I was going to inquire if anyone had an HO hump yard built on their layout. Due to the MOST EXCELLENT system Firecrown has developed. My title, triggered old threads of the subject. These were 2004 O gauge discussions. I searched the whole thread and did not find an answer to my question here. ONCE the term “saucer” was used when the alternate (non hump = flat switching) method of sorting cars.
Does that mean “The Bowl” (descriptor) is classification yard tracks AFTER a hump. Conversely if flat switching is done the yard track arrangement is called a “Saucer”? endmrw0322251325
Inadvertently, yes. I thought my layout was flat. Turned out, it wasn’t. Seriously.
Rich
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Hump Yards IRL are high cost specialized facilities for switching thousands of cars per day. Such activities would be hard to model and would also be hard to utilize in the concept of model railroading. Modelers, just like the 1:1 carriers really want to see trains running - not cars going over the hump one and two at a time. There is a lot of the nitty gritty of railroading that modelers gloss over in operating ‘their’ railroads.
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I’ve never heard “saucer” used. It could be a regional/local term. The bowl are the classification tracks in any yard. Even yards that are flat switched often have a bowl shape when possible to aid cars being “kicked.”
Jeff
A geographical bowl aids in two ways - it allows cars to roll into tracks in the bowl and to the extent that the ‘other end’ of the bowl tracks are higher than the center of the bowl it aids in preventing cars from rolling out of the tracks they are switched into. Gravity can be both your friend and your enemy.
Part of the maintenance in Hump Yards is making sure the tracks continue having their designed elevations - for the total length of the track.
Ed Ravenscroft built a working hump yard on his HO scale Glenco Skokie Valley layout in the late 50’s. The construction and operation was detailed in the November 1961 issue of Model Railroader.
Sheldon
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