I have a hump yard on my layout, after alot of trial and error I have one that works on gravity without air assist. I have a kadee uncoupler just past the apex on the top of the hill to release the cars down the hill and 2/3 of the way down I have strips of styene inside of the rails with mole skin on them so that the car’s wheels rub against them to slow down the cars. I have this set on an electric motor that opens and closes the strips against the cars to control the speed I use a momentary switch to operate the motor. I found this works very well and with a little practice is easy to use without all the plumbing needed to run air to retard the speed of the cars. Granted my hump yard is only 7 tracks but this system works very well. I use a 2 1/2% grade for the cars to roll down from the apex, also make sure that your cars have at least 3 oz of weight in them so that they can get a good run downhill without stalling on the track. Remember to use the moleskin as this helps with to keep from rubbing all of the weathering off the wheels when the retarders engage the wheels. Hope this helps, I will get some pictures of it here soon, my grandson decided to take underwater pictures of the bathtub with my digital camera. (grandma left the camera sitting next to the tub after some “cute” baby pictures of a bubble bath and grandson knocked the camera into the tub) So much for the new camera.
I’m afraid to differ with you on this topic, I have a working hump yard that works on friction not air. If you see my post on this topic you will note that it does come close to prototypical operation and the cars don’t race away at warp speed but they do move I will grant you at a proto speed of about 15-20 mph before hitting the retarders, but the way I have the retarders set on electric motor so that they close and make contact with the wheels to slow the cars down enough to enter my hump yard at about proto speed of 10 mph. This took me about 3 months of tuning the hump and retarders to get the right combo. My hill is 2 1/2% downhill grade with the kadee uncoupler mounted just past the apex so that there is no issue of being stuck on the consist. For the cars coming in and filling the tracks that are nearly full already I leave the retarders on longer to have the cars roll in at about 3-5 mph. This takes time to learn and get the feel for how long to leave the retarders on to get the cars to roll to the right tracks and distance you want.
If the camera took a QUICK plunge-- less than a few seconds-- say maybe up to 10 (that’s a number I pulled out of my hip pocket) your best course of action really is to just shake it off and hope it survived.
Method B
If the camera is already dry (i.e., it got wet-- you didn’t know what to do and it’s dried out in the meantime), accept your fate-- assess it for usability, it might surprise you. You might just need to clean the lens. Getting it wet again is likely to simply tempt fate.
(If it took a long plunge into the ocean however, that might be another matter, and you might want consider Method C below if it hasn’t been too long from the incident)
Method C(This is also the best strategy if your camera gets dunked in sea water)
If the camera is still wet and it’s been wet for longer than a few seconds-- say 20-30 seconds or longer-- Don’t let it dry out yet!!! (Perform step #2 and put it in a plastic bag and pour water in it if you have to! Especially if it got dunked in sea water)
Remove the batteries and memory card (the memory card is probably fine in any case, mine go through the washer & drier all the time
I have always wanted to build a Hump yard,mainly because of fan visits to yards and watching the hump operate.Operation is limitless, Hump pullers and pushers,inbound yards,outbound yards,car shops and locomotive shops. I often thought about a “Dummy hump” hill as a backdrop and have inbound and outbound yards in and around the hill track,not modeling the "Hump bowl yard"itself.Hump towers in all hump yards are so cool,these can be modeled as backdrops too.I do agree with the impossibilities such as, retarders, pin pulling ,car weight and most importantly Space! A Hump yard is at least 5 miles long by 1/2 miles wide.Only a few modelers or clubs have this room. Hump yards I ve worked in, NS Bellevue, Buckeye, and Conway are very large facilities, I cannot imagine modeling these yards to scale,in any model scale.
N-Scale magazine ran an article a while back about some people who built a modular hump yard in N scale. Air jets were used for the retarders, which were controlled by a foot pedal.
For those of you with operating HO hump yards I would like to know more about the uncoupling. There are a myriad of ways to slow cars down and fine tune the bowl action. But the facilities to uncouple anything from a 40 footer to a 80+footer seems difficult while maintaining continual reverse motion and consistent speed of the locomotive. At least without 5 finger assistance.
On the hump yard I have, I have a kadee uncoupler on the down slope past the apex of the hill and I have the coupler marked on the rails with some “yellow” paint to mark the start and stop of the uncoupler. Granted my hump yard is small but it’s a yard that works. I usually run the engine slowly going forward and when I uncouple the car(s) to head to the yard it seems to work well, the main thing is making sure the cars have enough weight in them to roll away and not stall going down the hill before reaching the yard. The consist moves very slowly until the cars cut loose, at that point I stop the train and focus on the rolling cars heading for the yard. I can store about 12-16 cars per track on the long tracks and about 8-10 cars on the short tracks. I don’t shove the cars with the engine but let gravity take the cars once I uncouple them, so they don’t take off right away but build up speed going down the hill, I know this is not a true prototypical hump yard in the delivery of the cars to the bowl but it works and it fits on my layout. I usually will run 20-30 cars through the hump while breaking up a train. It took awhile and lots of trial and error to get the hump yard to work right, it’s not fancy or very big but it was a personal challenge to me to make a working hump without the use of air but more closely to the real thing with the retarders I use on the hill.
Hope this answered your question about uncoupling the
For those of you with operating HO hump yards I would like to know more about the uncoupling. There are a myriad of ways to slow cars down and fine tune the bowl action. But the facilities to uncouple anything from a 40 footer to a 80+footer seems difficult while maintaining continual reverse motion and consistent speed of the locomotive. At least without 5 finger assistance.
Richard
On the hump yard I have, I have a kadee uncoupler on the down slope past the apex of the hill and I have the coupler marked on the rails with some “yellow” paint to mark the start and stop of the uncoupler. Granted my hump yard is small but it’s a yard that works. I usually run the engine slowly going forward and when I uncouple the car(s) to head to the yard it seems to work well, the main thing is making sure the cars have enough weight in them to roll away and not stall going down the hill before reaching the yard. The consist moves very slowly until the cars cut loose, at that point I stop the train and focus on the rolling cars heading for the yard. I can store about 12-16 cars per track on the long tracks and about 8-10 cars on the short tracks. I don’t shove the cars with the engine but let gravity take the cars once I uncouple them, so they don’t take off right away but build up speed going down the hill, I know this is not a true prototypical hump yard in the delivery of the cars to the bowl but it works and it fits on my layout. I usually will run 20-30 cars through the hump while breaking up a train. It took awhile and lots of trial and error to get the hump yard to work right, it’s not fancy or very big but it was a personal challenge to me to make a wor
Thanks for the kind words I’m glad you understand how my hump yard works, I spent about 2 months trying to figure out how to design and build the hump yard. In my first attempts I was quickly reminded about the laws of physics and gravity the hard way, I tried just having some styrene strip inside of the rails to drag on but that didn’t work too well or slow the cars down very well and when two of my brass boxcars collided it was ugly. Hense I came up with the use of a electric motor on a momentary switch that I could hold and apply the styrene against the wheels to control the speed going into the yard. I had to also adjust the grade of the downhill run to get a combination that worked well enough and still be functional.
I remember seeing this picture in MR a long time ago. The Union Pacific built a model of their hump yard in Hinkle Oregon as a training layout. lol
1977 press photo harry meyen of union pacific demonstrates hinkle yard model. this is an original press photo. Union pacific executive herry meyen demonstrates model of new hinkle classification yard in easter oregon.
Model, which will be used to train 300 to 400 hinkle employees, is mounted in rail car.
Not really. There’s no hump. And no retarders. The whole thing is on a slope and cars just slam full-speed into the ones already in the body tracks – check out the impact on the last two cars.
There are some people who build poorly-working model subsets of hump yard functions and call it a “hump yard.”
There have been only a handful of truly functional model hump yards built with working retarders that can actually handle one car at a time and control the speed with which the individual cars roll into the body tracks.
99% of the time, claimed true “hump yards” in HO or N scales – aren’t.
[Edit: OK, maybe “99%” is a little high – but not by much.]
The same model was later rebuilt to be used for training on one of the North Platte hump yards.
By the way, I don’t see anything like retarders here, either, so probably they couldn’t hump individual cars, but instead demonstrated how the various yards would work together.
Correct and the Shelby club has/had one that worked quite well with air retarders just below the crest of the hump.The cars was controled to a easy coupling. A computerized air system would probably be superior to a manual operated hump.
As far as the others who am I to judge what a builder calls a hump after all a hump is a man made mound.
Here’s a sweet operation found at lake and tide water docks and as we know its not a hump.
