Need help with engine terminal plan.

[markpierce]

Your plan looks ok to me but what you are running in to is why I decided an engine terminal was not worth the space or money.  It is hard to do correctly and to be done right takes up space that in my mind could be used for better purposes.  Very secnic and we all want one but I opted to not have one.

Yes, all but the smallest take a lot of space, but you need to consider what alternatives there are for space formally allocated to an engine terminal.  Engine terminals create lots of operation with its several "industries": fuel, sand, and supply deliveries; ash and cinder exports; and locomotive repair, servicing and storage.  Nothing says "railroad" more than an engine terminal.  Think of what you are losing by not having one.  (And while here, I will mention that "yard industries" such as car repair, car cleaning, and car weighing are ideal "universal" industries.)

For the HO-scale, bedroom-sized plan I'm developing, I don't want to dedicate the space necessary for a good-sized engine terminal for a class-1 railroad, or even a yard if one doesn't count a couple of double-ended spurs used for spotting and picking up short cuts of cars and hidden staging for whole trains.  Instead, the plan provides for a smaller terminal servicing helper engines with service tracks, turntable, and enginehouse (actually two engine-service areas if including the branchline terminal).  These are welcome compromises for my circumstances.  The plan emphasizes car pick-ups and deliveries rather than the less-interesting-to-me car sorting.

Mark

[gandydancer19]

Looks good now and should work fine.

[Railroad]

Thank you all for your replays.

I made i small change. I made the cabose track a terminal track, and add a second track as outbound track as you can see beside the ladder. Do you agree with that?

[conrail079]

Looks Great, I don't see any problems with it. We all would like more room, it doesn't look cramped.

Don

Modeling Conrail 1991, Digitrax/CMRI

[gandydancer19]

What I see is a small engine facility with a large coaling tower. If your coaling tower could be resized for one track plus the supply track, it would make things much easier.

In the steam days, the minimum you should have is one inbound loco track and one outbound loco track, plus a supply track for the facilities. On the inbound track the loco would dump its ashes, fill the tender with coal and water, and then fill the sand boxes / domes with sand. The supply track could be parallel to and on the other side of the loco supply towers etc. that would allow cars to come in with the fresh sand, coal and to pick up the ashes. The outbound track would be next to the inbound track and have access to water only. The inbound and outbound tracks would go to the turntable, but the supply track doesn't have to.

So any track arrangement that would fill those needs should look right.  Now, your existing coal tower could span both the inbound and outbound track if you had to keep it.

[ndbprr]

Your plan looks ok to me but what you are running in to is why I decided an engine terminal was not worth the space or money.  It is hard to do correctly and to be done right takes up space that in my mind could be used for better purposes.  Very secnic and we all want one but I opted to not have one.

[Railroad]

 Here i am again with a new plan.I thing that it is better than the previous one.

At the bottom of the photo near the machine shop i am thinking to place a fuel station for diesel.

From the opposite side.

I will add a second Ash pit to the next track.Do you think this plan is ok or i should change something?

Any suggestion?

 

[cuyama]

Do you really need the 130ft turntable and associated roundhouse?  Only the biggest steam locomotives needed a turntable that big.  If you are indeed running big steam, then please ignore me.  But if you are running the more typical small to medium steam locomotives, then consider selling the 130ft and getting the 90ft turntable instead.  You will be amazed at how much less space it takes.

Fred's right to a point (obviously, 130 scale feet is larger than 90 scale feet). But because Walthers has designed their roundhouses to work with either of their turntables, the Walthers roundhouse must be set back from the 90ft turntable to make the stalls line up. I was surprised when I learned this while doing an HO design for someone, but I guess I shouldn't have been. There's no other way for the geometry to work out -- the centerpoint of the TT must be the same distance from the roundhouse doors of the Walthers roundhouse, no matter how large (or small) the TT.

The template that comes with the 90 foot turntable indicates a 5 3/16" offset between the 90 foot turntable and the Walthers roundhouse. So you only save about half of the track length that you would think you might save when going to 90 feet on the TT. Of course,the overall area is still less, so the 90-footer may still be a good choice.

The engine service area design I was working on was so tight that it was worth even that small amount of savings in going from 130 to 90, but it was a disappointment that it wasn't more. If one is scratchbuilding the roundhouse, it's possible to set up the stalls with a different geometry and the roundhouse could be built closer to the 90 foot turntable. (This would change the stall tracks from the 10-degree offsets, but the Walthers turntable can handle that).

There's a good article on scratchbuilding a roundhouse that includes some of the geometry trade-offs by Bill Darnaby in the August 1996 Model Railroader.

Byron
Model RR Blog

[dehusman]

Also the water tank doesn't neet to be close to the tracks, it can be anywhere and use a water column instead, has about a 2 sq in footprint and 100% prototypical.

Dave H.

[fwright]

Do you really need the 130ft turntable and associated roundhouse?  Only the biggest steam locomotives needed a turntable that big.  If you are indeed running big steam, then please ignore me.  But if you are running the more typical small to medium steam locomotives, then consider selling the 130ft and getting the 90ft turntable instead.  You will be amazed at how much less space it takes.

Just a thought

Fred W 

[wickman]

This link may or may not be off some help http://books.google.com/books?id=CxAXPWlW_6UC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=coaling+stations+sand+house&source=web&ots=q-GZkBMYyS&sig=DtoDc749RQFpzUh9TsqF_RUR1xc#PPA7,M1

I just went through the same pains and after a great amount of research came to the realization that we often try to cram things in that just won't fit in a proto type fashion so we often must give a little. I don't think you mentioned if this was HO or not 130 foot is huge. I just installeed a 90' with the Walthers wood coal tower and  3 stall roundhouse and I still have enoungh room for a small shop or 2.
hers' a couple more inspiring pics

Hopefully these folks don't mind me showing off there work.

[ndbprr]

In theory the sandhouse, water and coal tower should be accesible from the same track.  Otherwise you would have to keep moving the locomotive back and forth to be supplied which will tie everything up.  You could keep your sandhouse and taml where they are and run sandpipes to the other tracks to facilitate loading.  Same with water spouts not attached to the tank.

[Railroad]

I desinged 2 version, which seems to me good.I had one difficulty with the coal tower's supply house which it is elevated about 2/5" from the rest level. I will trim it and lower it because i could not lay the service truck without hard elevation.You will see in the photo a box which represends the sand house and the black box is the water tower.Please give me any suggestion to improve it.

 

[ndbprr]

Try filling in the corner and turning the roundhouse clockwise.  It doesn't appear that would be too long a reach if there is a problem behind it.  That would let you move the turntable down to the end some more and allow room for an ash pit and water tower o0r yard office.  What you are running into is why I decided that engine terminals should be avoided as they eat up space and don't add a lot of operational interest compared to industries. 

[dehusman]

You have room to extend the running track in front of your switching lead past the yard into the open area between the yard and aisle.  Put the switch back there and you should gain all sorts of room for the service tracks.

The roundhouse can ovelap the "corner" of the aisle, you could use foam to build up a place for it to sit.  Since the roundhose has a base it doesn't need to be structural and only needs to protrude far enough to support the roundhouse.

Dave H.

[BigRusty]

I would start with adding two diagonal fillers in the two corners. The one on the left would give support to the roundhouse and allow the turntable to be moved a little higher.

Add a parallel track centered on the turntable. There should now be room to replace the slip switch with a prefered cossover rather than the slip switch.

You need two additional parallel tracks, one for the coal loading to the tower, and the other for a sand house. The latter can be accessed over the new right hand diagonal. Put a Water tank near the sand tower and you have a nice engine terminal.

[steinjr]

This is my yard plan.

and this a real photo of my space.

 Mmmm - dimensions in millimeters, right ? Bench where the yard is is about 4 meters (12 feet long).

  H0 scale ? If so, the Coaling tower is about 25 centimeters wide (call it about 10"), including the covered dumping shed.

 That makes the benchwork pretty wide at this point - looks like it could be quite a bit more than 80 centimeters (30 inches) to the innermost tracks. How far from the front edge of the benchwork to the innermost mainline track ?

  I don't think you should go further into the aisle - if anything, I would look to see if you could make the benchwork narrower next to the yard tracks.

 So what you are asking is basically how to use the part of the benchwork closest to the aisle for an engine terminal.

 Are you _sure_ you want to put an engine terminal right here ?

 Stein

 

[Railroad]

Funny Railroad, I am in almost the same situation with a similar problem. As you've drawn it, I don't think there is enough room for a roundhouse. That may be OK with you. I can't quite tell from the dimensions on your plan, so forgive me if I've misread things, but the Walther's turntable sets tracks on a 10 degree angle. Their roundhouse is designed around this angle (as opposed to Atlas' roundhouse which is aligned to work with the Atlas roundhouse kit at broader angles), so there has to be enough room between the turntable and the roundhouse doors to align the lead tracks with the roundhouse. Again, I'm not sure, but I don't think that will fit on your plan. There is a template with the roundhouse kit that lays out the dimensions you need. What you might consider is to bump out the benchwork a bit to accommodate to either the turntable or the roundhouse. That's what I did and it worked out nicely. It also adds a little scenic interest to the shelf layout I'm building by breaking up the straight edge look of the benchwork. It is also helpful to have more than one spur leading to the turntable (enter and exit). That also allows you to position some of the engine service facilities on a different track, provide for hauling in coal or removing cinders, etc. I think you could do that easily with another turnout off the engine terminal lead.

Good luck,

Abbie

If you see at the photo i have cut paper (grey)with the dimension of a six stall roundhouse. In front of it is a white paper with the turntable's diagrama. They both fit.

An other option is to put the turntable inside the trackcurve where the roundhouse is now, and move the roundhouse to the right by extending the benchwork. But this is the last option because it is already wide enought.

[abbieleibowitz]

Funny Railroad, I am in almost the same situation with a similar problem. As you've drawn it, I don't think there is enough room for a roundhouse. That may be OK with you. I can't quite tell from the dimensions on your plan, so forgive me if I've misread things, but the Walther's turntable sets tracks on a 10 degree angle. Their roundhouse is designed around this angle (as opposed to Atlas' roundhouse which is aligned to work with the Atlas roundhouse kit at broader angles), so there has to be enough room between the turntable and the roundhouse doors to align the lead tracks with the roundhouse. Again, I'm not sure, but I don't think that will fit on your plan. There is a template with the roundhouse kit that lays out the dimensions you need. What you might consider is to bump out the benchwork a bit to accommodate to either the turntable or the roundhouse. That's what I did and it worked out nicely. It also adds a little scenic interest to the shelf layout I'm building by breaking up the straight edge look of the benchwork. It is also helpful to have more than one spur leading to the turntable (enter and exit). That also allows you to position some of the engine service facilities on a different track, provide for hauling in coal or removing cinders, etc. I think you could do that easily with another turnout off the engine terminal lead.

Good luck,

Abbie

[ARTHILL]

I have the same problem, though a different space. I have a peninsala that needs a double track main around the outside. Along with the roundhouse and turntable, you have the coaling tower. Where will the ash pit and water tank go? I bought Kalmback engine facilty book, and hope to get enough good ideas from there to make it work. I will watch this thread for there seems to be several of us working on this scene at the moment.

[Railroad]

Well i am trying to plan my engine terminal (or maybe squeeze is more apopriate) and i need some ideas. I have the walthers 130' turntable and coaling tower.

 

Can you help me?Any sugestion is welcome.

This is my yard plan.

and this a real photo of my space.