Yard Design

[rrebell]

rrebell
That is what would happen, I would lose 4 cars in the yard for every car on the tail. Average train on this layout will be between 5 and 7 cars.

Seems to me it would be worth rethinking the overall layout design – what you have so far seems to be constraining the yard unreasonably given your goals for train length and yard capacity.

Without seeing the full track plan, it’s impossible to give useful suggestions.

Good luck with your layout.

You should drop by, beleive I am fairly close to you, in Hayward.

[cuyama]

You should drop by, beleive I am fairly close to you, in Hayward.

Thanks for the invitation; I’m not up that way too often. In the meantime, there are probably many folks here on the forum who could provide ideas much sooner. If you’re just not able to post images of your track plan, I’d be happy to upload them for you – or scan and post. You may send paper or electronic stuff to me via the contact information on this page.

[rrebell]

rrebell
You should drop by, beleive I am fairly close to you, in Hayward.

Thanks for the invitation; I’m not up that way too often. In the meantime, there are probably many folks here on the forum who could provide ideas much sooner. If you’re just not able to post images of your track plan, I’d be happy to upload them for you – or scan and post. You may send paper or electronic stuff to me via the contact information on this page.

Thanks.

[rrebell]

.

[cuyama]

rrebell sent me images of his sketch for the layout and the yard area, which I am posting here at his request:

Based on his earlier posts, I thought that there must be some way to arrange the yard that would eliminate the “only two cars at a time” constraint. There aren’t a lot of degrees of freedom because the 30”X96” space is fixed, some elements like the turntable and roundhouse are must-haves, and the desire is for 7-car trains – about 420 scale feet (58”) with power and caboose. On the plus side, his equipment negotiates 18” HO curves and Shinohara Code 70 #4 turnouts well.

I took a quick and very rough pass at a working yard design. One of the keys in any track planning exercise is overlapping elements where possible. In this case, I used a pinwheel yard ladder along one curving leg of the wye. To coax the maximum length in the clear for the yard, I curved and angled it across the benchwork, which also carved-out a triangular space for turntable and roundhouse.

The resulting rough design could use some tweaking, but suggests that it might be possible to accommodate all of these elements. The double-ended tracks (1&2) are at least 445 scale feet in the clear. Operation is much more fluid, especially if a yard lead can be placed alongside the main (in blue here). By building or backing a train (up to 427 scale feet) on Track 1, it can depart through the wye co

[cuyama]

I just realized that it would be easy to add at least three (relatively) long stub-ended storage tracks in place of the icing plant in my sketch. These would be inconvenient to switch, but fine for storage. Curving-in the benchwork where I noted the possibility would help with access for these.

This would leave the front tracks as the working yard.

[rrinker]

What about flipped over, with the roundhouse/turntable on the left, top (or even inside the wye?) and the end of the yard tracks to the right. Ice track at the lower right.

Seems like this would give room to extend the switch lead onto the main part of the layout, preserves the required turntable and roundhouse, and maximizes the lengths of the yard tracks. Perhaps even makes room for a few more things besides just the icing track.

–Randy

[cuyama]

What about flipped over, with the roundhouse/turntable on the left, top (or even inside the wye?) and the end of the yard tracks to the right. Ice track at the lower right. Seems like this would give room to extend the switch lead onto the main part of the layout, preserves the required turntable and roundhouse, and maximizes the lengths of the yard tracks. Perhaps even makes room for a few more things besides just the icing track.

Could well be – I did this quickly, so I didn’t look at all the possibilities (by any means) and just started with rrebell’s general placement for the turntable and roundhouse.

Your suggestion would certainly be worth his time to explore.

[rrinker]

Yeah I’m at work or I would throw it together and see what I got.

–Randy

[rrebell]

Thanks again guys. As I explained to Byron the yard is the last area to be compleated, working on the main layout now which with the dry times, will take a long time. Two days or more for caulk to set up properly on the inclines (using Woodland Scenics inclines for this) and if I have to layer foam, you get the picture.

[rrebell]

Well I will bump this one last time and see if I get any comments, good bad or other on any of the plans but especially the yard plans.