Good point !
Stick that speeder shed at the end of the track under the coaling tower toward the engine house. That way, you have direct access to your track for repair work.
Rich
And I guess I have to dig a pit under the track under the coaling tower for the cars to dump the coal into
Just a plain pit in the ground or did they have sides etc ?
If you can fit an ash dump pit under a track, you should have enough room. N&W used a sluice wash system, where the cinders dropped into a pit and were carried away via moving water, like a sewer system to an above ground storage tank which was off to the side. Here’s a couple pics from the Virginia Tech Imagebase historical collection, which houses N&W’s official collection:
pic 1. The pits across the center of the photo are the ash pits.
pic 2. You can just make out the structure on the right, in the dark, that is the ash tank that drops into a hopper or gondola.
pic 3. A pic of the tank in daylight with a hopper under it.
pic 4. The bottom two pics are of the pumps that run water through it and the sluice trough that moves the ashes.
I’d lengthen the coal pit track behind the coaling station so that it reaches the sand storage bin, as this type would have been unloaded by hand with a shovel, out of a gondola. This would take a long time and you don’t want to block your engine house. Maybe place a gondola full of sand, with a few planks leading from the gon over to the sand box, or just put the track really close to the sand storage bin.
Likely a concrete box, with a grate and rails across the top and some sort of conveyor system, or bucket lift system in the bottom. You could build this pit with some styrene or cardstock, and paint it concrete color, and add a lot of black powder or spray paint weathering. You could leave out the machinery in the bottom as the grate and black coal dust would make anything below not show up anyway.
When the Ash Pit kit gets here I will know better the spacing etc for the sand box coaling tower
Another question
My mains have road bed for elevated ballast
The yard should be flat
So do I just come down off the #4 turn out to the flat with the ballast tapering down for a slight ramp
Yes, but you need to be careful or you’ll have problems with derailing and uncoupling. The ramp must be gentle and there must be vertical curves where the grade changes. Turnouts can be on the grade but not where the grade changes. You may not want to drop all the way down to the table top so the steepness and length of the grade is less.
Mark
Another alternative, if you’re using track with attached roadbed, is to build up the “ground” around the track, especially where you want to place the structures.
Wayne
Frequently when a main track passes through a yard there is little vertical separation from the yard tracks. The main track may or may not have higher quality ballast, but will normally have heavier rail and less aged ties than the yard tracks. Trains on the main track usually travel at restricted speeds when passing through yards.
Mark
UncBob
I wouldn’t mess with that. Like me, you use Woodland Scenics Foam Track-Bed to support your track on the double mainline. If I were you, I would keep it simple and use the Woodland Scenics Foam Track-Bed on the yard tracks as well. That’s what I do.
Rich
Track on the roadbed wouldn’t be too cool going into the engine house and under the coaling tower to the emptying pit
The roadbed would stop at the engine house, but I don’t see a problem with running it under the coaling tower. When I ballasted my track, I just used cinders over the roadbed in the yard and the engine servicing facility. The rest of the yard also had cinders as well, so it gave the appearance of being level rather than raised.
Hey, UncBob, are you messing with us?
In your layout photos, your foam track road bed already goes under your coaling tower and into your engine house. [#oops]
It doesn’t now
If you have been following this thread your know changes are coming
That is why the track wasn’t ballasted --not a final config
Here is the latest mockup
The ash pit and loading gantry will be across from the sand box
That way the gondola that brings in the sand can also take out the ash
Nice !
Bob yo have a long way to go, here are a few pics of my engine servicing facility during partial mock up notice the push pins holding tracks in place. You are going to require no less then two maybe three tracks for the coaling tower depending on how many shoots it has or how many locomotives it can service, typical they would service no less then two. You will need one track to serve as coal feed track for the tower. Coal was transported up into the tower by means of elevators or conveyors, you will need a separate track for a cinder & ash pit and some times the same track could be used for the sand drying house and sand loading facility. A wash station of some sort was typically present as well. An inspection pit would also have been pretty much standard for a steam servicing facility as well as a water tank and water column(s) yard lights usually were always present as well as gantry cranes of some sort, a power house to generate electric power as well as steam power to fire the locomotive up for their daily runs. A common misconception was that firemen went out ans stoked the firebox in the early morning to get the boiler hot enough to build up a head of steam. This would have been done only on smaller branch line railroads and never on any thing that handled any kind of freight service. Being your only intending on using a two stall engine house you can get away with using a lot less. Instead of a ash pit with elaborate conveyors etc.you can get away with a small self powered conveyor and a dump truck or an old gondola to take the ash away.
Depending on the size of the railroad and the facility itself determined what and how much was ion a servicing facility. Your best bet is do do some picture research on engine serving facilities and as I mentioned before pick up some books on them as well.
I don’t have a long way to go since it will be what you see above plus the ash pit
I have a small shelf 18.5 inches wide and I have a small RR( only runs freight 3 days a week and Fan Far on weekends )
6 regular steamers (2-8-4—4-8-2—2-8-2—2-8-0----2-6-0—4-6-0 } and 3 Fan Fare old timer 4-4-0s
3 transition era diesels -RS3–FA2–GP20
24 coal cars ( 12 black 12 oxide )–If I had it to do over I would have only bought 6 black and 6 oxide
12 Ore Cars ( only needed 8 )
5 steel box cars
3 wooden box cars
5 gondolas
3 wood reefers
2 stock cars
12 Old Time Fan Fare passenger cars
BTW at the Strasburg PA RR while they have a water tower their coaling facility consists of a pile of coal along side the track into the engine house -They use a front end loader to load the tender
LOL
Allegheny, I still want to see UncBob install a turntable as well. As if we don’t have enough to do on our own layouts, it is sheer fun living vicariously on UncBob’s growing layout.
I, too, have suggested the Kalmbach book on Locomotive Servicing Terminals.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/400-12228
What say we each chip in $8 and buy it for him?
Rich