Here’s a first rough and incomplete draft trackplan.
Givens and Druthers:
Pike: River’s Edge Branch of the “Berkshire & Atlantic RR”.
The “Berkshire & Atlantic RR” is my fictional proto-lanced road closely based on the Boston & Albany subsidiary of the New York Central Lines.
Governing Rolling Stock:
B&A mainline loop:
A-1a, A-1b Berkshires, L3 & L4 Mohawks, J1E Hudsons, K5 Pacifics, E Units, PA’s, Pullmans. Oh, the occasional Niagara might strut it’s stuff, to break in after shopping at Albany, on a milk train.
River’s Edge Branch:
NE-2 2-6-6-2, H7 & H5 Mikes, K-11 Pacifics, EMD F units, Alco FA’s and RS roadswitchers, 0-8-0’s, Pullmans.
Scenes: New England milltown, palisade/cliffside adjacent to River’s Edge interchange yard. Interchange yard will have associated facilities and an engine terminal. I’d like to somehow tuck in a small village (lower right corner) repleat with depot, siding, village green and church.
The plan is basically a twice around single track branch intersecting with a double track mainline loop that feeds into staging and the interchange yard.
What I like: I’ve managed to shoehorn quite a bit into here. With a little massaging I’d like to be able to fit some of the signa
How do you get into it? do you have to crawl under it to get to the center?..that will get really old really fast…duck-unders should only be used as an absolute last resort, if nothing else will work.
sorry, but I dont like the plan…especially if it needs to be operated from the middle…you can do MUCH better with the space…
13X14 feet right? which sides are up against walls, and which sides are open to the room?
Why do we continue to call them “duck-unders” when they are almost without exception “crawl-unders” since one must be on hands-and-knees to pass under the layout with typical layout heights? Nevertheless, if one enters the operations “pit” only once or twice in a session, I wouldn’t consider it much of an inconvenience as long as there is padding on the floor and the framework at the point of passage (says this sixty-something fellow.).
About the only switching this plan provides is in the making- and breaking-up of trains. If that is the kind of switching you want, that’s fine. However, the layout lacks locomotive facilities, an important element if one centers operations around yards. Also, there is a lot of “industry” associated with yards which you should consider: car-weighing, car cleaning, car repairing, locomotive servicing and repair, etc. which provide a lot of operations in themselves. And depending on the era and location, there is also car icing, and livestock-in-transit care and feeding.
I’m perhaps biases toward making a trackplan have a proto operations flavor - that is I like to think about the flow of cars (and commodities) on and off the modeled area (from staging) and how those cars would be routed while on the layout en-route to a destination. So my comments below come from that view point (please forgive me if this isn’t at all what you were looking for but your comment about 50/50 mainline and switching suggested to me that you were, in fact, interested in having cars routed across a mainline to a yard then distributed to industries)
There does seem to be lots of yard and interchange space but not much place for trains to go.
If I understand it correctly the bottom level (with the staging) is the mainline and the other parts is a branchline? But most branchlines don’t loop around and return to the same interchange area. It would seem that the branchline might be more ‘branch-like’ if it were stub ended?
The interchange area seems very heavy duty but it’s not at all obvious why a railroad would have put that much money into an interchange unless there would be lots of traffic going through there.
I think all that hidden staging is going to 1) make construction tricky, 2) be a pain to operate. You’ll either need survelance cameras so you can observe when trains are in the clear on a track or have to signal the heck out of it with a correspondingly complex control panel, 3) the good Lord help you if you run a turnout backward and stuff comes off the track back there. 4) the good Lord bless you if any of the track in staging ever needs repair.
If there are not walls up against all sides of the railroad try to put staging against an open area (for access). Put all the staging turnouts adjacent to aisles (for access and visibility).
What sorts of industries would there be to justify the classification yard? What happens if you make the mainline a twice around and put the yard at the junction with the br
As per the original post…Specific industry trackage has not been defined yet…This is just a first take and will be refined. Nevertheless the space is there.
At the Rivers Edge interchange yard, I suggest you put the interchange tracks between the B&A mainline and the branchline rather than having the interchange tracks on the far side (away from the B&A mainline) of the branch’s “mainline.” This will make the interchange of cars more handy, requiring less car and locomotive movements, and thus, more realistic.
Actually, quite often branchline trains originated at some point on the mainline. They ran on the mainline until reaching the junction to the branch. Thus, the facilities of the junctions were often quite limited. I believe too many modelers are stuck on the idea that the branchline trains operated only on the branch and only transited between the junction and the branchline terminal. If branchline trains start and end on the mainline, one increases the length of the journey for the branchline train, frees up much of the space previously devoted to the junction.
The plan for my bedroom-sized layout has the junction hidden (it is a single track switch) located near a small town which has a bit of industry and a double-ended spur where through freights can occasionally drop-off or pick-up cuts of cars to/from the branch, with the branchline trains originating in the same staging areas as the mainline trains. There is also a turntable and limited locomotive services at the junction, but this is mostly to simulate helper service on the mainline rather than for originating or terminating branchline trains.
Actually, quite often branchline trains originated at some point on the mainline. They ran on the mainline until reaching the junction to the branch. Thus, the facilities of the junctions were often quite limited. I believe too many modelers are stuck on the idea that the branchline trains operated only on the branch and only transited between the junction and the branchline terminal. If branchline trains start and end on the mainline, one increases the length of the journey for the branchline train, frees up much of the space previously devoted to the junction.
I gotta agree with Mark here. More often than not, branchline trains started out on the mainline and then traveled up the branch. For instance, Southern Pacific’s “Del Monte” ran between Castroville Junction and San Francisco on the Coast Division mainline and between Castroville Junction and Monterey on the branch. Monterey Branch freights originated in the yard at Watsonville Junction, which was a moderate sized yard a few miles north of Castroville. Watsonville Junction also originated trains for the Santa Cruz branch as well as main line locals.
Going to the other end of the country, Maine Central’s Rockland Branch passenger trains (4 in each direction as late as 1950, with one train pair carrying Pullmans in the summer) ran between Portland Union Station and Brunswick on the mainline and Brunswick and Rockland on the branch. Eastbound freights originated in Rigby Yard in Portland and there was (and still is) a small yard in Rockland.
This is just my opinion, but I wonder if you’re not trying to do too much in what appears to be a fairly limited space. I realize it’s nice both to see mainline trains powered by big engines and branchline trains powered by smaller ones, but I’m not so sure you wouldn’t be happier either eliminating the main line totally and concentrate solely on the branch (with connections to the outside represented by staging) or represent the branch with s
"you were, in fact, interested in having cars routed across a mainline to a yard then distributed to industries) "
Absolutely…
"There does seem to be lots of yard and interchange space but not much place for trains to go."
Right, I haven’t added any of the auxiliary or industry specific track yet…This initial draft represents the “core” which will hopefully support the kind of operations and “railfanning” I’m seeking to accomplish… Their is quite a bit of yard and I’m already thinking of focusing more on the interchange as the sigificant yard and biasing the terminal (along the top of the plan) more towards purely industrial and maybe some added emphasis on servciing and turning around commuter trains.
"The interchange area seems very heavy duty but it’s not at all obvious why a railroad would have put that much money into an interchange unless there would be lots of traffic going through there."
What I have in mind with the interchange is something akin to the North Adams Junction yard which served as an interchange for the North Adams branch off the B&A. A very significant facility…actuall MUCH larger than what I’ve laid out…
Regarding the hidden staging…I have similiar concerns to what you’ve indicated…I do have some leeway in the room where if I’m careful with how I locate the staging I will be able to actually access it from the exterior side of the layout. I’m also considering swing down panels on the bottom of the layout in order to access critical hidden areas…Remember I need to be able to raise and lower the layout. As far as observing it during operations goes I’m thinking of using cheap USB camereas hooked up to a PC. I have a flatscreen on the wall of this room and I can route my PC video to it…
In staging all of you staging tracks are off one main track. Unless all of your cars come from Albany and all of the outbounds go to New York, you’ll want to put staging on both main lines.
As others have mentioned, the mainline operation is minimal, just show up for 20 ft, make a set out and make a pick up. If you put any mainline train sets on the mainline loops you will consume all your staging/track capacity for the through trains. You might want to lose the main and concentrate on the branch. Make the interchange tracks just extensions of the staging tracks and make the branch a continuous run. You could put a B&A engine on each interchange track to shove the cars out of staging into the visible layout and pull the “outbounds” from the interchange tracks into staging. If you were using DCC, the engine number could be set to the track number.
If you are going to keep the double track main you need to move the switches around. The NYC/B&A operated a lot of current of traffic (right hand running.) So on the bottom of the plan the crossover needs to be to the right of the entance to the yard and have access to the interchange/set out tracks. On the left side the counterclockwise track crossover needs to be before/above the connection into the interchange yard. That way if you have a local out of staging go up the branchline
I am concerned that the convoluted laps will put so much of your mainline on steep grades that it will make local switching difficult.
I plan to “mirror” the staging on the other side of the trackplan to ensure their is equal staging for both mainline tracks.
I don’t exactly understand what you mean by, “If you put any mainline train sets on the mainline loops you will consume all your staging/track capacity for the through trains.”
I plan to add additional staging as mentioned with which to rotate what trains are availabl
