On my, "in progress", mainly switching layout, I currently have about 40 industrial car spots, another 18-24(max) spots at the coal mine, and about another 6 at one interchange, and potentially 7 feet more if I manually "pop a train into existence" on a siding. (although I am still building up my rolling stock so I dont even have enough for all industry and staging yet)
I also have a small classification yard with about 50 spots max(which at 50 would leave little room to work in the yard), but I can squeeze in two more shorter tracks if absolutely necessary.
I have not yet built the staging but plan on 4 areas eventually.
My question to the group is how much staging do you suggest described in seperate tracks and number of cars, and is my classification yard large enough? I am sure I will get different opinions, and your ideas on how would you operate this setup?
Information for context:
The fictional Northeastern Railroad is based on deregulation coming to the railroads in the early to mid 1960s instead of much later, and the Northeastern is mostly a merger of the Pennsy, Reading, NYC, and a handful of others. (I also picture the Southern becoming the major player in the south and a major interchange partner on that end)
The layout is a mostly industrial region with many factories and rail served businesses, many of which are recognisable names from the era. Around the bend in a mountainous area is a coal mine which gave the nearby city the reason to exist in its early days and still generates considerable traffic.
The track plan is a point to point, (with a dropdown for continuous running) with the classification yard and interchange on one end, and currently a small temporary staging area for only two trains. My plans are to expand this next and why I am asking the group for advice. Eventually it will allow staging to staging running in all 4 directions (N,S,E,W) with connections to the other major roads.
At this time it is an around the walls with a 4.5'x6' penninsula in a roughly 15'x15' room. It has about 60 or so feet of mainline, two passing sidings about 7 feet long on the shorter one, and a lot of spurs.
Thanks for any ideas, and if you need more info please ask.
Since none of my layouts ever had that many spots, my thoughts may not work for your situation. I sort of figure staging for switching this way. Assume roughly 1/3 of the spots will be working at any one time. Approx 1/2 that number of cars will be in trains on the way to or from industries (including yard, don't want the yard clogged). So cars on layout should be less than 5/6th the number of industry spots. Then for staging, multiple by 2n+1. So from your numbers, 40+18+6 (not counting the yard because it's used for working) = 64. 5/6 of that is about 50 (note I'm rounding down to leave more open space rather than up for more cars). So that means staging for about 101 cars. Same 2n+1 theory goes for whole through trains.
Now, all that said, my current layout doesn't come close to this. I have a single "staging" track that I use to fiddle cars on and off. So in practice, physical space constraints throw theory out the window.
jim
This is the kind of question that Model Railroad Planning magazine exists to address. I can think of two articles that I would recommend.
The 1997 issue had an interesting article on using a spread sheet to calculate staging needs. And the 1996 issue has an article by Tony Koester about how many and how long should the staging tracks be. And from time to time Koester and other authors briefly touch on this issue - sometimes with a wry "twice as many staging tracks as you think you need" type of conclusion.
Dave Nelson
dknelson This is the kind of question that Model Railroad Planning magazine exists to address. I can think of two articles that I would recommend. The 1997 issue had an interesting article on using a spread sheet to calculate staging needs. And the 1996 issue has an article by Tony Koester about how many and how long should the staging tracks be. And from time to time Koester and other authors briefly touch on this issue - sometimes with a wry "twice as many staging tracks as you think you need" type of conclusion. Dave Nelson
I do understand that such books exist, and articles in old issues long since passed, and in fact I have probably bought most every planning, operation, wiring, lighting, and other relevant reference book Kalbach and others produce over the past 20-30 years and I still have questions. Many are very vague in their explanations of how these ideas could be varied to apply to differently setup layouts. Even the "2n+1" listed in the book I was reading before I posted this, never really defined "N" as anything more than "what you think you need" as you mention, sorry but that really makes me question why I should pay $20+ for a book and still have no inkling what direction to go, or pay to backorder an article that may be just as useless.
Please be advised that I am not taking your particular post this way, but the "look in article X" reference reminds me that as I read these forums everyday now that I am back into the hobby, as well as reading back several years into the forums, I too often see some too many posters repeatedly answering posts with "its in an article published back in April 1963!", like the new person asking should know that off the top of their head. Maybe those posters have had to find their own way and have also mastered the search, but that has little meaning to us that dont know that article exists in the first place and is quite a turnoff to people new to the hobby. We are asking for help for a reason, to become part of a community that eventually, in turn, can help others, not to be brushed off with "go find out for yourself the hard way". After all this is the 21st century, this IS how we find things out, and what was said years ago may not even be relevant today.
In any case, I have located and bought and read many articles, searched for many days, and I still have questions. I would also like to know the real world results of others that are, and also the ones that are not, masters of the hobby. I am looking for the actual results of the thousands of others with real life limitations in their basements and hobby rooms and wallets, not just the same limited articles by the few. Therefore, I would hazard a guess that forums such as these are by definition the place to ask these questions to share and learn from the collective knowledge of others, so if anyone can and is willing to share their experiences and guesses, and I would think a wide variety of opinions would exist, I hope to hear from and learn from them.
I appreciate your opinion jmbjmb
I do not have enough room to get all the staging tracks I want. I have all the length in the world, but I do not have enough room to make a wide enough shelf.
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This means fewer passenger train operations. Making choices is hard, especially since I already bought a lot of the equipment.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Hello there,
This is what I did on my railroad. Since I have 2 levels, I have staging below. There are 9 tracks and vary from 20’ to 30’. Staging is just what it means. Trains and/or cars are staged and not part of your main operation of trains. I have 13 industries, plus a freight yard. I know how many cars each industry can handle as well as the yard. One thing I do know is that I have more freight cars than tracks, so not everything goes on the layout. I do leave space on the tracks as not all freight cars are the same length, at least on my railroad. My staging tracks can handle more cars than what I have on there right now. However, you need some room to move trains around, if need be.
I’m no expert, but I learned from others with layouts and friends who operate on many layouts. Books are good, but are at times, a generalization. The givens and druthers theory needs to be in place for you as well.
At the end of the day, I have train movement that flows with no real issues. Just one person’s opinion. Neal
In my mind, staging is a combination of track arrangement and operating scheme that suggests a world “beyond the benchwork.”
Without a track plan, it’s not possible (for me, at least) to offer much specific advice, except to say that you definitely don’t want more than 50% of your visible yard capacity used at any one time. This leaves room for switching.
A key issue is how you will use the staging in operation. If those tracks represent connections to other railroads (a good idea in general), will there be active trains coming from these staging areas to set out cars in your yard? That will affect yard capacity and staging.
Or if you are using them as interchange tracks with unseen foregin lines that only your railroad will switch, then things may be less constrained by your visible yard.
Where does the coal traffic nominally depart to?
Will your railroad have trains coming from one or more of the staging areas? Will they do work on-scene and then move back to staging? Or will you need to terminate and make-up trains in the visible yard.
Basically, I would try to think in terms of the car flow into- and out-of the modeled scene as you operate. Depending on how you plan to operate, again the visible yard may be the limiting factor.
A track plan would help me, and perhaps pothers, to offer more specific advice. You didn’t seem too interested in references to published articles, but with a bit more information, some of us might be able to make a specific reference to on-line or print examples.
Good luck with your layout.
Byron
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
I am in the planning process for a new layout at my local club.
I live in the UK and the layout will be a UK based prototype set in the summer of 1985.
There will be 30 spots on the visible part of the layout and in real life they were never fully occupied at the same time. My plan assumes a 33% occupancy. Even so, my staging will still have 30 spots, giving space for storage, space for moving cars around and space to exchange cars with the big hand in the sky.
The layout will have a continuous loop and there will be staging for five full trains.
There will need to be 5 staging yard tracks and each one needs to be long enough to stage the longest train plus locomotives.
Always give yourself enough storage space!
In your example you have 130 "spots" available on your layout and your longest passing siding is 7 feet. Your staging yard tracks should be a minimum of 7 feet long and your staging tracks combined should have at least 130 spots. Will your staging tracks have loco storage?
How many tracks you have will depend on how many trains you intend to run or classify and how much space you have. Always remember to include finger space if you intend to move stock with your hands.
I drew up a quick sketch on paper:
The layout would be mostly one operator and I am using JMRI for operations. However I can see up to 3 people working it comfortably if I ever find people interested. (1 yardmaster, 1 on the local, and 1 running from and to staging seems right).
As it was built mostly for me, the focal point is generally the local, but of course it needs the traffic from and to the rest of the world. Right now I have 8 trains scheduled, one to north staging (New York), one from north staging (same physical train), one to south staging (probably Baltimore,I haven't decided where exactly where this exists), one from south staging (same physical train), one morning local and one evening local (two different trains), and one for servicing the tracks within yard limits and a coal turn.(not scheduled in that order!)
Right now I only have 2 "staging tracks" that are built to be the leads into the staging area and reside off the area around the dropdown. The other area above the yard in the corner is able to continue through the wall into the laundry room and closet if needed to. (Right now it is not complete and used as an interchange.)
Operating like I have been before I recently added the peninsula and doubled the number of spurs, as well as lengthened the passing sidings, I seemed to need much more than the 2 spots for staging I currently have (not to mention they are short as they are temporary). With this there was never enough cars coming and going to meet the needs of the industries. I was going to guess that if I had 3-4 north and 3-4 south staging tracks at about 7 feet long, it might be about right, but wanted other opinions, and most are suggesting more. And I have the ability to add 2 more staging areas (the area into the laundry room) with about the same amount of tracks if I need more, effectively doubling the number.
Thanks for all the input so far!
In designing the staging for my railroad, I took into consideration the physical/spacial things like: the number of trains operated. length of trains, sidings. staging, yard tracks, number of spots at industries, etc. That all worked out fine. However, I had no idea how long it would take for various operations: local switching at various industries, mainline run from A to D, locomotive swaps, add a helper, helper district run from D to E, classify x number of cars to 7 destinations, etc.
Once I started operating, I discovered that with the 4-5 operators the layout was designed for we could only run about half the number of trains I had planned for in a 3 hour session. That 'bug' turned out ot be a useful 'feature' because since I have twice as much staging as we can use, I only have to re-stage the layout for every other session.
I found lots of good design information on the web about numbers of cars and sizes of sidings, yard tracks etc. However I neglected (or didn't find) information on how long things take. Now I know that (depending on how complex the track arrangement is) one can spend a couple or three hours doing 15 setouts and 15 pick-ups with a local, or if you are really experienced, efficient, have everything blocked properly and only 5 or 6 industries, you could get it all done in an hour. Similarly, classification is another task that can really 'gum up' a railroad (and not just your model railroad - UP just after the merger with SP and CSX today are just two examples).
More things to think about and try to plan for, but sometimes you just have to learn by experience.
Grinnell