You mention choosing a tower and tower location as being indicative of era in one of your recent posts.
Towers are expensive… to put it mildly. So two things happen… when money is available or the regulating authority steps in an old tower ceases to be modified to take on new developments and gets replaced with something more up-to-date.
For your purposes I would look at cheating.
You need to step back if you want to allow for different eras. (As I see it this is a bit difficult if you have an intermodal yard sitting there… it’s never going to look right with steam locos… but that’s democracy for you [%-)]).
What I would suggest you do is work out a basic timeline and the shape the layout would have been at key dates.
If you go back far enough you can broadly figure out what would have needed to be the track signalling sections and the towers (using Armstrong frames) in something like the 1950s.
Some towers may have been lost over the next 2 - 3 decades and the signalling for the surviving companies and tracks concentrated on a CTC board in one, maybe two, towers. Then, if you’re lucky, things expand, the intermodal yard gets planned… and you end up with a shiney new tower. As I’ve said somewhere recently, you can have the old tower still there in alternate use or being removed to another site for preservation.
I hope this helps.
(PS did you get my e mails about the turntable? [8D])
You are mixing apples and oranges. A yard is NOT just an yard! It is designed for a specific purpose. An interchange “yard” or track is simply a place where one railroad leaves cars to be picked up by another railroad. and the second railroad leaves cars to be picked up by the first railroad. It might be one track, pull the inbound cars and shove the outbound cars on to the track. It might be two tracks, one for inbound cars and one for outbound. An addition track might be provided for a run around. One end would be connected to track of the first railroad with a turnout locked with th
I suspect that you are asking mtrails to include too much of reality in a “democratic” club modell RR envionment. He’d probably go with some of our ideas if he could but he’s tied up with what different, sometimes diverging, people want. This is only “representative” of the real thing in the broad sense… it is far more MRR functional.
Your ideas are good though… where someone has more opprotunity to apply them.
Use interchangable modulars as mentioned above for different eras. When you want to run steam, replace the intermodal yard with a freight house and team tracks.
Model a railroad museum (from MR suggestion years ago.
Dave, no I didn’t recieve an e-mail from you regarding turntables. Thanks for reiteration to Dog about the club’s democracy. [:)] Come to think of it, I didn’t get notification e-mails that the above posts had been made. Hmmm…
You know, things would be so much easier if the club was set in one era, or time period! When the club ran on analog, there were FOUR main tracks! Immagine how dumb that must have looked. But obviously, to have enough track for everyone to “play” on. I have wondered why these guys simply like running trains. We have one young memeber (17) that I can understand just wanting to play, but the older guys? But i’m guilty too. According the schedule, the club has (I think) TWO prototypical operating sessions per Year. I’d like to see it at least once a month.
Regarding towers, if the idea for the intermodal yard hadn’t come about, the wye-to-yard modules would have been catered to the steam/transition era. We have always wanted an intermodal yard, and never had a place for one, until this unique polygon module was made. But as Dog had suggested, perhaps a steam/transition era module could be inter-changed for scheduled operating sessions, and/or public viewing. Great idea Dog! Maybe in the future as we add on to the end of the current yard module, the intermodal yard could be relocated in a more realistic setting.
[quote]
You are mixing apples and oranges. A yard is NOT just an yard! It is designed for a specific purpose. An interchange “yard” or track is simply a place where one railroad leaves cars to be picked up by another railroad. and the second railroad leaves cars to be picked up by the first railroad. It might be one track, pull the inbound cars and shove the outbound cars on to the track. It might be two tracks, one for inbound cars and one for outbound. An addition track might be provided for a run around. One end would be connected to track of the first railroad with a turnout locked with their switch lock (pad lock), the other end to track of the
As you are probably aware, wyes (and reversing loops) require special wiring. That could get interesting!
Be sure you consider where the operators will need to stand when running the yards. You have the two yards (say the left yard and the right yards off the wye, plus the intermodal yard. If the two yards off the wye are to have seperate operators with their controls on the left side of the layout, you have a conflict since both operators will want to stand where they have the best view of threir resective ladders. If the right yard is controled from right side of the layout, there may be a conflict with the operator of the intermodal yard.
As far as conflicting ops go… use a Dispatcher / put the mains on one “through” Tower not located here and all the wye tracks on a local tower / CTC Board. Then you only have to “talk to each other” when you want to move from the main tracks to the wye/yards and vice versa.
Being on one tower doesn’t mean that you can’t have several things going on at once… the tower operator keeps them apart.
You moght like to think about only putting switches in the wye and where routes would conflict on the tower and keeping all the ladder tracks on ground throws. Less work for the towerman [:D]. Within each yard and its lead track a switching crew can trundle around so long as they stay clear of any fouling points and/or conflicting routes (mainly the diamonds).
With the through track you need to beware modelling a model. I realise that with much of the information we get coming from MRR mags this can be difficult. The thing to try to do is to look for phrases like “I did this to fit it in”. The trouble is that books come in generations and where, years ago, people knew from “everyday experience” that a modeller was “cheating” to fit things in the generations have succesively lost the everyday experience and the books have carried over the ideas from MRR books without a comparison to the real thing or the same background knowledge to be able to see what is going on. I guess that the short version of this is to say that from slight variation we graduallly move to myth… if we’re not careful.
Anyway… why shouldn’t we just enjoy watching the trains trundle by!
[BOY! Someone has changed the setup in this system! Looks good so far]!
True, but what the Old Dog was referring to above was the people operating the layout, NOT the tower operator/s. What I was trying to sayb was something like this; “When you position the operating controls for the layout, and the points of interest on the layout, try to do it in a manner where the club members will not want to want to be in the same space in the aisle at the same time.”
The tower operator would almost certainly be involved in the delivery of train orders to the passing trains. Note that there are two types of train order, some orders can be passed up on the fly using ahoop, other orders must be signed for requiring the train to stop. This would requirwe additional signals. The Old Dog is unsure of the relationship of such signals to the other signals in the interlocking.
The tower operator might be requried to control the operation of highway crossing gates near the tower.
In this situation this probably would not apply, buy at a junction, the operator might be required to function as a block operator on the branch if manual blocking was used on the branch.
[quote user=“Dave-the-Train”]
You moght like to think about only putting switches in the wye and where routes would conflict on the tower and keeping all the ladder tracks on ground throws. Less work for the towerman [:D]. Within each yard and its lead track a switching crew can trundle around so long as they st
The question depends on what is being modeled. If you are modeling a short line, a branch line, or a secondary mainline that does not see that much traffic, fouling the main is no big problem. But on a heavy usage double track mainline, it can attrack unwanted management attention in a hurry. It is a question of how you view your RR.
From your description of the club, it sounds like many of the members enjoy putting a train on the main, and letting it run and are not too much into operation. Making the yard/s a seperate “playpen” would allow them to enjoy the layout while you enjoy doing some switching with interfering with them.
I’m not sure but I suspect that you are overlapping two or more different train operating systems. Train Orders are basically a seperate system from CTC and Absolute systems controlling movements by signal indication. As far as I am aware the systems do not overlep but I am open to correction on this.
Also, as I understand it, Train Orders were given to trains at Train Order Stations/ Offices which did not necessarily have to be towers. Further towers were not necessarily Train Order stations/offices. This is similar to the fact that not all Signalboxes in the UK are Block Posts. The simplest examples in both countries are grade crossing towers/boxes… they may only look after the road crossing and do nothing to regulate trains except to control their movements over the crossing. They will be in the “information loop” (yeuk! I hate that jargon)! but they will not be working the regulating system. – Incidentally; this is not a response to your point 2 above.
[Whether a box/tower has responsibility for a grade crossing is a different issue. In the UK at least (and I’m pretty sure in the US as well) grade crossings do not exist as far as the operating system goes. The regulating system keeps trains apart, routes them and brings them together under controlled conditions… this can be done within a specific system such as an Absolute Block System. Keeping traisn from hitting things on grade crossings that are controlled is a completely different issue. A controlled crossing (whatever gates’barriers there are or are not) is purely a signalling issue… when the crossing is protected (sometimes by gates/barriers) the signals may be cleared. These will control the movement of trains but not have a regulating function within the operating system. Got that? Good… just to confuse you signals will sometimes both control and regulate… as in where a tower/box is
With CTC the signals basically communicate the “train orders” to the crew by signal aspect. It is a much newer process then the items the Old Dog is talking about.
True, in fact most “train order offices” were located at stations since stations are much more common then “towers”. In some rare cases, in remote areas, there might be an “office” without a “tower” or “station” being present.
Almost all manned “towers” would be “TO offices”, since they would need to coordinate with other RR installations by telegraph. If one has a telegraph operator present, he might as well handle TO’s as needed. In fact, in a “tower” where two separate RR’s crossed at grade, the “tower” would often be a “TO office” for both roads.
Same over here, in with an automatic (track circuits) blocking system the “block” signals would rarely be at stations or towers. The Old Dog was referring the manual (hand operated) block signals.
Clearly we are falling over the issue of era and, sometimes individual RR’s practices. We aren’t going to solve this on a “generic” / “run what ya brung” layout. Mtrails is stuck with finding compromises. This is one reason I don’t get much involved with club layouts.
As far as the laddr goes the main thing to watch out for is that too many changes of direction increases the likleihood of derailments/jack-knifing.
Absolute Block in the UK is different from ABS in the USA… which is why I wrote it out in full. It remains that a colour light signal head of a particular kind (in itself) can be doing one of several jobs (one at a time and one at each location - this is why engineers need route knowledge… have you ever thought about those signals having numbers plates etc? they’re not very big are they? So a Driver has to stop to read them or know them from experience if he is rolling by).
Semahore arms in the US point the other way 'cos most of you drive on the wrong side - except the CNW for one… can’t say that I’ve noticed where there semaphores are though [:I] as I model diesel era.
Train Order Signals (as you probably know) are usually just outside the office and back-to-back on the same post - so that on approach one arm sticking out to the right will show its face and the other, sticking out to the left, will show its back. Green/Board straight up meant clear to run through/no orders. Yellow/45degrees meant clear to run through BUT picking up Orders on the move (both loco and conductor). Red(???) /horizontal meant Stop and sign for Orders.
Now that the Old Dog has completed his battle with one of Microsoft Word’s less useful features, automatic paragraph spacing, let’s get started.
There is an old saying, “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.”
That design for a yard would be used strictly for car storage on a “real” RR for just that reason. It is an attempt to get as many cars as possible in a limited area. Such a yard would normal be in an area where land costs are low. It might for something like storing cars when a Midwestern RR is getting ready for the grain rush.
First, note that there is fail safe feature, if the plate falls off, the signal must be treated as an absolute signal. The driver does not need to read the plate, he only needs to see that it is there. "Route kn