What you need is what makes you happy!
I thought you were called to active duty ? On hold for now ? The hurry up and wait system ?
While yards and/or staging seem to be in fashion in published plans today, most model railroads probably have neither.
I once watched a major RR at the end of one of their branch lines. There was no yard. A train came in with 2 locos and about 30 cars. After switching some industries the locos were parked on an industrial spur. There were several other locos in the area parked on another spur. The next day they did some more switching and then left town with about 40 cars.
Vsmith is right.
IT IS NOT A SIN NOT TO HAVE A YARD ON A MODEL RAILROAD!
You will not go to hell if you don’t have a yard…however you will spend a long time in pergatory…
Actually, as stated a staging track or interchange track serves the same purpose. You could use a track or siding for several purposes, interchange, staging, as RIP track. Thios would provide the function without taking up much space.
Tilden
Well,
You need to ask this question within the context of YOUR requirements.
What do you want to accomplish with your RR operationally?
Yards are the “Heart” of an RR, the center of a circulatory system.
With a true yard, however quaint, you can receive, dispatch, and reorganize trains. No other part of the RR infrastructure accomplishes this as efficiently.
A good yard does not have to be a big yard. It merely needs to have the capacity to address your RR’s operational requirements.
Without some sort of yard you put a damper on the operational side of model railroading.
BTW “Port” on the famous “Gorre & Daphetid” was essentially a two track yard.
You certainly do not need a yard, but you might well find yourself missing one if you don’t have one. On my layout the “yard” is a single passing siding next to a double-track main. That leaves me with only a very limited amout of space for visible storage on the layout. I have about 50-60 revenue cars, most of which never see the light of day but remain socked away in their storage drawers. To my mind these items should be on display, because why did you buy them otherwise? A yard is the logical place to display them.
I assume you mean me?! Yes, I’m gone away for now,but in a holding pattern while the Big Army decides if I am going to join the rest of my unit or send me home on retirement. Evidently I am in a position that only happens once or twice a century, so the regulations are so old nobody is sure if they still apply, even though they haven’t been superceded yet. I’m waiting for a review board to convene and decide my fate. Might just be here for another 30 years at this rate.
Anyway, I still say you need a yard (or staging area if you want to call it that). A model railroad, no matter how small, can still have a place to make up a train as the real roads did, even if it serves a dual function of yard and industry/main/passing/staging tracks. In the compromise of the model world, one set of tracks can serve as a yard, then as industrial sidings, then as main lines or run arounds, depending on how you operate the railroad. Even a small circle of track with two spurs can be operated, with some creativity, as a real railroad if we are willing to suspend our disbelief.
While given the option, I think that I (or real railroads) would always prefer a yard, but it is not absolutely necessary. The shortline near me does not have a yard to speak of, but they make it work. They have a pair of passing sidings that they use to shuffle cars around. They probably do a lot more pushing of cars than a class I however.
They even interchange with their class I (NS) using just one spur siding (not passing siding) in a “cornfield meet!” They go nose to nose with the NS engine back down a siding and then get out of the way while the NS pulls out the empties. Then the NS takes its train down, the shoreline pushes the empties up and then goes in and pulls out the loads. They can do a little more shuffling and the shortline can pull the loads back down and the NS can pull the empties up north.
hey, i don’t have a yard. thats mainly due to a lack of space, lack of freight cars, and a lack of track. switching lots of industries is way more fun! there is planning and other things that i just forgot. with a yard:
train comes into yard, train is either broken up or left there, and then train leaves…
with lots of switching:
train approaches with empty (or full) cars, switches around the cars via a car list (or whatever its called), train becomes rearranged, train leaves to serve more industries…etc.
which is more fun and uses more (fun) time?
lots of switching!!! some turnout may not have an industry to service, so it could be called a team track or a very tiny yard.
me…i prefer switching.
There was a good thread on this subject last summer. It included the definition of the various types of yards too.
I know of a short line (about 50 miles long) that has a passing track at each end of the line. That is as close to “yards” as it has. At the end of the line all the cars are positioned at their industries (classified in place). At the interchange end all the cars a put on the one siding, the locomotive runs around and goes home. There are no locomotive facilities either. The locomotive is parked on the ‘main’ in front of the station.
That earlier thread also used the Belfast & Moosehead Lake as an example.
[:)]
A couple of passing sidings, several industrial spurs, and staging hidden behind a wall sounds plenty sufficient to me. I think you will enjoy it a lot.
BTW, if I have a “fiddle siding,” it will be on the front of the layout next to the controller, so I can work it without walking around behind anything.
[:)] [:)]
I’ve got over 40 yard switchers in my fleet and no yard on my home layout. They just run idiot loops on the main line. So no, a yard is not necessary if you want to run trains. Just have fun doing what you’re doing.
Well, I definitely plan to use the area behind my wall for staging, but I think I’ll need some kind of type of fiddle yard on the layout at least, otherwise I’ll be using my industrial trackage, and they ought to be more limited to the type of freight cars that industry would need. So maybe I can adapt my track plan and have the passing siding expand into a small yard with anothe line of track, or two. I’ll see about that. It sounds on this thread that a shortline yard with two or three tracks, quite small but size-efficient, wouldn’t be so un-prototypical.
In any case, I fancy my freelance shortline to be a larger shortline or a small regional rather than a mom-and-pop RR, so a small yard would be in order, if i follow the comments.
So I guess i’ll try to adjust my plan a bit, and redirect some track to see if it can work and not be a mess. Geez, one thing is real…it’s great to do a track plan, but doesn’t reality hit when you put up the benchwork and get a look at the true space! Now there aren’t as many sugar plums dancing in my head anymore. Time to make some tough choices. I may have to kill an industry or get rid of some town section.
Brakie…do you have any examples that I could look up for prototype NS or CSX yards at the base of mountain passes or mountain climbs? Is there any special purpose for these yards…are they freight yards or simply yards to marshal helper service? If you have some examples, I could look them up on google maps for some additional inspiration. If anyone else has some good examples of shortline yards that I could map-look at, please do let me know.
Thanks all for an informative thread…
Shawnee,Coal marshaling yards is plentiful in the Appalachian coal fields.[:D][tup]
http://appalachian_railroad.tripod.com/index.html
Brakie, of course you’re right…i wasn’t considering the tracks at my coal mine as a yard, but rather as industrial trackage. But of course it is a yard. But i was thinking of “yard” more in terms of a general RR freight yard for multiple freight service.
Thanks~
Well the Shelby,Ky comes to mind as does Elkhorn City.Then theres Johnson City Tn,Bluefield,Huntington and many others that serve coal and general freight nested in the Appalachians…I am sure there are others out West and in the North-East as well.
aloco, yours is another of those heresies which will be severely punished when you attempt to pass through the pearly gates and enter that great basement in the sky. Don’t you realize that model railroading is shoving cars mindlessly into spurs; if your cattle car won’t fit at the stockyards spur shove it into the fruit packing plant - but SHOVE IT - that, by the way, is what I tell those people who tell me that I can’t be a true model railroader unless I am an ‘operator’.
I have had 2 model railroads and only one had a yard, the second layout I built was to run trains on a mainline and fiddling with cars in a yard seemed less than satisfactory for me, although i did have a couple passing tracks to hold trains that were not currently running.
Here is a bird’s eye view of the small NS yard at Lambert’s Point, Norfolk, VA. Similar shots can be found by using mapquest or similar direction programs. It’s a great “eye in the sky” research tool. Notice the roundhouse and turntable still in use. Click on the “birds eye” tab for really cool and very clear closeups.
I have better stuff via military sattelite, but I’d go to jail if I shared it[;)]
Tangerine Jack, very cool ISR on Lambert’s Point. [;)] Is that one of NS’ coal shipment points?