I am presently planning my next railroad (HO DCC). My present railroad JohnsTownRR has been operating and being built for the past 5 years from a 5 year plan.
I am interested in having more operations built in to the new layout and happened to visit Lyon Valley Northern Railroad, an operations layout in Canada. This can be found on YouTube or their own sight. Look for operations 3 or 4 session. The 4 video is 28 minutes long.
I understand when a train approaches the Yard, it backs in to the yard through the "throat" and positions the cars on classification track and the engine/s proceed to the engine facility by backing up.
My first question is when a train is coming in the other direction, it seems to leave its load of cars in another classification yard and proceeds to the throat of the yard and enters going forward to the engine house and is not backing up as the other train did. Then a switcher goes and gets the cars from the classification yard and backs them in the the yard itself. Is this correct! In the videos, the Richmond Yard is the main yard and the classification tracks are outside the yard in another area called a classification yard. Is this how both directions of trains enter the main yard in this exercise. I hope this makes sense but is very important in the planning stages if I am not having a turntable or wye to change the direction of the engines. If you haven't visited this layout please do. You are in for a wonderful time.
The second question is a track switch issue. In the operating sessions, the members do all swiching manually and the switches seems to have a loud spring load snap to it when swiching and are very dependable. Are these Peco switches? Does anyone have any knowledge as to what type of switches these are??
Thanks in advance!
John Dionne
JohnsTownRR