Hi everyone, I would like to know your opinions about my yard design, also if you have pic’s of L shape yards it would be great. I’m using #6 switches and track 100 code from Atlas. Also there are two double slip #6 from Shinohara. Thanks in advance 
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3532/4069680874_0573af72fa_b.jpg
Not bad, and [#welcome]
I’m not a pro when it comes to track plans, but if you want to see some pictures of an L-shaped yard check out the websites listed in my signature. My layout is a L-shaped locomotive servicing faculity.
Good Luck,
Jamie
What is the size of your grid? If it is 12 inches that is a good sized yard. Looks good to me, but I am not an expert. I would be happy with it…
Thanks for comments
each square has 1feet x 1feet. I will add picture after finishing the layout, I’m having some problems with engine facilities
The thing to pay close attention to, when it comes to yards, are the S-curves. Coupling cars is that much harder across an S-curve, and long cars just generally don’t like 'em. In the design as you have it, there are several lurking, most noticeably on the mains and A/D track at the bottom. Is it necessary to offset the tracks like this, and return back to parallel to the grid? On my own yard, which is rather comparable to yours, I angle the mains in at approximately the frog angle of my switches, such that all curvature pretty much happens through the diverging route of the turnout.
The bottom switch going into the caboose track is a left-hand switch, yet you could use a right-hand switch located closer to bottom, where your S-curve leading up to the current switch location begins.
The frontmost two yard tracks exhibit S-curves coming through the yard ladder into track 2. This could be solved by using a left hand switch instead of right to branch between tracks 1 and 2. This keeps all the curvature bending in the same direction, eliminating the S-factor.
One thing I do like about this design is how you’ve handled the trade-off between A/D track length and Drill Track (Yard Lead). Ideally, the drill is as long as the A/D so that the switcher can pull the whole train to break it down. On my own layout, I opted to have an A/D track a bit longer than my drill, figuring that long trains can be broken into two sections. Your solution, though, has the switch from A/D onto drill located about 2/3 of the way up the A/D track, which means you can break a short train in one go and a long train can be broken in the middle, working the bottom half first. It’s both versatile and compact - I like it!
Thanks WP&P, do you have pictures where I can see your layout? and as my technical english is not so good, do you have pictures examples of what you said at the beggining? sorry for the problems
Hi Fondo –
Welcome to the forum.
Try to explain what your thinking behind your yard is. As set up, I can see a number of features that are a little puzzling.
How long and how many trains will your yard be handling at the same time? You have five six-foot plus classification tracks and a 10-11 foot yard lead, but still only have a single double ended seven foot or so track that you can take trains directly into from the main.
Will you only be taking apart or building one train at a time? If so, why do you need a big engine facility and three feet of caboose track - how many engines and cabooses will you need to handle in an operating session?
Of the nine parallel yard tracks where your yard is at the thickest, two tracks seem to be purely engine escape tracks (one between the dedicated A/D track and the double ended three foot caboose track, and one at the far left. To get to the engine facility, you need to cut across the yard ladder.
How many blocks of cars do you need to build at the same time - do you really need to build five six-foot blocks at the same time?
You are not saying where your walls are, but I assume left and top. If so, your main will run between you (in the aisle) and your yard, so you will have to reach across the main to reach things in the yard and in your engine facility.
Still assuming walls to the left and top - your yard ladder is sloping away from the aisle towards the wall, making it harder to see the class track turnouts - a yard ladder that slopes towards you would give you a better view of the turnouts.
But the most important thing is to hear from you what your yard is designed to handle, and how the rest of your layout will be.
First thanks for your comments, let me say that this layout should be friendly with NMRA standards, because with friend we want to each do some part of the layout so the idea is to connect main line between each layout. Regardless, my idea is to have this layout at home to have fun so there is no other part of layout and my idea would be to have 4 trains(length should be shorter than A/D track just with cars) where cabooses should stay in caboose track, locomotives in engine facilities and re order one at a time, not all together. It must be in L shape as it will not fit in my room. And my idea would be to have less space for engine facilities but in the way I design it, has a lot of free space.
Hope this answers your questions and again thanks!
Ah. You may have a bit of work ahead of you.
Good luck with your layout.
Smile,
Stein
Sorry what does it mean that? I didn’t catch it, he
It was an expression of frustration. I was mentally getting ready to say “whatever” and walk away.
But let me give it another spin. I think that if my main goal was to do a bit of classification, and to have a layout that is portable, so I could take it out of my room to join it to a friend’s layout, I would seriously have considered downsizing my yard a bit .
In my opinion, you don’t get significant added play value by just adding more or longer tracks. Five classification tracks doesn’t give you much more play value than three class tracks (at least when you don’t have any destinations anyways).
No point in two different pretty much dedicated engine escape tracks - there won’t be a lot of trains moving around on this layout at the same time.
In general, multipurpose tracks (that are used for differtent purposes at different times) are more useful than dedicated tracks, especially for a smallish switching layout.
Also, in my opinion, you don’t get extra play value by having a double track main (since your trains doesn’t go anywhere anyways). A double track main is (on a real railroad) a way of making a lot of traffic flow more quickly.
You don’t usually want quick flowing traffic on a model railroad layout - our trains doesn’t need to go 2000 miles or 500 miles or whatever as fast as possible - they should provide as much entertainment as possible for as long as possible,
With the possible exception of a large layout with many operators, where you might want to avoid too many bottlenecks that will have too many people hanging around waiting.
Your layout may be “NMRA friendly” (whatever you mean by tha