To all the individuals contributed to my post, thank you very much!
Wyatt
[#welcome] to the forum Your posts are delayed for a while in moderation. If you have no Russian brides to sell us, you are in.
With imgur, if you copy the BB code, we can see the photo in the forum (control C Control V, don’t use any icons)
I’m not the layout guy, but is there access into the center of the layout.
I like that yard and terminal plan, looks good.
Yes, it would be nice to understand how the benchwork is configured.
Sheldon
Henry,
Thanks for posting my post and the Imgur suggestion.
As far as access is concerned the operating aisle at the top as well as the lower portion of the layout is accessible through a man door. The two tracks in the middle of the plan are just temporary to be able to run trains during construction of the yard and until I finish designing the balance of the layout.
Sheldon,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on my post and for the compliment. The benchwork will be 1 x 4 open grid, 3/4 subroadbed.
[#welcome]
After a few posts your contributions will not be delayed my the moderators any longer. Please stick around with us.
That looks like an excellent yard/engine terminal arrangement. I have the same questions Henry and Sheldon had about benchwork and access.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
-Kevin
Hi Wyatt,
Overall the yard looks great. However, I suggest that you give some consideration to a couple of things:
The first is the lengths of the yard leads. Ideally your yard leads (the tracks that you move your trains onto to allow them to be switched from one yard track to another) should be at least as long as your longest yard track. Your current yard leads are not quite that long. The solution is simple in your case. All you need to do is move the turnouts that are on the ends of the yard leads further along the mainline away from the yard. You can get away with the shorter yard leads as they exist, but that means that you might have to move a long outbound train onto the departure track in two pieces, or fowl the mainline with the long trains. If you don’t plan on running long trains then there isn’t an issue with the way you have planned the yard.
The second potential issue is the reach in distance to the center of the yard. Even assuming that you can access the yard from both sides, by the time you add in a few inches of benchwork on either side, the center of the yard will be difficult to reach while standing in the aisles. I made that mistake in a couple of spots when I designed my old club’s new layout a couple of years ago. The result was that the members had to climb up onto the layout to install the track. If you are willing to do that then the problem sort of goes away, but climbing onto the layout is very uncomfortable and potentially damaging. However, once things are done, it won’t have to happen very often. Recognize that you probably won’t to be able to manually uncouple cars in the middle of the yard.
[2c]
Dave
This was my concern. The benchwork as drawn appears to be over 5’ wide. I would have no more than 36", but ideal for most is around 24". We had 36" in spots on my old O scale layout. It wasn’t too bad to re-rail a locomotive, but I’m also 6ft tall and the benchwork wasn’t very high.
Ed
As another example, I am 6’ tall and my layout surface is 36" off the floor. I can reach in no more than 40".
Rich
This plan does require access from both sides, and it woul be nice to know what the desired operational scheme is.
Sheldon
I would also like to see an operational plan, or at least a detailed narrative describing the OP’s modeling philosophy and objectives.
It is certainly an interesting layout. I’ve been pondering it for a coupla days now. So far my impression is that it’s four yards cabobbled together: one lower right, one lower middle diagonal, one upper middle horizontal, and one upper horizontal; plus, a turntable/roundhouse tossed in for fun. A lot of activity.
Access from both sides is necessary, and the reach-ins are not all that bad. That is, they wouldn’t be all that bad except for the delicate work required for typical yard operations: coupling, uncoupling, derailments and re-railing, throwing and closing millions of switches, etc.
All in all an interesting challenge, and I always like a good challenge.
Just my observations and opinion, of course. Good luck.
Robert
Hi Dave,
Thanks for reviewing my post and your suggestions.
That’s why I made this post was to lean on everyone’s experience and hopefully have a majority of my mistakes pointed out and corrected before starting construction.
As far as the yard leads that is something I definitely overlooked and will extend them.
Adding a few additional inches to each side of the layout edge will decrease my reaching the center of the layout and was also something I overlooked. I was trying to keep the layout around 5’ 1/2 wide for the most part. Do you thing if I were to delete the passenger station siding, one freight yard classification track and one arrivial / depart track that I could gain enough back to where it world be workable?
Thanks again Dave for your input…
Hi Ed,
Thanks for reviewing my post and your comments on layout widths.
This is something that I need to give some additional consideration to and see what changes I can make.
Thanks again Ed…
Hi Rich,
Thanks for reviewing my post and taking the time comment.
My yard layout is accessible from both sides but by the time all is said and done reach will still be somewhat challenging, so i’m reviewing my plan to see what changes I can make to ease this problem.
Thanks again Rich for your input.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for pondering over my plan and your detailed response. BTW, love your layout, very impressive!!!
As far as my plan goes yard operations is my favorite part of the hobby so thats why I’m starting with the yard first. I like a lot of track, cars and switching. I don’t have an operational plan as of yet, I was going to leave that up to the person I hire to design the rest of my layout.
With that being said, I tried to incorporate as many yard functions as possible with the goal of having each yard fuction without interfering with another for operation purposes.
- Engine facility (steam & 1st generation diesels) positioned to face into the layout room
- Double ended freight yard
- 3 arrival/ depart tracks (avoid bottle neck)
- Car shop, bad order / rip and MOW tracks
- 6 car icing facility that would accommodate 14 car through trains
- Small passenger yard
- Stock pens and grain elevator to add a varity of switching & operation
- Two temp tracks are just for early operation while working on the yard.
By angling freight and arrival yards allowed a majority (not all) of the turnouts to be within reach. Turnouts would be operated by switch machines, uncoupling would be done by hindged magnets and I planned on installing two re-railers per track in the freight yard.
Based on your input and the input of others, I’m looking (open to specific suggestions) to see what I can do to reduce the with of my plan without comprising the integerity of the plan unless enough fellow modelers suggest I start from scratch.
Once again thank you for your time and input and look forward to additional comments and/or suggestions.
Operational plan?
How many people to operate the yard?
I believe that simpler is often better.
It seems to me that the number of tracks could be reduced. Are 7 freight yard tracks needed? 5 passanger yard tracks? Why not just 2 A-D tracks instead of 3?
Keep the functions but simplify. This would make it easier to keep track of the operations and have the benefit of reducing the necessary width improving access.
Hi Wyatt,
Doing those things would help a bit, but I think that the biggest issue is that the two center yards are on an angle. That effectively widens the benchwork by about a foot (I’m guessing). If you were to eliminate or reduce the angle you could reduce the benchwork width.
Unfortunately that would shorten your yard tracks a bit if you were to use the same turnout arrangement, so let me suggest a couple of options:
-
Rotate the roundhouse and turntable counterclockwise so you can move the turntable north (up) about 8" until the bottom of the turntable is even with the southwest corner of the roundhouse. That will allow you to move the yard ladder up so you can reduce the angle of the yard.
-
Change the turnout arrangement on the west end of the main yard so it looks something like this:
That will allow you to fit the yard entrance around the turntable. You will have to move some of the garden tracks to the top of the turntable.
- In order to keep the main yard tracks as long as possible, consider using a pinwheel yard ladder on the east end of the yard, something like this:
I know it is not ideal because of the curved ladder, but you are not likely to be coupling or uncoupling on the curves if the straight sections of the yard tracks are long enough. All the turnouts are straight by the way. No curved turnouts.
- Eliminate the tracks as you have suggested, and eliminate one or maybe two of the tracks leading to the turntable. Lots of roundhouses only had
Yeah, I kinda figured that. [:D]
I understand this is Phase 1, and the loop of temp tracks around the room is to allow entrances and exits to and from the yard and to take trains out on excursions to stretch their legs.
Any (rough) ideas for Phases 2 and 3? I’m asking because my initial thought is to remove the passenger station (as discussed with Dave) and the uppermost 2 or 3 tracks/sidings and possibly move them on the other side of the room or along either of the sides. You could pick up 6 or 8 inches, which might not sound like much, but it is a lot more than you might think. Plus, moving the station would solve the aromatic issues. The last thing you want is a bunch of irate passengers posting obnoxious videos on YouTube. Have you flown lately?
Good luck.
Robert
D Schmitt,
Thanks for taking the time to review my plan and your suggestions. Your suggestions have been added to my list of options.
Thanks again…
Dave,
Thanks for your suggestions and your illustrations. With all the suggestions received to date should give me enough to start revising my plan.
Thanks again Dave…