to lay our mainline?
But the more important point to keep in mind, is that even though prototype yards often “evolve”, when that evolution is needed, a civil engineer and some railroad people sit down with a list of needs and plot plan of the available real estate and “plan” the next version just like we design a track plan.
Maybe we do a good job, and maybe our modeling goals don’t change, and it works good and stays basicly the same for the life of the layout - which may well be frozen in time (example - myself, I’m not an “era switcher”, I’ve been modeling the same place and time for 25 years now) - OR - maybe not, for a number of reasons.
But based on the methods used to construct most model layouts, major changes are not really “fun” in my mind (or cost and time efective). So I’m a fan of good planning, and knowing what you want and learning as much as possible about how to do that in the planning stage - not by trial an error.
Like John I thought this Topic/question would draw more responses. Maybe it is one of those questions that gives us something to think about but there is not a lot to say on the subject. Sort of like what came first the chicken or the egg.
I like JTGs pre-planned and developing statement. I realized that aside from my planned yard I have two areas that have a turnout with one piece of flextrack connected to it off the main. Both areas will have something in them eventually but I am not sure what. Another small yard or an industry or two. Or how long does a siding off the main have to be before it becomes a spur?[^o)]
When I was a kid with my “N Scale” 4 x 8 plywood pacific we planned our yard before construction started and in the beginning it worked well. Of course Dad couldn’t resist going over to the Hudson Bay Co. on his lunch hour and was always coming home with more rolling stock and the occasional engine. I added a few more sidings to accommodate the additions but eventually I had take off my engineers cap to put on my engineering hat, as a major rework was required.
I have a stretch of track I call my Rogers Pass section. It’s about 65’ long and I have started building my mountains along it. I have no spots reserved for small sidings that may hold MOW equipment, but down the road I know I will be blasting out that pink foam to put some in. It is only pink until that gray paint comes out again.
When I go exploring up in the Rockies, I see many spots where the CPR has put small MOW sidings into old blasted out gravel pits. There was one pit that was full of very, very old equipment that I am guessing they made Ballast with. I am going back this summer to take pics so I can hopefully model it someday. It requires about three rough miles on the mountain bike to get in there though.
I am only in the planning stages of my layout but I can say that I am planning one “major” yard and one with only a couple sidings (not sure what officially constitutes a “train yard”). Time will tell if I end up with more or less.
Mine was pre-planned. Since I am modeling modern era, I basically used the general layout of my local yards (San Bernardino & Barstow) and combined them both. I wanted to have an intermodal facility (San Bernardino) and a fairly large engine facility (Barstow). I took advise from several experienced modelers and left some room for additional track if it is needed in the future. I am very happy with the way it turned out, well for now.[8D]
When I planned my layout I preplanned two classification yards both yards are large with 2 run by tracks as well as trackage for passenger car service, engine and caboose service as well as in one yard a train shop for refurbishing equipment. One of my yards is a “hump” yard since you never see one on a layout I decided to build one. This was a trial and error project, the prime problem was slowing the cars down coming off the hill. After forgetting about the basic laws of gravity and seeing a weighted brass box car crash into another one and seeing a few cars flying off the tracks as they went screaming through switches I had to keep reducing the grade of the hump as well as placing some styrene inside of the rails to use as brakes to slow down the cars I found the right combo that works. I have a Kadee uncoupler mounted under the track at the top of the hump just pass the apex so when I uncouple the car is rolls away easily with out having to bump the car and reconnecting it to the consist again. What I didn’t plan on and what evolved was two more smaller yards on my layout. What started out as transfer trackage soon began to grow into a small yard due to traffic and industry. I started to add more industry in that part of the layout and the need to handle the extra cars turned a transfer track into a five track yard with a diesel service track there for refuel and sand. The other one started out as a spur line to no where, with the option to run the track into a tunnel to a staging track and make it another mainline. I had laid the track for future development with no real idea and once I got to that part of the layout I developed a timber and coal mining industry and quarry, so the need for another yard was born. So two planned and two unplanned and I am kicking the idea around about another one right now in a part of the layout that doesn’t have alot of activity in it. Looking at the idea of cattle/hogs and slaughter house as well as a &nbs
In the case of my layout I had to get the demo crew out and wreck the plaster in order to lay the yard. I don’t mind demo work on unfinished scenery but when I have to wreck finished parts I hate to wreck something I spent alot of time and money on, but the flip side to it is that I get to keep busy and improve the overall layout and add new things to do on my layout during run times.
Am poised to build small freelance, a-t-r narrow shelf layout. Will try idea from modeler in an old RMC article. He built diorama-like scenes, positioned them along his r-o-w and connected them w/trackage. Said he wanted to build favorite industries, small town stations, etc. to his liking, w/o concentrating on anything else, then fill-the-gaps w/trackage. Guess he succeeded quite well…papasmurf in NH
