I am just building my yard, and wondering about the distance between yard ladder tracks. In another post I mentioned a picture of a yard in the 1940's (Armstrong: Track Planning ..., p.21) which shows very little clearance between the tracks. In my understanding there should be enough space for the switchmen to walk between the cars. What distance between track centers do you use? Thanks for hints, Christoph
Another factor to consider is: can you get your fingers between rows of cars to rerail or remove a car? If you model the clearance on full size track, you couldn't get your fingers between cars.
Track spacing is kind of tricky, especially in a yard. You may want room for your fingers (as mentioned above). But prototypically, 1.125-1.3 inches would be an appropriate center-spacing for N scale track. This would equate to 15-17 feet in real life, which is a little wide (main lines are usually parallel at 13-16 feet or more depending on the speed of the line). I would not suggest you go wider than 1.5 inches (20 feet), since that would look silly in a yard (but is not too bad for modern mainlines) and you start to cut into the number of tracks you can have in the same area.
Christoph, On our old layout, we simply centered the yard tracks on the centerline formed by the two halves of the cork strips. In fact, we never pulled the two halves of these strips apart when we laid cork in our yard. We simply laid sections of cork so that the unbeveled sides touched each other. In any case, spacing the yard tracks in this way gave a realistic spacing on the tracks. The cars looked quite realistic in relation to each other in the yard. Likewise, along the mainline we spaced the tracks in this manner and it looked equally as good. Quite like the real thing indeed! I recall that this spacing came very close to the prototype - 14' or so as I recall. Mind you, this left no room for fingers and rerailing cars was a challenge. I suggest you allow more room in staging, or fiddle, yards that are not in view. But in viewable areas, this simple method gave a realistic impression. Bill
Bill, I favor your suggestion, since these are only 3 tracks, and the pictures I have seen show the yard tracks very close to each other. It will finally depend on a test. Christoph
