Classification Hump Yards in scale

[Anonymous]

Hello all!

I'm currently planning my third and final club layout (HO 48'x36') featuring a large classification yard as the centerpiece. I think it would be pretty awesome to build a working hump yard, but I have not seen one anywhere in any scale. I suppose the big problem is designing and building working retarding units.

I am also searching for layout plans with well designed freight and passenger yards. Please post links of your favs and explain why you like them, if you have a mind to do so [:)].

Thank you - LS

[Big_Boy_4005]

I have done a semi working hump yard in O. It takes some smooth rolling, properly weighted cars, combined with a good slope. he slope should be greatest just past the crest, and continue all the way through the turnouts, gradually going to flat on the bowl tracks. At the far end, the ladder should have a slight upward slope, to help hold the cars in.

[Anonymous]

Thanks BB4005, our concern is that once the classification bowl starts to fill up, the repeated collisions of the cars will cause undo strain on the couplers as the distance from the hump decreases since the velocity is higher. We're figuring on an 18' classification track length BTW. Although It would be fun to be able to manually control the braking of the cars, I suppose that setting up as you descrbed would be just fine. The concern is that we have many kitbuilt and scratchbuilt cars between us.

Do you know of anybody that has built a working retarder unit?

[Anonymous]

The best solution to this would be to have a electromanet under the tracks that would be push button controlled . The magnet would be at the neck of the yard leading into the "Bowl". A real retarder would not work in small scale. Also you will need to Number All your freight cars so that each has a Unquie Reporting number like CSX 897435 that is kept track of by a computer and is updated on were your car is in your yard or in your layout bv station

[ckape]

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I remember seeing a article on an operating rotary dumper in MR that used toothbrush bristles to slow down the cars. The bristles were pretty much invisible in the pictures unless you were looking hard for them.

Of course, if you want something you can turn on and the only suggestion I have is a contraption that uses levers, msucle wire to lift toothbrush bristles so they hit the axles or lower them so they don't. For a range of retardation you'd want to put several contraptions in a row.

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Lord Schtupp

Thanks BB4005, our concern is that once the classification bowl starts to fill up, the repeated collisions of the cars will cause undo strain on the couplers as the distance from the hump decreases since the velocity is higher. We're figuring on an 18' classification track length BTW. Although It would be fun to be able to manually control the braking of the cars, I suppose that setting up as you descrbed would be just fine. The concern is that we have many kitbuilt and scratchbuilt cars between us.

Do you know of anybody that has built a working retarder unit?

It's nice to see that you have given this some thought already. That is a very realistic concern about coupling speed. If you could find a way to standardize the rolling characteristics, and find a balance between weight and drag, that might be a good place to start. Then you could have some kind of speed sensor in the track, and employ the electromagnetic retarder method.

Nobody said this was going to be an easy project. A little scientific experimentation with Newton's laws would go a long way toward your reaching your goal. Maybe start off with a couple dozen cars. Gather their vital statistics, especially weight, along with wheel and truck types. Then take 10 sections of flex track and experiment with incline heights and profiles. Kind of like Pinewood Derby for trains.[:p]

[jrbarney]

Lord Schtupp,
Since you're relatively new to this forum, you may not have done research at the Index of Magazines yet. Here's a link to article references:
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&cmdtext=hump+yard&MAG=ANY&output=3&sort=A
As I recall, there are some ingenious retarders in some of those articles including one that used solenoids.
Also, you may want to use the "Search the forums. . . ." window at the top of this page to locate some earlier threads on rotary card dumpers to follow up on the bristle retarders.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jrbarney

Lord Schtupp,
Since you're relatively new to this forum, you may not have done research at the Index of Magazines yet. Here's a link to article references:
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&cmdtext=hump+yard&MAG=ANY&output=3&sort=A
As I recall, there are some ingenious retarders in some of those articles including one that used solenoids.
Also, you may want to use the "Search the forums. . . ." window at the top of this page to locate some earlier threads on rotary card dumpers to follow up on the bristle retarders.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

I went to the bookshelf and grabbed that article from November 1961by Ed Ravenscroft. He used pneumatics to retard the cars. I didn't read the whole thing, it went on for pages. Even though they were making Kadee couplers back then, he wasn't using them. This massive project showed plans for four tracks, but he only built two tracks.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ckape

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I remember seeing a article on an operating rotary dumper in MR that used toothbrush bristles to slow down the cars. The bristles were pretty much invisible in the pictures unless you were looking hard for them.

Of course, if you want something you can turn on and the only suggestion I have is a contraption that uses levers, msucle wire to lift toothbrush bristles so they hit the axles or lower them so they don't. For a range of retardation you'd want to put several contraptions in a row.

QUOTE: Originally posted by trainfinder22

The best solution to this would be to have a electromanet under the tracks that would be push button controlled . The magnet would be at the neck of the yard leading into the "Bowl". A real retarder would not work in small scale. Also you will need to Number All your freight cars so that each has a Unquie Reporting number like CSX 897435 that is kept track of by a computer and is updated on were your car is in your yard or in your layout bv station

Yes I had seen the article utilizing the bristles long ago and this would undoubtably be the easiest to set up something similiar. However I was hoping to find someone who had figured out a prototypical method of braking by gently sqeezing the flanges, this being varible controlled by the switchman according to track occupancy. of course this is more workload than his prototypical counterpart, the amount of braking being determined by computer. This seemingly onerous task would be greatly simplified by having just three settings: No Brake, for when the classification track is up to 1/3 full; Light Break, up ot 2/3 full; and Heavy break, for 2/3 to 3/3 (capacity). Two people are necessary for efficient operation: Switchman: classification and braking control; and Yard engineer, controlling the train and decoupler located at the apex. The challenge of the mechanics of the retarding unit are great: thousandths of an inch of movement, varience of wheel flange widths etc.

QUOTE: Originally posted by jrbarney

Lord Schtupp,
Since you're relatively new to this forum, you may not have done research at the Index of Magazines yet. Here's a link to article references:
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&cmdtext=hump+yard&MAG=ANY&output=3&sort=A
As I recall, there are some ingenious retarders in some of those articles including one that used solenoids.
Also, you may want to use the "Search the forums. . . ." window at the top of this page to locate some earlier threads on rotary card dumpers to follow up on the bristle retarders.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

No I hadnt but I will make use of the magazine index, thank you Bob - neato

QUOTE: Originally posted by Big_Boy_4005


It's nice to see that you have given this some thought already. That is a very realistic concern about coupling speed. If you could find a way to standardize the rolling characteristics, and find a balance between weight and drag, that might be a good place to start. Then you could have some kind of speed sensor in the track, and employ the electromagnetic retarder method.

Nobody said this was going to be an easy project. A little scientific experimentation with Newton's laws would go a long way toward your reaching your goal. Maybe start off with a couple dozen cars. Gather their vital statistics, especially weight, along with wheel and truck types. Then take 10 sections of flex track and experiment with incline heights and profiles. Kind of like Pinewood Derby for trains.[:p]

Funny but we had done just that in a somewhat scientific way., using about 18' of flex and some old tyco trestles, you know the ones where the track slides into tabs that allowed some curvature variations to be done, also about halfway down I did some finger braking to get a feel of how much force is necessary. As you can imagine the few weighted cars we tried went different distances. All trucks have metal wheels

I figured that once an optimum contour was determined then I can fabricate an aluminum template at my sheetmetal shop to create a consistant bowl profile. Its bendable and disregarding track curve would allow exactly the same rolling resistance for all tracks.
.
Check out this scrap view of the Conway PA hump yard:



This yard is a double hump with east and west humpyards and east/west arriving/departure yards to the north and south connected by double track running under the apex. A much simplfied (obviously) version of this is what we want to do.

Thanks you all for your input, Im glad I asked! More research needed :)

-LS

[ndbprr]

Ravenscroft used air retarders between the rails. They were nozzles that you could decide how many were needed to adequately slow the car. There was a guy here in the chicago area that had an O gauge hump yard in his house. monthly he had to do a roll test on each car to determine how much retardation would be needed at the next operating session for each car.

[nslakediv]

I believe Don Santel had a working humo yard on his layout, and keller did a video tape on it, if I remember it was one of the earlier ones, I would say between tape #5 and #15. also try search with this info. Randy

[DSchmitt]

In the articles I've seen about working model humps, the builders, initally at least, made the hump adjustable.

[ckape]

Well, although I personally wouldn't want to do anything that would mess with flanges on rolling HO wheels, I don't want to be the guy who said that this cool idea was undoable. If you do want to go that route the only suggestion I have is to make sure all the cars use RP-25 countours (no semi-scale wheels).

Another suggestion is if you have resistive wheelsets or similar for block signalling in all of your cars you could have a fairly simple system for automatically controlling the braking by putting block detectors on each third of every yard track.

But, whatever you do, write up an article and submit it to a magazine, since most of the articles listed on the model train magazine index are back in the 50s and 60s and my club's library doesn't make it back that far.