Beyond the Yard Limit

[Jon Grant]

I've been working on my fiddle yard cassettes over the past couple of days, adding alignment bolts, carrying handles and fold-down padded rail stops.

The base is made from 3/8" plywood, covered in cork sheet, with aluminium angle sides, both to straighten the wood and to act as a safety barrier.







The padded car stop and carrying handle





brass wire locates into square-section brass tube, which has been soldered to copper-clad PCB. The wire bolts also transmit the current to the cassette.




Jon

[Colonel]

thats excellent how many cassettes do you have? How do you prevent cars from rolling off when you are swapping them over?

[Flash Blackman]

Jon: Excellent! Especially the track alignment and power transfer idea. That might have application in other places, like lift outs, etc.

[Jon Grant]

Originally Posted by Colonel

thats excellent how many cassettes do you have? How do you prevent cars from rolling off when you are swapping them over?

The design is based on something Iain Rice put forward in his book on small layouts (Kalmbach), although he uses the edge of the metal angle as the rail (I found it more difficult to rerail cars with this method.


Here's how the cassette works


The bolts are removed from each end





The car safety stops are lowered into place - they can be dropped in either direction for longer or shorter trains.







The cassette is lifter to where new cars will be added.







Ps - No freight cars were harmed during the making of this thread


Jon

[Jon Grant]

The space left for the full cassette






...and a driver's eye view as he leaves the fiddle yard






Jon