The Falls Valley Railroad has been hammering out final plans for a future yard. Since I dont YET have a scanned image of that track arrangement I will try my best to describe arrangement and how I think best to use it.
Mainline goes into yard limits. One track will be the arrival/depart track off the main.
The Yard switcher’s drill track will have connection direct to the A/D track.
The drill track will connect a ladder for 5 storage tracks. The store tracks are stub-ended.
There will be a run-around that bypasses the ladder along it’s diagonal length with the hope that the road engine can escape from it’s train and proceed to the engine area to be serviced.
Counting from the operator’s point of view:
Edge of table: Mainline.
A/D Track with Drill track.
Track One: Yellow
Track Two: Blue
Track Three: Green
Track Four: Black
Track Five: Company use and engine area access as well as run around lead track.
I see a color system where for example Yellow track. This track will recieve any trains considered to be “Throughs- or Bridge Traffic” that does not do anything on “My system” but passes through.
This track also represents a train that will leave FVRR for the “Outside world” at staging. So once this track fills up with outbounds I can call an engine and get this train sent to staging.
Another example: Track Green This presents all of the cars that are specifically marked to go to be loaded or empty at the town of Falls Valley. The yard switcher can sort FV cars to and from that track.
Each of the other tracks with a color code represents a town on my line. Track 5 is special. It gets to be kept open for a variety of useful reasons.
My goal is to orginate and ternimate locals to and from each of the 3 towns and to send extra trains to interchange or staging by midnight each working day. I also plan to recieve manifests that are blocked from either Philadepha, Baltimor
I suggest you make an additional arrival/departure track. Make it a through track so once your trains are assembled you can depart from there.
Is your yard drill track clear of the mainline so as you work the yard, trains can arrive/depart/proceed on the main without interuption. This sounds like a very busy yard so and the yard is the most time consuming operation on the layout. This is where most time schedules get messed up.
I am working the drill track problem. The A/D is already at 15 feet which is dictated by the lengths of my trains minus engines.
The situation is complicated somewhat by the need to have a drill track. Im thinking of using about 6 feet worth so that the switcher can just start chomping on the train to be broken down. The storage tracks will not be too long, hopefully just long enough to meet the towns industrial siding capacity.
I am thinking about adding a second track. I already know that there will be a staging area also of the same length feeding the yard by a helix. There will be a backdrop between the two of somewhat medium height.
I have not yet decided if I want to use a helix or a loop with a roundhouse/TT area inside it.
I plan to start the railroad at this point when construction begins so I can get operations up and running right away even if it is only making/breaking trains. I could do this with what track I have right now in one area of the house although it might drive the spouse crazy after an hour of steam and desiel activity.
It’s small. But imagine if I did not have heavyweights and modern stock like 62’ tank cars I could probably change the era to 1930 or so and do the same thing in 8 feet and a 4-4-0
Urgent!! Clear your mind of the concept of using the yard as storage tracks! The purpose of a yard is classification (sorting) of cars: Incoming from somewhere (staging or local industry), going to somewhere else (staging or local industry). Make it a practice to keep the yard fluid. I have one friend who has a yard full of stored cars such that he can’t use the yard! All he can do is have trains chase their cabooses around and around. Storage of excess cars/engines can be on staging or offline on shelves, in boxes, drawers, etc. jc5729
I switch cars for a living so, I’ll admit I’m a little biased.
I use my yard as a visible staging/fiddle yard, rather then a classification yard. As a result, I shortened the lead to make the body tracks as long a possible.
A thought on your design…you might want to run the mainline along the BACK of the yard if possible. That way your yard operators aren’t reaching over the main to do their work.
Take some time and read Andy Sperandeo’s book on yard design. Also Google "Ten Commandments of Yard Design. It is excellent reading by Craig Bisgeier. I have used both to design my 24’ yard on my railroad and the yardmaster in charge during op sessions says the yard performs flawlessly. Arrival and departures go on without interfering with drilling. Do not us the yard for storage. Either have staging or shelves for keeping cars off the layout.
Those 10 comments of yard design leaves a lot to be desired…I found the BEST teacher is the railroads and One’s own experience in yard designs.Also recall there are several prototype yard designs and one design doesn’t fit all.
Why?
Simple…Those Ten comments is only his thoughts which may not work in all situations especially for smaller layouts where yard space is at a premium…[:D]
Hence the big debate we had last summer about just saying “yard” because it means so many different things to so many different people. Reading the original description, I think this is supposed to be a classification yard, with a “body” track.
[#ditto] A yard is not a yard, is not a yard. Another way to think about this is the opposite of the thread topic. One shouldn’t make a yard and figure out how to use it, but decide what is needed and make the trackwork meet that need. Then whatever track work emerges from the design becomes the “yard”.
There are tracks that make up the body of a large yard…Sadly most modelers including “experts” isn’t aware of that fact.You have classification tracks and body tracks that cars such as home road empties,empty grain cars,auto racks etc are stored till needed…These cars may sit for days without turning a wheel.
I stripped off the grid, descriptions and the roughwork that included the roadbed then built this image to show to everyone.
There is a very specific use for each track, switch in this area without any waste. As I stated earlier there will be tracks one through four, three for towns and one to staging.
Track 5 which is not marked will take care of the engine facilities and caboose, location to be determined.
My next problem is that 15 foot elephant, the A/D track and where to put it. Looks like the total length is going to be just about 24 feet. The drill track will follow the mainline for a few feet and end where a yard limit (Junction tower, or interlocking tower I dont know what you call them) sign is going to be set.
I did not yet set a width of the yard; it will be at least two feet for sure probably no more than three total feet.
There is a run around built next to the ladder using flex track, I would hope that this will reduce excess traffic across the ladder itself and give the switcher a chance to run around something without venturing into the A/D or the main itself.
The mainline will go past the yard at the “Top” of the picture per the advice of a poster. The more I thought about having the ladder towards the operator, the more I liked it because indeed there will be derailments, coupler issues and other yard gremlins.
This is quibbling, TZ, but I think an eclectic, non-rigid, but guided approach to building a yard is probably the refined modeller’s way of doing it. Those ten commandments are for guidance and provoking thought, but they may cause a modeller to conclude that they should forego a yard entirely since they find themselves having to compromise too often, or to break the commandments here and there such that they feel the proper thing to do is to forget the yard.
So, yes, you are right, but we shouldn’t be so rigid in any approach or attitude that we preclude effective use of potential.
And they (the commandments or any other how to) are good in that many newbies don’t know much more about a yard other than it is “railroady” to have a lot of parallel tracks, so that it makes their layout look more realistic. So if nothing else it is one form of introduction as to what railroads really do.
How the management think yards are/should be used.
How yards ARE used by the men (like Nick) on the ground who have to get the job done.
How the shareholders want the yards used… least wear and tear, least standing empty car time and most profit.
If you are looking to model the real thing you need to decide first on the influence of era and second on what the RR is doing with what it has got at the site.
The more modern and more recently built/modified a yard is the more likely it is to be out-of-town with high switch (angle) numbers and long flowing curves if not straight tracks. Unit trains are favourite. A computer may decide what goes where.
The older you get the more you are likely to have what the RR could afford balanced with anticipated (hoped for) traffic. In earlier periods cars also tended to have both longer stand times and more frequent static inspections.
In between you have a mix of specialised yards and compromise. As much as possible any business including RRs uses what it has already invested in up to the point where it becomes more cost efficient to change - if it can find the new capital.
So existing yard(s) and spurs will get used and modified a lot unless someone is putting in something like a big new plant. Then that plant will get specialised tracks to serve its (original) designed needs. Note the “(original)”. Plants also change their practices and internal arrangements. This sometimes shows as bits of track still in roadways or across parking lots where there is no other visible track around or even a new/more recent buillding on the site of the old track. Sometimes just a switch stand or bumper gets left in place as a sort of monument.
Where new track is put into new plant the RR may run direct to/from
yard space is physically only two dimensional… the length of tracks by the number of tracks across. you do NOT want to go vertical!
BUT there is another dimension… TIME.
This all applies all over the RR in practice. Operations are always dealing with occupied or free track in chunks of time.
As far as possible things are scheduled to at least keep rolling slowly. The order of working trains both on the main and in yards is shuffled to keep everything on the move. There is no point in rushing a train or car through to the front if it will only stand there… even less point if by standing there it will stop other stuff getting through. You also do not want to have to shuffle it to the back… where it may get hung up and not be free to be moved when it is wanted.
maybe the best/easiest comparrison that most people will be familiar with is an airport. Whole trains, cuts of cars and individual cars are like aircraft. They need their “slots”. get there early and they block something else. get there late and they may be blocked as well as blocking something else. There has to be some slack and some flexibility in the system.
One solution on the RR is sometimes to send a train on beyond the yard it is meant for and bring it back later. This is not popular with anyone as it costs fuel and crew time but it is better than blocking the main track waiting for a yard road. If possible a train will be held back or diverted to take the long/slow way round (provided the crew know the route).