In designing a track plan, what is the difference between fiddle and staging yards and their track arrangment? In terms of operations, are they used differently during an operating session? Thanks!
[#welcome] volcano_son
A fiddle yard is usually small and uses a “sector plate” or some sort of transfer device. I believe it’s a European design for staging, mainly because it saves space. Where as a staging yard uses turnouts to route trains to the layout and can take up some space.
Go to MICRO LAYOUT GALLERY and look up “Sector Plate”, under “Shelf Switchers” in the menue on the left.
More info on Fiddle Yard Design
More info on Staging Yard Design
In terms of operations, if a sector plate or transfer device is used, as in a fiddle yard, it is usually operated manually.
With a staging yard using turnouts that have switch machines, the operator can route trains to the layout using push buttons on a control panel or, if DCC equipped, by using a throttle or computer or any combination of all three. There’s no “fiddling” by hand with aligning tracks.
My understanding of these two terms is this; a fiddle yard is as little as one, as many as a few, tracks that are spaced so that you can comfortably get you fingers between them. The fiddle yard is where trains are assembled and broken up “off-stage” by the 0-5-0 switcher (hand) to be run out onto the main modelled portion of the layout. A staging yard is different in that trains are not made up and broken down, but instead are stored whole, “off stage”, ready to be run onto the layout as is. Staging tracks, therefoe, take up much more room as whole trains must be stored intact. Fiddle yards, on the other hand, require handy places to store cars and loco’s, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be on the layout space. They can be stored in racks under the layout.
Thats the way I understand it.
The fiddle yard is a special subset of the general set called staging yards. What sets it apart is that one can “fiddle” with the train(s) by rearranging consists, removing or introducing items of rolling stock, and/or adding or removing loads from open-top cars.
The use of a sliding or rotating storage table does not make a staging yard into a fiddle yard. It just saves turnouts. (One track plan, published in MR during the last few years, had a huge multi-track transfer table 16 feet long, with no overhead clearance to speak of. With no way to get the 0-5-0 into it, it was emphatically not a fiddle yard.)
On my layout, currently under construction, one end is a multi-track reverse loop which can store six trains but is (or will be) totally inaccessible to the operator. The other end is a stub-end arrangement with multi-track transfer tables of two different lengths that will have a train dumper to unload coal from gons and hoppers. It will also be accessible for car swapping and load rearrangement - making it a classic fiddle yard.
Chuck
It looks like if one reads all the posts that all the information is here so I am repeating, but for some reason cannot seem to prevent myself from posting.
I have found that people call the same things by different names and/or call many different things by the same name. That makes conversations difficult. Here the terms in question are “yard”, “stagging”, and “fiddle”. So here are my definitions.
Some people call any set of tracks with a ladder a yard. In real life this would mostly be true, and each railroad had their own names of what they specifically called these. For model railroading purposes I have definded them as follows. The most simple yard being a “storage” yard where strings of cars are just set out when they are not needed. This would be mostly for seasonal products, something like grain cars during the winter. Another type of yard is a holding yard. This is where trains made up in the classification yard are sent to await scheduling and power assignments to move them through the system. An example was the Santa Fe North and South yards in Wichita Kansas. The trains would arrive and be classified into new trains. Once the new train was made up it would be sent as a unit to the other end of town on tracks not involved in the classification. The next most simple yard would be a transfer (or interchange) yard where strings of cars are set out for another railroad to pick up. Sometimes multiple railroads use these yards so there can be at least two tracks (pick-up/drop off) per railroad using the yard (Once again an example was 1960 Wichita Kansas where the Frisco, Rock Island, and Santa Fe all swapped cars in one yard with coincedentally six tracks. Cars going to the Mopac went to the RI. The RI MP interchange was about 1/2 mile away). Each railroad would take a cut of cars and divide them into the tracks of the appropriate recieving railroad. From there one gets into a full scale classification yard with arrival and depature tracks where trains are brok
It’s funny how terminoloy will get mixed up, being that it’s a world wide hobby. What we call rail cars in the US are called wagons elsewere. In Canada a caboose is called a van. Railroad trucks in the U.S. are boggies in Europe. Is a turnout a switch or is a switch a button you pu***o throw a turnout? A locomotive is also called an engine, but it’s the engine that makes the locomotive go. A tie is also a sleeper.
So we have staging yards and fiddle yards. Both serve the same purpose, to store unused trains.
I believe the reference to “selector plate” above should be “sector plate”.
You’re right Ed, it’s sector. http://rail.felgall.com/terms.htm#s
Texas Zepher, as the Eagles would say, “Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.” You hit the nail on the head gsetter.
I’m in the process of doing something that might be concidered odd by most. My “hidden” double stacked yard will be intresting (still on paper). I will attempt to explain the operation here.
Basically, The Boeville and Newtown will have no phisical connection to the outside world in the main room. Instead, a pair of stacked hidden yards will be in play “off stage”.
The upper yard, split in half down the center, will represent the towns of Richmond, VA and Harrisburg, PA. This yard will contain cars used by the BAN. The BAN, has it’s own “on stage” yard for moving said cars. The “off stage” yard will have an “armstrong” 1.5ft turntable for turning locomitves that will be placed on a storage track.
The lower yard, split in half down the center, will represent the towns of Richmond, VA and Harrisburg, PA. This yard, however, contains frieght cars NOT used by the BAN and are basically thru frieghts. It also will contain my passenger trains. This yard will also have a 1.5ft "armstrong turntable for turning locomotive that will be stored on a storage track.
The idea behind using a locomotive storage track is each time a train enters either yard, a new one leaves. When the first locomotive is coupled up to it’s train, the next locomotive moves up one spot. This means that the locomotive will be in a constant rotation.
I’m hoping to have my latest ideas place on my website shortly. I will update you all when they are there.
Wow! Thanks to all for the detailed and helpful replies! Cheers! [:D]
From a planning perspective I think the bigger difference is between “active” and “passive” staging.
Passive staging takes two forms: one is on layouts which are operated as point to point but which are actually continuous loops: a train put in staging at the west end is ready to go “self-staged” on the east end in the next operating session, and so on. The consist is not changed – hence, passive. Passive staging also works on a true point to point where a train arrives in staging and that is it for that session, but that can call for having lots of long staging tracks and plenty of cars and locomotives.
Turning and consist changes if any are done “offline” before the next operating session. A subset of this kind of point to point passive staging would be a push pull commuter train which arrives and departs in the same session but is not changed or touched in any way.
Active staging is where a train arrives and is broken down more or less in the traditional yardmaster manner onto arrival, departure, holding, RIP and other tracks – whether the cars and/or locomotives are removed from the line or just placed on different tracks to leave in different trains.
Active staging can use a locomotive – probably the best choice if it is visible and actually “modeled” with scenery and ballast etc., and also a nice option for the staging yardmaster who after all might like to actually run trains now and then – or by hand, in which case it becomes a fiddle yard. Things like sector plates, train cartridges, “train turntables” like Ray mentions and the like are all refinements on fiddle yards but are not essential. Indeed you can have a working fiddle yard without track, just table top space.
Speaking personally I have been the yardmaster in the hidden staging yard of a friend’s layout that models the Burlington Northern between Peoria IL and Galesburg IL using timetable and train order operation with a fast clock. The hidden (laundry room) staging represents both ends of the
Just to echo earlier comments, I would agree that “fiddle” only applies to trains being made up and broken down by hand, i.e. someone is “fiddling” with the trains. I suspect it goes back to the early big O scale club layouts, where they probably only had storage room on shelves below track level. A train would come to the ‘end of the line’ and someone would have the job of moving it down to a storage track by hand, and putting in place a new train to take it’s place.
Of course many modellers abhor ‘fiddling’, supposedly John Allen had cars that were on his layout that went years without ever being touched, only would handle them to repair them or if they derailed or something.
p.s. someone pointed out once that in theatrical terms we use “staging” incorrectly. “Staging” really means what happens on the stage, the sets, etc. so really the layout is the staging area, and the areas where we prepare the trains (the “wings” in theater terms) would be more accurately called “pre-staging”. [%-)]
I finally got the page to work (YEAH!!!)
If you follow this link:
http://home.comcast.net/~ccmhet4/trains.html
Go to the Final Layout Plan link. There is what I will be building (hopefully) this fall. Feel free to look at the other links posted. The track plan was done in a CAD program called Visio (I have yet to get the normal track planning software to work to my liking).
Have fun!
Interesting point Stix … maybe we should not call it staging but winging?
From a vocabulary standpoint I had never assumed that “staging” referred to plays produced on a theater stage, but rather figured that it was a phrase and concept born of the construction industry, where trucks and materials needed in a certain sequence are said to be “staged” off the job site and called in as needed. I have heard the place where they are held referred to as the “staging area.”
Dave Nelson
Last weekend, our club held a large British show. I had a look at a number of fiddle yards, most of them on pont to point layouts. Sector plates were definitely the favoured device, although one 2mm scale layout had a sector plate with integrated turntable. The large continuous run layouts usually had a run through yard.
I didn’t see anyone with a cassette system.
The Peco catalog actually shows a cartridge you can buy ready made, called a “Loco-Lift and Storage Unit”
I am contemplating a cartridge that works on a different principal – at the end of a staging yard I anticipate having a smooth surface with felt bottomed lengths of track that would slide around easily from track to track. Not sure yet how I’d handle the electrical connections.
Dave Nelson
Dave
Electrical connection can be made by soldering standard rail joiners to the mating end(s) of the slide-around tracks. I’m actually using a (very) temporary variant of this idea, with very short trains and lengths of standard flex track.
Chuck
Not to mention that any time a car is touched, it increases the likely hood of damaging the detail. It also gets body oils on it.
I have several of the older Ulrich type wooden freight cars. I am afraid to handle them in any way because it seems I always break off a roof rib, brake wheel platform, or smash a hand rail.
Through the years and hundreds of operating sessions, some of the wooden cars at a friends layout have developed dark spots from the gunk off peoples hands. It is obvious where people touch them when they pick them up. Unfortunately I don’t think they would survive a trip to the wash rack.
Dave: I don’t know about felt bottoms, but the cassette system you describe is used in a number of Brit layouts. One common construction is two pieces of aluminum (or aluminium) angle set to track gauge.* Electrical contacts a sping brass or something. There’s a variation where the loco gets its own short cassette. Use masonite for the base and lots of talcum powder.
- the angles are set to form a U shap, with a track gauge sised gap in the middle. Usually mounted on a wood base.