these might help with my problem of designing a properly functioning yard. your helpful hints from my other post “yard design” has actually helped like i knew you would, but i thought i would provide a visual as well
Well, the drill bit is probably not prototypical.
Just kidding, couldn’t help myself.[banghead]
I haven’t got to my yard yet, that will be next winter. I will use mine just for storage and not operations. I guess that would be a question you might want to answer for others reading this post.
Peter
First off, I admit, I am no expert on yards… In fact, I cant even claim I knwo how to wing it. With warnign out of the way… here is my take.
I guess the first thing you need to ask your self, do YOU think there is somethign wrong with it? If you do, find out what it is, then tackle what bugs you.
My impression is that, while small, as in actual room, you have alot of options to play with. You have all kinds of leads and swtiches that, while maybe not prototypical, it coudl lead to hours of extra fun for a “modeler”. You can set power and cars out all over the place.
The other direction is you want more room. If that the case, I would knock out all of those switches, get rid of two or thress tracks, and do a ladder yard and you coudl come up about 1.5 or 2 feet more. It will be boring, but you could pick up more “yard room” and increase capcity.
Tell what you think about Rick? What are yoru concerns about it?
Ask youself how it will be operated.
Will there mainline operations going on while you are in the yard?
Will the yard operation foul or conflict with the main?
Do you have a yard throught that seperates the two?
Do you have arrival/departure tracks longe enough for most trains?
If stub ended is there an escape for the locos?
Can the arrival departure tracks access the main dirrectly?
Here is my throught.
The two tracks straight through the turnouts are arrival/departure. The track on the left is a through mainline also for a passenger station. The turnout in the foreground is the beginning of the ladder for the yard. The track on the right in the foreground is the drill track and the left track is the main.I plan to run 5-18 car trains so my arrival/departure will hold that much.
Don’t make it too time intensive to operate as the yard keeps the pace for the entire layout.
Have fun.
I see a couple things you could do to basically keep the same movement between trains and tracks, but would open up your ladder for longer yard tracks.
There’s a little redundancy in the two middle tracks that go from left to right in the second picture. Without being a good photo editor, I can’t do much more than ASCII pictures, so hopefully everything will line up as I try to explain how I would do it. Just ignore the “Oo”'s, that’s the only way I could get the spacing right… the Oo’s are the open spaces between the coal leads and the far left track. Everything is oriented as if looking at the second picture you posted.
First, I would get rid of the second switch track from left to right, and also the crossover switch on the first two yard tracks, like this:
-----\ ------------------------
Ooo\ -----------------------
-------\ ----------------------
--------\ ---------------------
OOoo_________________
Basically, you just get rid of the middle left/right track altogether. That would free up close to 9 inches for extra length on each of your yard tracks. Just move the yard switch lead and the yard tracks toward the coaling tower, where the track you just removed currently sits.
Then, I would change how you have the two coal tower leads connecting with the far left (mainline?) track. Instead of the right hand turnout you have now, I would replace it with a left hand switch, between the curve and the other coal tower lead switch, basically creating a ‘ladder’ out of the far left (mainline?) track and the two coal tower leads.
The last thing I would do is remove the crossover you have between the first two yard tracks. The only purpose it really serves is a runaround, and it’s such a short distance, it’s impractical, and probably would just get in the way of parking trains on those two tracks. If you absolutely need a runaround track, you could just add another right hand switch on