Hello all,
To start on with, I model in HO scale.
While trying to design a track plan that fits within my available space (16x40), I’m having a hard time laying out the freight yard. I know it will be 7 tracks wide, but the length is what is getting me. I know yards take up a lot of real estate.
How much space does your yard take up on your layout? Does it function how you’d like from an operations standpont?
Ed
I opted for my yards to be simple staging areas, and consider them ancilliary to the modelled portion of the layout…
I could switch them in the manner of a ordinary yard, but it’s not an area of great interest to me, as all of the towns on the layout require switching of their industries as most of the trains work through. Only a few trains pass through without doing some work in each town.
Having the yards as staging allowed me to stack four of them, as shown, with a fifth one in another room, leaving more room for running trains.
All of them are around 12’ long, big enough for the relatively short trains I’d usually run, due to the many curves and heavy grades with which most trains have to contend.
Wayne
Hi Ed,
Something to consider with regard to yard size:
Having a big yard is wonderful from an esthetic point of view. You can make up big trains! I love watching long trains run!
However, ask yourself whether or not your layout can actually accommodate long trains from a switching perspective? If you want to switch long unit trains (i.e. all the cars are the same) then it will look better if you can accommodate long(ish) cuts of cars at your destinations. If your spurs can only accommodate two or three cars then having long unit trains is counterproductive. If you are doing mixed freight it isn’t as much of an issue.
We have two large yards on our club’s layout. Unfortunately, the guy who designed the layout (that would be me!) didn’t make the spurs long enough to make the big yards’ capacities useful. Dumb mistake. If I were doing the design over today I would make the yards shorter and the spurs longer.
You said that you want to have seven yard tracks. You can still build longer trains in a shorter yard just by using two tracks. The space that the shorter yard doesn’t take up can be used for industries which will give you more destinations to deliver cars to.
[2c]
Cheers!!
Dave
Not to disagree with anyone, but in my mind yard size relates to the expected length of mainline trains, not the length of swiching locals or siding length.
First you need an operational concept and a practical train length for your layout based on your room size. That will tell you how long a yard should be.
Real railroads use yards as origin and terminal points for mainline trains as well as staging points for local switching.
Personally I am not a fan of model operational schemes were every train is effectively a local, leaving the yard to do switching along the mainline.
Major industrial areas have few sidings on the mainlines, rather they have belt line and other secondary trackage to serve industries and mainlines that run between major yards in different cities. That is how my layout is designed.
Virtually none of my industries are along the mainline, there are tracks leading from the yard directly to the industrial areas that do not interfere with the mainline.
Mainline trains travel around the mainline, to and from various off scene staging, with most terminaling or originating in the visable yard. Seperate locals then move cars to/from the industries on the belt line, never going out on the mainline except for one or two industries or for specific moves that are required.
I have no idea how you are planning shape your layout, but it seems to me that in the space you have 20-25 car mainline trains could work, which, depending on your era, would require a yard between 12’ and 15’ long.
Trains longer than that would likely overwhelm your space.
I have about three times your space and I am designing my layout for 35 to 40 car trains and will make my yard about 20’ long having 8 tracks for my 1954 era equipment.
There will only be the one visable modeled yard, but there will be plenty of off scene staging of trains. The off scene staging will store about 30 trains.
Sheldon
On my old layout, my freight yard was 19 feet long. But, the yard was double ended, and that takes up a lot of room which I wasn’t prepared to commit to on the new layout. So, on the new layout, I went with a stub end yard which saved me 6 feet of space without giving up any storage capacity.
Rich
my understanding of yards is that there is a track for each train leaving the yard and any storage is only for overnight because a car came in after the train was scheduled to leave.
a train come in from some destination (i.e. staging). cars from that train are sorted onto the track for their destination, a local or train to some other distant destination (i.e. staging).
empties (MT) are returned to their origination (at least owning RR). Not sure what happens to excess MTs
Staging may represent several distant destinations. Yard tracks may be for trains to more than one distant destination represented by staging. Cars may come in on trains from staging and be sorted onto tracks for trains going back into staging.
Tony Koester’s layout demonstrates the concept. He has yards at each end of his layout but also staging just beyond each yard representing distant destinations.
since trains typically have a limited size (to fit into sidings along a route) it’s possible that if there are too many cars for a train, they need to remain in the yard over night for the next train to that destination. Therefore a yard track may need to be longer than a train. However it is possible to store those extra cars on some other yard track that doesn’t need as much capacity such as for the local train.
That is basically what I explained above. Unless a layout is VERY large, I see no point in modeling two yards. I have a pretty large space and I would never consider having two visable yards.
But that is also driven by the fact that I find 12-15 car mainline trains totally unacceptable for my era and class of railroad.
You mentioned siding length and that is an impor
This is a track plan in a somewhat smaller space (33x15) - yard is on the left.
My yard is 5 deep, 2’-3’ long. Planning to run 10-12 modern era car trains, in a 25 x 30 room. It will function as both staging and a yard on a point to point. It also has two smaller two track industries in it. The layout will have another yard at the opposite end (tunnelin9h through a wall will give me another 12ft to work with)
A few more thoughts:
Tony’s layout is effectively three times the size of mine by virtue of three levels in a similar size room.
I’ve built and operated on multi deck layouts and it has lost its appeal for me.
With a mainline run as long as Tony has, single track and two yards works fine. On a smaller layout, not so much in my opinion.
Sheldon
Past issues of Model Railroad Planning magazine, and chapters in John Armstrong’s book Track Planning for Realistic Operation (and his lesser known book, Creative Layout Design) all touch on this topic. I advise doing some reading about the planning involved.
I seem to usually be the yard guy at operating sessions, breaking down arriving trains, making up departing trains, and at layouts which have “active” staging, taking cars off the layout and adding cars to the layout.
From a design perspective the problem with really long yard tracks is that you need a long yard lead so that you can pull cars from the entire length of track without having to foul the main. Maybe you do not need a yard lead just as long as the longest yard track - no rule says the entire track has to be pulled at once even if the car you seek is at the farthest end – but you still need a fairly long switch lead track. So with long yard tracks going one direction, you need a nice length of switch lead going the other direction to actually switch that yard.
Sheldon makes the good point about train length (arrivals and departures) having an important role in determining length of yard track. I’d say as a practical matter that it is somewhat easier and sometimes even prototypical to send out a departing train that actually has to make up its train from two shorter yard tracks than it is to deal with an arriving train which is too long for your longest yard track and needs to be broken into parts. Dealing with the power, having the switch engines near by – those things tend to create more stomach churning moments for arrivals. But that itself might suggest that while one (or two) arrival track(s) need to be long, the entire yard might not need to be that long if space constraints dictate. Very specific arrival tracks are part of yard design.
Frankly the yards I enjoy operating the most are “fiddle” yards. That is, yards function as yard
For however it may help, a few additional thoughts based on Dave Nelson’s great comments:
In my case the yard leads are nearly as long as the yard, and they do double duty as being the belt line feeders to several industrial areas.
Also, the combined length of the yard leads and the yard provide an arrival track about twice the length of the yard. So just as Dave suggested, I can double longer departing trains outbound, and receive longer trains inbound with fewer problems breaking them up.
While the yard is designed for 30-35 car trains without doubling in or out, it will easily handle 50 to 60 car trains, which I do run.
So yes, I have about a 50’ run of benchwork devoted to the yard, engine terminal, piggyback terminal and working yard leads. 50’ to 70’ is my typical mainline signal block (although I do have a few that will only be about 30’), so there is an interlocking at each end of the yard where it rejoins the main.
As mentioned earlier, most of my industries are fed via a belt line directly from the yard. So locals can work the industries without effecting mainline traffic at all in many cases.
I prefer not to handle equipment any more than necessary. Some of my equipment is today’s high detail stuff, some is stuff I added a lot of detail too, and some is more “generic” and handling friendly.
So my staging is not done with fiddle yards. I will have a 12 track stub end staging yard connected to the main via a wye, and a series of small staging yards in series as the mainline makes a hidden “twice around” loop of the room. Operating sessions are set up to not require reworking trains that are staged. The layout will store about 30 trains.
Sheldon
My visible yard will be four tracks, and ther longest track will be 4 feet long.
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That is a very small yard by most standards.
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Staging will be 9 tracks, double ended, hidden, and 18 feet long.
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-Kevin
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Eh, sort of, but also not exactly.
The main purpose of most yards is for sorting cars. So you need tracks for each destination/train/block you’re sorting.
You also need some free tracks for arrivals and set offs (to be sorted). Depending on the size and volume of traffic of the yard, you might have at least one or more unsorted track for much of the day.
And yes, some yards may need some space for local storage (keeping a supply of empties on hand to cover industry loading, holding cars out “off-spot” that can’t be delivered due to space at the industries, MOW cars, etc.)
Depending on the yard and its needs, the number of destinations, storage tracks, and need to have some open tracks for arrivals, runarounds, etc. may mean you don’t actually have enough tracks to permanently assign one track to every destination, so it would be common to “swing” the assignment of various tracks throughout the day. e.g. the only train to Anna runs in the morning, there are morning and afternoon trains to Bess, and only an evening train to Charlie. So you might build the Anna train overnight/early morning and hold Charlies along with other cars that need to get sorted/re-sorted yet and then after the Anna train clears out reassign that track to collecting all the Charlies. (And conversely, any Annas that don’t make the track before that local leaves in the morning wouldn’t really need to get dealt with until after the evening Charlie train leaves since the next Anna train isn’t for ~24 hours.)
of course there are many other possible yard tracks: an arrival, run-around or escape tracks, caboose, rip, sand, coal, ash, …, not to mention storage for locomotive that may return later in the day.
so if you’re using some card system for routing cars, is there a destination for MTs on a yard track? how often and what are the desitnations for trains composed of MOW car? if there’s no room to spot a car at an industry, wouldn’t it simply be left on the track for that local?
for operation, what are the most productive yard tracks to have if you have limited space?
All model yards are limited in space compared to the prototype.
Track usage need not be so rigid in assignment, it is the yardmasters job to know what is what.
I don’t use card systems, me and my friends write up switch lists for local pickups and set outs. And train orders for mainline trains identify car blocks to be left at the yard or picked up from the yard. It is simpler and more flexible in my view then little card for 1000 freight cars…
My main yard track that lines up with the leads is the arrival track for both directions, departure tracks are whatever track the train is made up on. The shortest tracks closer to the operator are the setouts/pickups to/from the local industries.
As part of the adjacent engine terminal there are caboose tracks, MOW tracks, etc.
My freight yard is more of a clasification yard. Trains can arrive or depart from either side and since I have two sets of ‘ladder’ tracks, the yard has the ability for an engine to do a run around to pull or shove freight cars. I do have 4 tracks on the far right that can be used as arrival / departure tracks. The yardmaster can build his train, set the cars on s specific track and block the cars for a local run or just to head out. My ‘staging’ yard is on the lower level, 9 tracks and are anywhere from 24-32 feet in length.
Some examples and details:
On our club layout we have certain hoppers that have their “home point” at the main on-layout yard. As the empties return, they’ll be stored until needed in the yard. For sessions a certain number of new waybills to be assigned to cars will be pulled. The yardmaster takes the stack of these waybills and part of his duties in the session will be to assign them to cars in the storage track, have the switch crew pull them and then classify them per usual based on destination.
Similarly there is a pool of newsprint/paper service boxcars that have waybills sending them to the yard to “Hold for loading” to provide a supply of empty cars to service three different paper mills supplied by the yard. Similar to above, the YM will have a collection of orders (new waybills) to assign to these empty cars in a storage track and send them out on trains to the mills.
On my own layout (still in the planning stages but I’ve been playing with the operating concepts since it will be specifically designed and built with ops in mind) there is a lot of log and lumber traffic, and also iron ore. Empty hoppers for the ore processsing plant will flow back to one yard as a “home point” and be assigned for loading from there, and empty flats and gondolas will collect in the central yard in order to be sent out for lumber and pulpwood loading. (These are all “home road” cars on a smaller regional railway. So empties will collect back in the yard.)
These are some rare examples of where a destination on a model RR waybill slip would actually be to the Yard. Note that the card/waybill system would only specify “Anna Yard”, not specific track assignments since that’s up to the yardmaster.
(One will note from these scenarios that this assumes tha
My yard is small, since I model a shortline. It will probably be two or three tracks.
But I think the big concepts still hold true. If you’re going to operate the yard, making up and breaking down trains, then you’ll want yard 'holding" tracks long enough to accomodate your longest train.
But the yard lead does not have to be as long as your longest train. It has to be only as long as the longest cut of cars you will switch. Each person has a tolerance for how many moves they want to make when breaking down or making up a train.
Also, I have switched trains on what I would call excessively long yard tracks or sidings. It takes a long time to run down the length of track, switch the turnout, then run up the other length of track, especially if you’re just switching a short cut of cars. So having a lead that requires cutting your longest train in half helps to save space when you are switching a shorter cut and the lead doesn’t need to be that long, and it doesn’t necessarily hurt you in terms of time or moves.
does any track become available for other purposes?
the local goes out and the next train has trains for the local that now need to be sorted onto the “local” track that will go out either later in the day if there’s a 2nd local or the next day.