Cudos to Andy Sperandeo & the many authors of, "How to Build Realistic Layouts - Freight Yards," just received in today's mail. The pre-publication price of free shipping + $1.00 discount is hard to beat!
If you read nothing but, "A Day in the life of Waterbury Yard" by David Popp, and "A baker's dozen yard ideas for design and operation" by Byron Henderson => the modeler's purchase price is well worth it. Don't be surprised if you see many other well-respected authors in this issue. There's even "A classic Pennsy scale house" if you are PRR user-friendly like Dave Vollmer and myself.
"How to Build Series" from the "Railroads of the 1950s" to today's issue has become "must-buy MR" as opposed to "must-see TV." This series has just the right balance of prototype, layout planning, and scratchbuilding to suit just about anyone.
Perhaps we could build up this thread to constructively discuss your ideas & thoughts gleaned from Model Railroader's "How to Build Series" or address other freight yard questions we have seen in this Forum in just the last couple of weeks alone.
P.S.: No... MR didn't ask me to start off this thread, and this series is also "scale-neutral" to boot!
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
DPB's "Realistic Layout Operations" on DVD was very well done.
I have to wait to get to the store and get that book, I have one set aside for me waiting to be picked up.
Thanks for the positive comments. Editor Andy Sperandeo and the Kalmbach staff did a really nice job in presenting my article, I thought. David Popp's article was also very good as you mentioned, although I wish there had been space for slightly larger illustrations of what was happening in the yard. It really showed well the idea of "swinging" the tracks in a small yard from one classification to another as the session progresses. Paul Dolkos' article also highlighted the swinging of yard tracks from one destination to another through the modeled day and talked about some ways to manage this.
Some very good modeling, too, from Koester, Mindheim, Darnaby, et al (Jim Kelly's N scale ATSF yard tower is super-slick).
I really enjoyed reading it (and especially being part of it).
Byron
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
They were to late for me. I ended up modeling a prototype and it looks great.
Craig