I have been researching trainyard and their shops with little success. The only source that I can find that is really helpful is the Atloona Works diagram on Wikipedia and their official website.
Other than the locomotive and freight shops and power plant, what other structures are in a typical railyard?
Library of Congress online.
then click “American Memory”
Then select Architecture/Landscape… opens 9 collections.
Then select “Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey, 1933-Present”
Classic Trains runs a periodic series in which they have aerial pictures of significant yard facilities. Each has its various facilities and structures labeled and its brief history explained. Reviewing these would be a very useful primer in yard and locomotive facilities.
Given that they were, what, the biggest in the world, I’m not sure I’d count Altoona as “typical.”
What era are you modeling? The newest issue of Trains has a big spread on a CSX shop.
I am modeling present day (2008-present) freelance n scale in central illinois. I saw the issue about CSX, but didnt have the money to pay the issue at the time (on the newstand). I know I will buy DPM or Pikestuff buildings and kitbash them to build a locomotive facility as well, freight car facility, and a small passenger car/passenger locomotive shop.
Hi
You can google ( maps.google.com ) “parkwater spokane wa” if you want to do some industrial espionage - the sat pix is really clear. See the baloon tracks in the middle of the loop, zoom in and check it out. You can almost make out the engine number(s)! You can then possibly gleam information from that. Sure, the BNSF yard is a smaller one but it will give you general ideas to start with. Looking at the image(s), you should get a good idea of what the buildings are for by looking around and figuring out what cars/engines are located near by along with the associated junk laying around. You can also google your favorite yard and get the same info, although I don’t know about the detail. Hinkle, OR (UP) would be another as that one is a huge yard.
ctclibby
Well, there are shops, and then their are shops. Your railroad will build the kinds of shops in needs in the places that it needs. To keep things in scale, you are undoubtedly building a small shop for overnight maintenance and small repairs. It may even be big enough to do the 90 day inspections.
Railroads typically send their equipment to much larger facilities for annual inspections and major overhauls. These will have back-shops of all kinds: body shops, paint shops, wheel shops, engine shops, electrical shops and who know what all else.
New York City Transit has smaller shops at the ends of each subway route. This is where equipment is laid up over night, cleaned, small issues repaired, and daily inspections performed. There are bays for light maintenance, and of course cleaning racks.
NYCT has two major overhaul shops, one at Coney Island and the other at 207th Street. These shops can do anything whatsoever. They have even re-manufactured subway cars from the ground up, but in HO scale, that would be an entire large layout in and of itself. (The LION will represent these shops on his layout with a four track garage.) NYCT has 60 tracks at Coney Island, and about 20 back shop buildings. The LION has a four tracks and one building. Call it selective compression.
Just build what you can, perhaps a shop building and a back-shop building. Nobody can see what is inside of them or know what shop it is. If you build it in the corner of your layout, you may assume that the rest of the back shop buildings, if any, are off the layout.
It might not be unusual to see a string of nine locomotives leaving this shop in tow to a bigger shop in a different city.
I think I read and saw some photos of the New York Subway yards and shops and really they are cool to look at and I do plan on building my own buildings, made-up or prototype. I will have a commuter train pulled by my 4-8-4 made
Here in North Dakota, Red Trail Energy has two locomotives. Both are leased units of which one is painted for RTE and the other is not. RTE is an ethanol plant, they do not repair or maintain locomotives. For periodic inspections, perhaps the lessor sends someone out, or maybe they contract the job to BNSF. For major overhauls, they go back to the leasor’s shops.
RORA
Um… what? That is not what I call “present day” railroading…
Well, given the massive contradictions in your answers, I’m not quite sure how to answer you, but any engine facility requires 3 basic things: fuel, water and sand.
Fuel:
-Diesel fuel: fuel tanks, small shack containing fuel pumps, and a fueling stand.
-Steam: going to assume that your model engine represent coal-burners. So a small coaling tower, or if it’s a tiny terminal that just services one or two little engines, maybe just a track with a couple of gondolas full of coal and a crane with a clamshell bucket.
Water: Obviously steam engines requires lots of water and a water tower. Diesels also use water for coolanst, but much smaller amounts, and the servicing equipment required there is just a standpipe with a hose.
Sand is used for traction. You’d have a sanding tower with a small elevated hopper, and a sand house containing the equipment to dry the sand and blow it up into the sand tower plus some attached storage for sand.
Apart from that, just one or two tracks for storing engines or doing light maintenace (if it’s just diesels that can be open air, steam engines require fully enclosed and below-track pits for running gear maintenance.
Other small buildings would be various small shacks for storage and tools, or carmen’s offices or shelters. Parts and track supplies might be stored around the property either open air or in old storage containers.
Eh… That is the terminal, not the shop.
Shops have to have tools and people to perform the required inspections, make repairs and modifications and routine maintanence.
A Roundhouse is such a shop, the locomotive goes there after it has been fueled and serviced. Obviously steam requires more work than diesel, and diesel requires more work than EMUs, but they all require the same inspections. Equipment must go to a major back shop for heavy maintenance, with lifts that pick up the whole locomotive and move it around the shop.
LIRR does its locomotives (and passenger cars for that matter) at its Dutton Shops. EMUs are locomotives according the the FRA. Cars (and engines) are cleaned at their overnight layover points.
LIRR also has a large maintenance facilities for FREIGHT CARS. They own no freight cars, but if a visiting car needs service, then it must be serviced. The home railroad will be billed for these services. This shop actually makes money for the railroad since its own cars never go off-property.
ROAR
There are two principal books I have purchased and continue to refer to as I build my locomotive servicing yard/freight yard layout. 1- The Model Railroader’s Guide to Locomotive Servicing Terminals (Marty McGuirk) 2002/Kalmbach 2- Steam and Diesel Locomotive Terminals and Service Facilities (Thomas Dixon) 2007/TLC Publishing Both of these have diagrams, photos and commentary by the authors on the topic. Marty’s book is, perhaps, more directly useful, as he includes diagrams of both steam and diesel layouts, differentiated by the type of facilties required to handle each era’s engines. The Dixon book has more historical imagery and content, as it goes back into the latter 19th century. Either or both of these would be very useful for layout planning regarding service facilities. Good Luck, Cedarwoodron
Keyword “I”
It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but myself. I have read all the comments you left on my posts and I feel you are trying to be smartass. Everyone else is being respectful and actually talking about what the thread is about. Read the original question and you will get it.
Thank you.
Thank you again Mr. Lion. I knew I like lions for a reason (I’m a leo), such smart animals 