Newbie here, I’m in the planning stage of my railroad and want to know if I can have a staging area and a yard. I have read about both but they seem similar with the exception of the stating area being the place you switch out your cars on and off of the layout. And the yard area being an area where you switch cars between trains.
So for the experienced out there, can I do both or is it redudent?
Thanks,
Bill
most people that have a yard on the layout have a separate staging area… this allows you to add and take of trains without interfering with any operations on the layout… staging areas can be hidden (ie behind scenery) and are often un-scenic’ed to save time and money…
Here’s an article I wrote to explain staging:
Think of a real stage with the track going across from one end to the other. The staging yards would be off-stage at each end of the stage and is were the “actors”, your trains, wait their turn to come on the layout or stage. You may or may not have an “on-stage” yard so you can switch cars in and out of your trains, break up trains, or make up new trains “on-stage”.
Frequently, staging yards are unscenicked and are nothing more than a yard ladder and yard tracks. You don’t need engine facilities, run-around tracks, yard leads, etc. Often staging yards are hidden by scenery or on a lower level of a layout. They are just a place to store trains.
“On-stage” yards typically have scenery, an engine servicing facility, run-around tracks, caboose tracks, a yard lead, etc. They look just like a real yard.
Excellent article, Chip.
A yard is a place where trains come in and get broken up into other trains that will take the Commerce to thier final customers. It is also a place where Commerce is gathered until a train can be called to take it to the customers or on to the next yard some distance down the line. It is also a place where empties of all kinds gather to be assigned loads or taken to be loaded.
Yard = very busy place. Lots of things going on.
A Staging area is simply a place “Off-layout” A strip of track that represents a distance place somewhere “Out there in the USA” that you might use to connect to for operations.
I think that we may be missing something via the choice of words here.
As I understand it… and I could be wrong… correct me if I am…
A staging track or staging yard on the real RR is a facility in which whole trains or parts of trains can be held clear of the main tracks waiting for a route, waiting for re-routeing, waiting for fresh locos or crew to be provided. I suspect that they were more common in steam days when divisions were shorter to accomodate the needs of steam locos to be serviced.
It seems possible that the term came from the staging concept in stage coaches…?
As I understand it a train needing a new loco or crew could be put into a staging track (what we would call a refuge or lay-by) to wait while the changes were made. (An express might have its locos refuelled or changed out on the main track… this is why you see coal towers over main tracks at some places).
In other circumstances a slow moving, low priority train could be switched into a staging track to allow a following faster train to overtake. Once in the staging track a train might be stuck there while several other trains made moves ahead of it before it could get a pathway.
Yards come in several forms. They can be freight, stock (cattle), passenger (servicing), industry specific, public track, loco, MoW and others. As a general principle work of one kind or another is done in yards. This may be loading/unloading, train cleaning, fueling and so on. one thing to note is that cars stand still while things are done with them… unless they are being flood loaded or unloaded hopper style while rolling very slowly. Cars and locos being maintained in yards often get "blue boards /flags/lights put on them to indicate work in progress and that the car(s) should not be moved. Especially where loading/unloading takes place there needs to be room for platforms, ramps or vehicles alongside the cars to get the loads in/out. There ar
Chip, great information you’ve put together about staging.
Dave. I appreciate explaining the diffiernces.
I was hoping to have a place to change out trains and not have it done in the yard.
I have a basic idea of what I want to do, now I need to expand on it. I Hope to have the plans done in the next few weeks. Once I get them on paper I’ll post it for discussion.
Thanks for everyone’s help.
Bill
I think the term (and concept) of ‘staging’ is really a model railroad thing only. If I had to bet, I would say the term was probably created by Frank Ellison, a great O scale modeller of the 1940’s-60’s. He wrote many articles about model railroad operation. In his professional career in New Orleans he worked in the theater, and brought some of the concepts of staging, set designing etc. to the world of model railroading.
<>Think of it this way - on a real railroad, you would usually have a major yard / servicing facility every 100 miles or so. On a model railroad, modelling one good sized yard is about all we can realistically fit in. So let’s say you choose to model a yard on a mainline about halfway between Chicago and Kansas City. You could have your yard in the middle of the layout, and have mainline tracks leading to the staging areas representing Chicago one one side and Kansas City on the other. The staging areas aren’t meant to model the real yards in those cities, they’re just a holding place for the trains that would be coming from those cities to your yard…kinda like actors coming from the off-stage ‘wings’, coming onto center stage to say their lines, and then exiting to the wings again.
Some trains might start in Chicago and end at your yard, and be broken down and switched, and some might run thru to Kansas City with little or no switching at your yard. Some might start in your yard, and then run to KC or Chicago. Passenger trains would probably skirt the yards and stop at the depot.
A staging yard on a model railroad can be made to look like a real yard, with scenery, or left plain. It can be switched by locomotives, or it can be a ‘fiddle yard’ where cars and engines are picked up and moved around by hand.
While the concept of equating a model railroad with a stage did come from Frank Ellison, the concept of a staging yard was popularized by Allen McClelland through his V&O series published by Railroad Model Craftsman in the late 1970s. Prior to that time, any “offstage” yard on track plans was simply called a “storage yard” or a “fiddle yard” and many track plans did not have them.
Only after the popularity of Allen’s V&O concepts became mainstream in the 1980s did the “state-of-the-art” in layout design mean that you should include connections to the outside world on your layout through the use of staging yards.
Prior to this time, the “cat’s meow” in layout design was considered to be the “point to point” layout – since that was most like the real thing. If you have a copy of “Track Planning for Realistic Operation” from the early 1970s like I do, there’s no mention of “staging yards” – rather they are storage yards and the whole concept of staging is not discussed. The point to point design is heralded as the ultimate in layout design, with Roy Dohn’s Victoria Northern track plan (a large point-to-point) given as exhibit A.
In 1968, Roy Dohn published a set of formulas for evaluating your layout design and there was nothing about staging in there – naturally since Roy’s layout was a large point-to-point design. Back in the early 1990s, I took Roy’s formulas and updated them to include the concepts of layout staging. You can find my updated Layout Design Formulas here on my web site.
Think of a staging yard as a parking lot for your trains. It is a generic area and a single staging yard can actually represent several locations that all enter the modeled portion of your layout at the same place. It is also where you can do unprototypical manual handling of your trains to change locos and rolling stock. If it is a single ended staging yard, you can turn your trains by hand as well. Locos and cabooses get moved to the opposite end for the return trip. This is also where you can change open top cars from loads to empties or vice versa. Thinking in theatrical terms again, this is where your actors (the trains) can do costume changes before reappearing on stage.
Okay, that’s some posts to suggest that the term “staging…” comes from the MRR world not the real one. I’m pretty sure that I heard it for the real world somewhere… maybe it is one of those situations where the MRR term has got applied to the real thing? It wouldn’t be the first time.
Anyway… about yards and stuff… something that might be useful…
Don’t forget that a lot always depends on era…
However…
as a general rule…
Where you have a busy track or tracks the RR will tend to make provision for trains to be worked into yards before anything is done with them. that way they are out of the way of other tarffic and at much les risk of anything else running into them.
The reverse also applies… on a small quiet line where little or nothing else will be about chunks of train may get tied down on the main track while the rest goes off to do other things in a yard, down a spur or even on a complete branch line. In these cases cars are sometimes unloaded straight off the main track. I have seen stuff on road grit/salt being dropped from covered hoppers through an undecked bridge in the main track into county trucks waiting on the road below. Simple and effective… but you don’t want to do that on a busy foru track main…
Once into a yard a train needs space in the form of length to be able to shuttle about getting cars from one track to another. Yards are often taken off one end of a loop at the side of the main to provide this. The train coming in can be run-round if needed… in fact it can enter(/depart) at either end of the loop. While it is in there the loco can bob backwards and forwards sorting cars into and out of roads as much as it likes.
From a model point of view this is good for beginners as they can run trains freely as they want and switch at the same time. When things get a bit more advanced and a modeller maybe gets into ops it can be int
On previous versions of David Barrow’s Cat Mountain and Santa Fe the staging yard was in view, with ready trains waiting to depart. It still worked the same way as a hidden staging yard, but the area was scenicked. Waiting trains may have been “geographically” hundreds of miles apart, but they were right next to each other. Basically a display area where all the toys waiting to be played with could be seen.
Trains made up in the yard for departure to off the layout destinations located towards staging could be parked in staging as if they were waiting for their crews. Trains arriving in staging (that had left the yard from the other end) from the layout would be arriving at a crew change point and would “park” for the “new crew”.
Just two thoughts:[2c]
Do a “google search” on “staging area”. Be ready for a lot of strange things.[:D]
If you have a “staging area” on your layout, call it what you want![;)]
It could be one of those situations were Britain and the US just use different terminology. I’ve personally never heard of anything on a real railroad reffered to as a staging yard.
Eric
[:(] Aw! The link to stage coaches sounds so good as well…[:(]
In the UK we usually call the hidden (or not) off-scene tracks “Fiddle Yards” on models.
Fiddle yards do not exist in the real world.
Things have changed and changed again here so that trains mostly get run point-to-point without being put to one side en route these days. (Some would say that such an idea is way too complicated for the computer assisted signalling and/or modern management…)
Before “modernisation” we had both “refuge” sidings and loops that trains could be put into while others overtook them. Provided both ends of a loop were arranged to stop a runaway from escaping the loop a train could be tied down in a refuge while the loco (and sometimes the brakevan/caboose) went away. This wasn’t normal practice but could happen.
There were also “mileage sidings, loops and yards”. As far as I know these were intended to be used as I have suggested for staging tracks… but by the time I was first looking around they were mostly backed up with out-of-use stock and stock waiting scrapping… so I never saw them in regular use.
One thing to recall is that “Just in Time” delivery is a very modern concept (late 80s onward???). Bef
I know as soon as someone reads this they will begin jumping up and down yelling NO, NO, NO, and NO. It is not that way here.
A yard is to arrange cars to go to a distant destination.
A staging yard (also known as ready tracks) is were a completed train is placed ready to enter a slot to go to its destination.
NO, NO, NO. Sorry I couldn’t resist.[:P]
My understanding is that ‘ready tracks’ are for locomotives that are ready to be attached to their trains, not for complete trains. What you are talking about I’ve always heard referred to as departure tracks. That is a section of a yard were trains are are built up, have a locomotive and caboose attached, and wait for their turn to leave the yard.
“There’s a prototype for everything” dept . . . .
When CN acquired BC Rail a few years back, they effected an end-to-end merger here in North Vancouver. The former BC Rail North Vancouver yard is connected to CN’s Lynn Creek yard by a couple of miles of track and an interchange yard. According a one of my railroading friends (ex-BC Rail), the former BC Rail yard is now operated as a “staging yard.” I’m not sure exactly what this term means on the prototype, but I suspect it has something to do with holding southbound arrivals until they can be classified at Lynn Creek or run through to CN’s main Thornton Yard in Surrey.
There’s more–the connecting track between these two yards runs through a tunnel and emerges from the basement of an office building. Do you think someone’s been reading too many MR track plans?
A yard usually has at least one track that can hold a entire train arriving to be broken down or a departing train that is being built up and stands ready to recieve it’s road power.
Finding this room in HO scale is a challenge. Even a modest 15 car freight with caboose and engine requires approx 12 feet or so.