Even though I have already started laying track, I just thought of this question. On my layout, I have a walthers Northern Light and Power power plant. This is currently served by a one track siding. What I want to know is, do I need another siding. The one is only long enough for a few hoppers, which are bottom drop (definetly not the right word, but you get what I mean). Thanks for your help!
This is kind of fun, as at work the other day I designed the track layout plan for a real power plant about 1,000 times the size of this one. The principles are the same, even though we’re dumping 270 to 300 143-ton gross weight rapid-discharge and/or rotary-dump cars on a loop track every day, instead of five or six 70-ton gross weight cross-hoppers on a dead-end spur every day.
The short answer is you only have to have one spur. But you do need space, somewhere to trade loads for empties. The question is whether you use the main track or a running track (a two-ended siding parallel to the main track) to switch from.
I know nothing about the era you’re modeling, or the location of your plant (big city/small town, main track or branch line), so my comments have to encompass many different things.
This kit models a very small, very old power plant – circa 1920. Of course, power plants last a long time so there’s nothing wrong with having that power plant still functioning 30-50 years later. Today it’s very rare for such old, small power plants to be in service because they cannot meet emissions requirements without a major reconstruction, and if the utility is going to spend that kind of money, they want a plant that’s considerably more efficient. And since the cost of the powerplant is 95% what goes in the building (boiler, turbine) and not the building itself, no one is going to live with an old building if it constrains efficiency or size in any way. Buildings this old however are often still in use but not often as coal-fired generating stations, now housing gas turbines or diesel peaker units, or switch gear or just storage.
Supposing you were modeling, say, 1950. The plant needs a spur for coal supply and room to sort out loads and empties, such as a drill track or runner. The coal spur needs to be almost twice as long as the daily coal supply, so that there’s somewhere to shove ea
How many do you need?
You might have that one siding to the dump pit. To me that is “Not enough” I mean, a huge Powerplant can eat that one itty-bitty hopper in a hour’s time and regirgugate the ashes somewhere else for re-use by concrete or similar plants. I see 8 50 ton hoppers every 8 hours coming and going. Probably justifies it’s own switcher if the railroads local cannot keep up.
You could position the pit way towards the back of the one siding and add a pipe or two for loading ash into covered hoppers from time to time that can be shipped out on the second siding.
Dont forget that alot of power plants were not mega units but rather served for Hospitals, facilities and other areas where it is needed but not necessarily part of the National Grid. These plants are likely to use Coal, Oil or Gas if they can get to it or have it brought to them.
I recall a plant in Maryland that served a hospital for years run by a switcher, it finally was kaput by advancing technology I think in the 60’s.
Back in school we had a building that we called the power plant, but in reality it was a boiler that was as big as a semi trailer and it needed to generate hot water for the whole campus. I guess they pipe in the fuel now but would not be too difficult to imagine coal or oil going into that place before 1950.
I say have a track to unload the material, have one or two tracks to “Store” additional cars (One for empties, another for loads maybe?) have an industrial switcher or simulate a cable pull system that shuffles these cars to and fro.
I suspect the real answer is how much laybout space do you have availible for that industry. You dont sound satisfied with just one track.
I have a Walthers Coal yard that can only handle three hoppers. Fair enough, but what to do with the sand, gravel, rock, fuel oil and Pressurized Gas? That needs a second track and alot of thinking where it can go in the future. (Now that the futur
If you have limited space on the layout to provide for the ideas so far there are at least two things that you can do…
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If the space for the dump road on the scenic layout is too short find a way of running it off scene through some sort of bridge - road, rail, foot, pipeline or combination. Once off scen you can curve the line around to fit into the backscene area as tight as you like/the cars will stay on the track. Two extremes of this are (a) to run into a vertical magazine that takes single cars on different decks (“all you need” is to sort out the indexing arranging to seperate the cars so that you drop one car at a time into the magazine shouldn’t be too bad if you’re using kadees [:-^]) (b) to make the curve vertical dropping the out-of-sight cars below the main track level (this avoids the indexing and uncoupling issues).
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If you want to run say 30 cars of coal to the facility per day but only have a 10 car spur (5 cars per trip according to the above) then set aside some space in your staging area (the often unused space alongside the entry/exit ladder track is good) for a switcher or road engine (depending on your preference) to steadily shuttle the cars backwards and forwards. If your scheme allows one trick you can use is a variant of the loads in/empties out… once you shove the loaded cars under that bridge you can go on shoving (or switch back) and put the loaded cars back into the staging area… you then hook up to a cut of empties and reverse the trip… so that the loco re-appears with a string of empties…
I don’t know your trackplan but you - or someone else - might try this…
The Walthers structure is on scene with the switch to the running track and 5-6 cars’ length of spur. At the end of the spur away from the switch the spur passes the facility building (front or back as you choose)… it then dives under both a road and a conveyor bringing the coal bac
Well first, the spur really resembles a passing siding with room for 5 or 6 100 ton hoppers. I have about 4 feet from the end of the spur until the end of the layout. Can I put a two track yard connected to the siding? If you look at my layout, it is located in the top right corner of the bottom left section of my layout. One other problem with that plan is I had to shorten the length of the mainline on that side so the switch on the right side of the siding is about 18" from a curve, sorry no way around it. Also, the plant will have a dedicated switcher which will spot the cars. Here’s my track plan:
http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g239/DerrickKM/?action=view¤t=newtrackplan.jpg
You appear to have designed a point to point layout… but (sorry) without annotation I can’t see the point of it.
You appear to have two yard areas in the top section with one r=yard kicking back off one track of the other, something (a station) at the LH end and a couple of sidings/ dead end spurs and a track with the power station loop in the bottom section.
What’s it doing/represent? Wht do you want to do with it?
What scale are you working in? N? H0? What era and (roughly) where in the USA?
Yes you could put in two roads - both at either end of the run round, two at each end or one at each end. To some extent whatever you do will need to relate to where the buildings go and where the cars drop the coal… into what… to be taken further on by what… trcuk, conveyor, auger, narrow gauge cars???
After looking at the plan, is the plant on the bottom part, the rectangle area with the track running thru? If so, perhaps move the powerplant to the right hand edge. Put up a wall. Have the track come up to the wall, with a doorway big enough to run a train thru. Just to the left of the wall, put in a switch. Have two tracks, one for loads, one for empties. Then come back out towards the main. The dump pit would be inside the wall. Could be modeled, but doesn’t have to be.
Madison Gas and Electric in Madison WI has a setup like I described. They get 17 loads on spot, go thru 8-9 a day. A Shuttlewagon moves the cars inside the wall, where they get dumped, then put outside. The plant is about 1/2 mile from the yard, so the cars are shoved over. Maybe a Google Map can show the area.
The University of Wisconsin - Madison has their own coal fired plant (heater). It is on a sharp curve with a big hill, on a wye. They move cars around with a front end loader, usually bending something up on the process. 12 cars on spot - 4 in the plant, over the pit; 2 up top, and 6 down below. Hard to describe with out pictures. Maybe somebody can post or link some.
Your link did not work for my computer, so I’ll have to free-form this:
You only NEED a spur to the side of a power plant. But if you want to keep busy switching the power plant while trains run elsewhere, you WANT more. Given the 5-car delivery plan discussed above, you can have: (1) a spur for loads, long enough for the cars. This leads to the dump spot at the end. (2) a spur for empties, long enough for the cars. (3) a ‘yard lead’ parallel to the main line and facing the spurs, at least 1 car plus an engine long, preferably >5 cars plus an engine long. (4) a crossover that connects the main line to a point between the spurs and the yard lead. As best as I can tell (which may not be very good) this is the minimum size to efficiently handle multiple-car deliveries.
If anybody has infinite length but little width, you could have a delivery track, with the dump spot in the center, twice as long as the normal delivery cut of cars. As cars are emptied, the whole cut is pulled along until the last one is done.