ideas Look at this The bridge is the kato double track through truss bridge. 2 is a grain elevator as seen in some rural areas. 3 is a farm. 4 is a small town with a small downtown area surrounding the tracks. There could be a siding here with what used to be the town station back when there was passenger travel but that now is a railroad office and crew station. 5 is an open hopper loading facility. Could be coal, or gravel. 6 is an industry that would be served by boxcars. At the end of the peninsula is a great place for a large hill with a tunnel bored through it to help keep the sides of the peninsula separated visually. 8 is an industry that is mostly a flat against the backdrop that takes plastic pellets in covered hoppers and sends out completed product in boxcars. 7 is a pulpwood chipper that loads woodchip cars like this The train cars are loaded by these conveyors. The cars are behind these piles of wood chips. I hope this all helps.
Thanks Specter3... I will have to take a look at the pics, etc. that you have posted when I get home from work tonight. For some reason, they aren't showing here. I know they will work on my home computer. I appreciate all of the help.
Specter3....sent you a pm. Here is a screen shot of the proposed benchwork for the peninsula that hasn't been constructed yet.
yard placement Specter3 got the plan you sent...thank you so much. What do you think about placing the yard along the long wall? I think I could do more with it there. Either that or wrap start the yard area in front of the furnace room and wrap around towards the door but I am still thinking the long straight stretch might be best.
yard There is nothing wrong with putting the yard on the long wall. Just be aware that if you have that entire wall as a yard you will have trains longer than any other straight chunk of your layout. I just made a train in xtrak and a loco and 35 cars is the entire side of the peninsula. So keep that in mind. Keep the train length sidings in the 30 car range and then have space on the end for a nice engine service area and graceful transition to the next scenes.
Good point...never thought about train length. I am going to have to figure it out. I plan on using the yard as a car storage area as well as having complete trains ready to roll.
I encourage you to keep the yard tracks straight. It is really tough trying to couple / un-couple on a curve.
So what is your opinion on yard placement grey one? I am looking for input and suggestions from all. Everyone here has been a tremendous help. Specter3 has taken a lot of his time to help me and it is appreciated.
Anyone got any good pics of their yard?? I want to see what the engine facility looks like, rip tracks, a/d tracks etc. I was considering buying the Freight yards for model railroaders book...is it worth it? Specter3's track plan is very close to what I am looking to do. I am tweeking it now.
That book, is probably the best one I have from that collection. Rather informative in an applicative manner. Well "The Model Railroader's Guide to Freight Yards" by Andy Sperandeo, anyway. Conversely I found Bridges and Tunnels to be completely useless.
Yard placement and yard layout should be a function of how you intend to use your yard. Will it be used primarily to hold trains that are waiting for their run around the layout? I.e. as visible staging? Are you planning to run 15 trains, each with 30 cars during an operating session? 5 trains of 10 cars each? Something else? Will your yard conceptually be located at one end of your modeled area - representing the connection to the rest of the world? Or will it beat the far end of a rural branch line? Will it be mostly an engine terminal? Will it be mostly an industry yard - a place to hold inbound or outbound cars while you switch nearby industries? Will there at any time be so many trains running on your layout that you will need several dedicated arrival/departure tracks and two people to sort cars and build new trains simultaneously - one from each end of the yard? Or is your layout a more leisurely place, where you during an operating session will have one arriving through freight dropping off a block of inbound cars in the morning, two local turn coming out of the yard to service industries, returning with cars from the industries in the afternoon, and then another through train picking up a block of outbound cars in the evening? Will your yard also serve some local industries located right along the yard? Form should follow function. There are also some general tricks when considering yard capacity. Compare these three different yard types placed in the same space: Which type will give you the largest yard capacity? Not the pyramid shaped double ended yard. You may still want a pyramid shaped doubled ended yard if you like the look of it - fair enough. You can play games with yard capacity by using other ladders than a straight ladder: A pinwheel ladder allows the use of a curve for the yard ladder: Smile, Stein
Continuing - only allowed four images per post ... Here is a single ended yard inspired by David Popp's Waterbury Yard on his Naugatuck layout: Here is a small yard inspired by Jack Gutsch's M&St.L layout: Here is a small local urban industry yard between some buildings on a peninsula: Here is another couple of urban industry yards:
Last couple of sketches. Inspired by El Portal on Jack Burgess' Yosemite layout: Inspired by Paul Dolkos' Woodsriver yard on his former B&M layout: A CNJ float yard (my design): Basically, what kind of yard would look good and work well on your layout depends on what you want to use it for Smile, Stein
Thanks stein. I plan to use the yard area to store cars and occasionally make some trains up but mainly for storage. I am more of a "run trains" type of guy than an actual operations person. That being said, I would like the ability to have an operating session if I wanted to. I am struggling with the yard/staging area because I want the double main and am trying to figure out my options for yard access. I have thought about having the mains run through the middle of the yard basically having a yard for each main and crossovers for access to the opposite yard. I also considered having separate yards at different locations on the layout. As far as the engine facility, I just like them and they make a layout look that much better but that is just my opinion. Again, thanks stein....very useful information.
yards Here is an interchange type yard on the layout. The interchange track would cross the main at grade and disappear into a tunnel, some trees, what ever, and could lead to hidden staging very easily for some additional operating interest if you wanted. I wasn't thinking about a small yard for an interchange or industrial area when I said two would be too much.
Not really - the really useful information you will have to provide. No matter whether you want to do "actual operations" or not, you are the person who will have to get concrete about what you want to do - how many cars you would want to store, whether you need to store complete trains, how many trains you need storage space for, how long those trains will be and so on and so forth. Adding a couple of crossovers to take trains over to the other main and into a yard is relatively trivial in comparison. If you know e.g. that what you want to do is to be able to pick and run any one of up to four different trains and send it running out on one main and any one of up to four different trains and send it out circling in the opposite direction on the other main, then it is possible to design for that. If you can get more concrete about what you mean by "occationally make some trains up", then it is possible to design for that. But the difficult job is not really drawing a track plan. It is digging in and getting fairly concrete about your goals, and later - to prioritize and deciding which of those goals are least important to you if you cannot get all your goals fulfilled. And that we cannot really help you with - because for your layout those goals and those priorities will have to be yours. Good luck with your layout! Smile, Stein
practice layout here are a few works in progress..track laying practice, scenery...etc. One is n scale and one is ho. excuse the mess.
