Hump yard?

[jlcjrbal]

Hey has anyone ever modeled this?? I think it wuld be cool to try. Any tips anyone? Joseph

[rrinker]

The club I used to belong to had a working hump yard. ALl the turnouts were controlled by Del-Aire air motors, so the retarders were simply air jets that blew back against the cars. During open houses I usually sat at the ayrd panel and ran strings of cars over the hump. To make it work reliably we had to cherry pick cars that worked just right as far as uncoupling and rolling. Just having metal wheels in gauge and Kadee couplers with correct height and the air hose adjusted properly wasn't always good enough. So basically I'd take a couple strings of cars, hump them, and then go around the bypass track and retreive the same cars and do it all over again. Another club near here has one as well and at a recent open house I noticed they were doing the exact same thing.
Bottom line, it works, but it's very finicky. For example, for reliable uncoupling, we had 3 Kadee magnets in a row at the top. Even then every car wouldn;t always let go of the previous one, so sometimes we got multiple car strings rolling down into the bowl. But that's prototypical anyway, unless you REALLY want a specific car to seperate and it doesn't.

--Randy

[dinwitty]

I built one, for a modular style layout. More than likely the more difficult part is making an automatic sorter to switch the switches and automatic retarders using air jets that turn off to slow the car if too fast.

The crest of the hump will have a "booting grade", a short steeper grade to pop the cars down, the uncoupling ramps placed just right.
I might build another since I no longer do modular stuff for my new layout in the plans.
But its not in my get it done now planning.

[rrinker]

Oh by the way, the one at our club was completely manual. Both lining the tracks and operating the air jet retarders was done by the operator. I've seen articles on completely automated ones though - Larry Keeler had a computerized one way back before most people even considered having a computer in their house.

--Randy

[Anonymous]

In one of the original Great Model Railroad video tapes from Kalmbach (Volume 2 I think) there was a piece on the Michigan, Ohio and South Shore. A Dayton, Ohio area free lanced railroad by Don Santel (Allen McClelland named a yard after Don Santel on the original V & O). The MO&SS had a working hump yard using air jet retarders. It was fun to watch on the tape. Maybe your library has a copy of the tape. Opps! I just remembered it's Ohio, Michigan & South Shore (OMSS). I had the two states in the wrong order.

;o)
Ed