Hello modelrailroaders. I saw the Realisitc Model railroad design book and one of the pictures show that a person has 17 seperate tracks to make a big train yard. The real train yards I’m guessing would be 20 seperate tracks for a train yard talk about a lot of trains passing by. Have you guys ever try to make a train yard and how many tracks did you use for your yard?
Sincerely
Ryan LaPlaca
It is a function of need. A major yard like Conway outside Pittsburgh or Enola outside Harrisburg both on the old PRR were actually four yards. there was a westbound and eastbound recieiving yard and an eastbound and westbound departure yard. Why? Because trains came in with cars for different destinations but the yard where they originated was only concerned with getting westbound cars headed west and eastbound cars headed east. Those yards reblocked the cars becasue they had trains going to one destination like Chicago or St. Louis and needed to have only those cars in the train. Keeping cars moving is what it is about and railroads become clogged from one end to the other when the yards get tied up. By the way both of those yards were miles long and had over 100 tracks easily. On the other end of the spectrum was C street yard in Philadelphia barely big enough for 6-8 cars on three tracks. So what was that all about? The crews working that section needed a way for some reason like a facing point switch to run around a couple of cars and reblock the train or store a couple of cars. Size depends on the need.