I’m actually drawing my layout’s yard and would like it to look somewhat like a typical UP yard around 1940,with no specific area in mind.I already have a station/freight house combo and the coaling tower.I know I’ll need a water tower too and likely sand facilities.A roundhouse would be great but since it eats up too much space’I’ll go for parallel stall buildings.But other than these components,what shoul usually be found in a regular steam era yard?And if any of these could be found combined,even better as space is at a premium.Thanks.
i assume you are running coal burning locomotives only so there is no need for an oil collumn. you might want to consider an ash pit, an inspection pit, a wash rack, perhaps a blowdown box and pad and if your engine house is on the small side, an old box car body for supply storage and hideout/break room for the employees.
it really depends on how many locomtives you are servicing in a day but the above should give you a pretty complete little engine terminal
as for the rest of the yard, a yard office of some sort (can be located in the freight house building) and a shanty for the car knockers. a small scale and scale house would make a nice touch. if space is at a premium, you could located the scale on the lead track.
you might want a rip track and cab track near the engine house so you can keep all the mechanical types in one area.
Kalmbach published a book on engine terminals. if you can find a copy, it will probably show you everything you want to know.
grizlump
The UP had coal and oil-fired geographical areas. You need to choose and have appropriate facilities and locomotives. If both, you’d want one part of the layout for coal-fired locomotives and another part for the oil-fired, with the locomotive facilities between.
Mark
Actually none of those are “typical” for a YARD. What you are describing is an engine terminal or facility. The depot and freight house would be at a station that would be in or around a decent size town, which may or may not be next to the yard.
Water towers would be about every 20-30 miles and might be located at a yard.
Fuel would be every 50-100 miles and might located at a yard.
Engine facililties with roundhouses would be at major yards, but a minor yard that originated or terminated trains might also have a turntable or roundhouse.
For engine servicing you would need minimally fuel, water and sand. If the area had cold weather them might have an engine house. If the location has mechanical forces on duty they would have a engine house with a pit.
As far as the yard you would have a lead on each end with a crossover to the main or siding. There will be a yard office, which can be a one story frame structure, maybe two. There will be a crew room which may be attached to or under the yard office. There may be one on each end. If the yard originates trains it may have a train order operator. If its a big yard there will be a tube system from the office with the yardmaster to the crew rooms on both ends of the yards, it will be a big pnuematic tub about 3-4 in in diameter, like the ones they use at drive in
This is what makes this hobby interesting.Modelling implies that one takes into account a lot of “mandatory” features then there are all the “might be’s” and “likely have’s”.I say great as one has a lot of options to decide from,having the possibility of creating something unique.
As far as my yard,or better said a terminal,I want it to be on the light side.I’m not much into switching so it will mostly be used to store my rolling stock so they’re left on the layout when not operating.I have about 40 freight cars total so even with all of them parked on it,it won’t qualify as a major yard,let alone a yard.Over the last few years,my interests have turned to steam powered passenger cars made of mostly HWY Pullmans(have 40+ of these also) so a station is mandatory.So this “terminal” would mostly be used as a local passenger terminal with occasional freight trains stopping by to drop and pick up a few cars at a time as a service to a few local industries,with “refueling” and emergency repairs and/or light maintenance being performed when needed.I like to think this was what a terminal was for but then I may be wrong.
keep in mind that not all coach yards and engine terminals were close to the station. some were at remote locations but that was most often in large cities.
grizlump
Since you aren’t being prototypical, then don’t worry about it and put in what you want.
Normally freight and passenger aren’t mixed in the same yard. Two completely different operations. A “local passenger terminal” would not be handling Pullman cars, but would deal mostly in coaches, combines and baggage cars. Pullmans were serviced at major terminals.
Sounds like what you want is a generic set of tracks you can store equipment on and switch around if you want to. That’s fine, build that and then don’t worry about what the prototype had or didn’t have because you will have a mix of trains and operations the prototype didn’t use.
Thanks for all this info,it confirms what I strongly suspected…I know next to nothing about prototypical operations but am learning.Had I elected to go steamers on the get go,things would be much different but I do have an interesting fleet of modern diesels (N scale,DCC equipped) that I can’t part with unless I nearly gave them away.This being out of the question,I’ll still run them within a steam era context,not worrying too much about the weird setup.However,all my future purchases will be steam oriented and so thinking,the layout is being planned accordingly.
I’m not disturbing my sleep with the prototypical goal,but will still put some effort towards it by collecting infos and materials to achieve it.Not a two day chore…Thanks again.
i think you are on the right track. this is all about having fun. no one will actually duplicate prototype railroad operations until he starts getting paid to move scale sized loads on his layout and deals with the business end of railroading, so we all play mind games. if you become too obsessed with getting everything right it can spoil the fun.
you will usually get a bunch of advice when you post a question on this forum, some will be well intentioned and some will be strictly opinionated. you must decide which is which and if it applies to your circumstances.
i try to stay true to prototype with my operations and the era i have chosen to model but, i have a brass steam locomotive and passenger consist that once belonged to a dear friend, long deceased. it does not fit in with anything i am doing but i run it around the layout now and then in his memory.
i will make you this bet. as you research and learn more, your ideas and attitudes will change a lot and that is part of the fun this hobby provides.
grizlump
Ah ha! Another opportunity to repeat my “yard philosophy.” Thanks.
If your modeling a UPRR engine facility many of them typically used the type of “coal bunker” shown in the pic form a previous post I had a while back. There were several variants of this and the typical concrete coaling towers of the north east would not be seen in a UP yard. A simple way to describe how much equipment etc.is in a large engine facility would be to stuff 100lbs of manure into a 20lb bag.
Not only will u need a coal bunker and water tank you will need water columns, sand drying house and bunker, sanding towers, ash pit and conveyors, a wreck track,lots of yard lights several shops including the roundhouse and turntable of course. maybe a car shop and or a back shop to handle repairs on equipment. contrary to what many believe repairs were not done in the roundhouse only light maintenance before being turned to go out on the main the next day. It sounds like your taking selective compression to a whole new level…lol by using the same yard for passenger operations and freight storage but your the master of your railroad so do with it as you please.
If you want an excellent reference book, Kalmbach has The Model Railroaders Guide To Locomotive Servicing Terminals by Marty McGuirk an excellent source of information on exactly what your inquiring about. Just because your doing something that the prototype would never do that doesn’t mean you can’t do it right. By this I mean you can separate your two operations, don’t do things like park trains on the track(s) where your coal bunker is don’t have rolling stock in the same section as your engine facility and one of my pet peeves which I saw a club do at an open house have rolling stock cross the turntable bridge. The member tried to tell us that they used to do it all the time, sorry they never did.
So you can actually make your UP yard look like something that really might have been if you do some research.
Good luck and enjoy
OK…well…to the purist,it is an obvious fact that I’ll be doing it all wrong.I don’t have the right coaling tower(concrete) and space doesn’t allow a roundhouse,although I’m considering a turntable that can’t turn my bigger horses.The water tower and the other installations are a future addition as budget allows but definitely won’t have all the space eating buildings.Already have a station that’s probably not UP typical either but that will have to do for now but in N scale,choice is somewhat limited.When you want something specific,you have to custom build it but right now my spare time is devoted to the layout itself…I want to run trains…some day.
The bulk of the layout operations will be passenger trains and then again I’m doing it weird as I’ll have trains that were never seen together (SP Lark and UP’s Portland Rose) but I have assembled them so I’ll run them,both incomplete because of layout size.Even in N scale,a GS4 and nine HWY Pullmans take up six feet of track.And then I’ll have an occasional Mike or lightly loaded Big Boy pulling some freight around.Not prototypical I know,but that’s the stuff I have on hand.Even less prototypical will be when I’ll run my SD90’s and AC4400’s with friends as neither of them has any steamers.