Yards

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Tips about yard design.
1. Don't try to cram a lot of tracks into a small space. Why? If the tracks are close together and a car derails and goes over, ever heard of the domino effect?
2. Give yourself at least one staging track and have it connected to the main at both ends. Two would be better. This gives you plenty of area to make up and break up trains.
3. Don't make spur tracks that are going to trap your locomotive behind a line of cars. Always have an escape route.
4. And most important, Don't try to make a complex design. The more complex a design, the more things can go wrong because of a simple mistake.

Simplicity of design is simplicity of operation. I'm in the hobby to have fun running trains, not trying to find my way out of a Rubik's cube switch yard.

[ndbprr]

As a person with over 35 years experience in steel mills I can tell you In know of very few that do not cover several miles.  USX Gary for instance occupies over eight miles of shoreline on lake Michigan.  However there is one mill in northwest Indiana that should be a snap to model and that is the old Inland Steel plant now part of Mittal.  All the buildings visible from public access and looking across the tracks are at 90 degrees to the railroad. So a series of end walls are totally prototypical.  I would keep that lower yard for general merchandise at other locations on your railroad.

Is that this?  (Close the little "Welcome" box on the left for a better view)

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=41.672431~-87.44525&style=h&lvl=14&scene=6893497

 

Yep! that's it.

[pcarrell]

As a person with over 35 years experience in steel mills I can tell you In know of very few that do not cover several miles.  USX Gary for instance occupies over eight miles of shoreline on lake Michigan.  However there is one mill in northwest Indiana that should be a snap to model and that is the old Inland Steel plant now part of Mittal.  All the buildings visible from public access and looking across the tracks are at 90 degrees to the railroad. So a series of end walls are totally prototypical.  I would keep that lower yard for general merchandise at other locations on your railroad.

Is that this?  (Close the little "Welcome" box on the left for a better view)

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=41.672431~-87.44525&style=h&lvl=14&scene=6893497

[ndbprr]

As a person with over 35 years experience in steel mills I can tell you In know of very few that do not cover several miles.  USX Gary for instance occupies over eight miles of shoreline on lake Michigan.  However there is one mill in northwest Indiana that should be a snap to model and that is the old Inland Steel plant now part of Mittal.  All the buildings visible from public access and looking across the tracks are at 90 degrees to the railroad. So a series of end walls are totally prototypical.  I would keep that lower yard for general merchandise at other locations on your railroad.

[Anonymous]

I remember a cement plant down in Hope Arkansas that are really just one track under the building. They would pull each hopper off the really big cut one by one (Either by tow motor or cable.. cannot remember) and unload it. That material then goes up to be transferred to trucks.

What happens to the now empty hopper? I dont know; but it's finished and needs to be sent back out on the next train.

Years ago, a story was circulated that a driver forgot to ensure the tanker he was assigned was not carrying pressure. He goes up to open hatch and "Plong!" gets thrown 15 feet up (Plus 12' of tanker height") and about 100 feet out.

[Anonymous]

I worked for a major plastics/rubber producer that in their last big expansion acquired a in plant switcher (GE 25 Ton job) and added a 5-track single ended staging yard up by the CSX's main and a passing siding.  It added substantial storage to the facility where cars used to have to be brought from atrack downtown in Brownsville, TN.  They mainly handled 23,000 gal to 30,000 gal tankers of Ethano, Hexanol, and Phalic Acid while had to be heated to around 300 degrees F to flow.  They had to use clean tankers to load out plasticizer oils used extensively in plastics production.  They had their own fleet of jumbo covered hoppers that were mainly loaded with flourescent green plastic pellets for water hose production or resin, one of the raw materials in manufactring plastics.  These cars used the parent companies name & herald "Teknor Apex" a red diamond with a white TAinside of it..   They also had a rubeer plant that received carbon black in 50' cars very similar to an air slide. (talk about a nasty job.   A pnuematic unloading system blew the resin up into 8 different silos.  Carbon black was transfered to 2 very large silos on the roof of the rubberplant by a series of bucket elevators and screw augers. Plasticizer oil was stored in one of 6 500,000 gallon storage tanks.  An interesting situation occurred on night as a tankerman was attempting to load out a railcar.  A nosey engineer went on top of one of the stoirage tanks to see how work was progressing on changing out a plain ole atmospheric vent (22 elbows welde in a simicircle and bolted to the top of the tank) with a type of vent with desicant in it toi prevent moisture from enterring the tank.  Well ,he thought it might rain and the crew had not bolted up the desicant dryer, so he had the brilliant idea to cover the opening with a blank flang.  Not bolted down just laid over the existing opening.  That night with his vision limited by darkness, the tankerman connected his lines to the tanker and started the "positive displacent" Viking brand of pump.  He said soon all heck broke loose with metal popping, bending and breaking.  He shut down the pump as soon as he could because he thought a piece ofmetal had crashed the pump or the coupling had gone out. 
the next morning to all of our surprise the 20 degree peaked roof was about a 40 degreed valley handrails and all.  It seems the weight of the blind flange was enough to seal the vent forming a vacuum enough to cave the tank in.  This is a little off topic, but I thought some of you might get a kick out of an engineer (mechanical no locomotive) going aboive & beyond the call of duty, unfortunately!  
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[N737AA]

Only you can determine your needs.  You should have a sense of what your railroads purpose is.  I thought I knew what I was doing when I started my current layout (36x30 double decked in areas), but have come to realize I had only a small notion of what I was doing.  I have learned along the way and made numerous changes to the layout in the early going.  But as I learned how the prototype works, I decided it made sense to follow those practices.  I know I have lots to learn yet, but I think I am headed in the right direction. 

My freelanced railroad (Central States) is point to point and has a fairly large division point yard at Tulsa, OK.  This yard stores no cars.  All cars transiting the yard are going somewhere, usually an industry on my layout, or to one of 5 railroads my railroad interchanges with (some have trackage rights into the yard and others are interchanged on the main).

In addition to the division point yard, I have two staging yards representing points east and points west, The points east yard represents Kansas City, MO; Springfield, MO; and St. Louis, MO.  The points west yard represents Oklahoma City, OK; Amarillo, TX, Ft. Worth, TX; and Houston, TX.  There is also an additional staging yard that represents Little Rock, AR and Memphis, TN as well as three shortlines the Central States interchanges with.  These three shortlines have trackage rights into the Central States Cherokee yard in Tulsa.  One additional track also represents industries on a branchline that I only model a portion of.

My layout is large and I need these additional yards to achieve the goals of the railroad.  I did not arrive at this instantly, it took many revisions to my plan before I was able to develop a good operating plan.  This was key since it is what drives the traffic on the railroad.  The yards are there to meet the needs of the railroad, not just a place to store cars.

I hope that helps.

Mike in Tulsa

BNSF Cherokee Sub

 

[Texas Zepher]

I used to live in the Denver area and I've been up north to a little town called Millikin, CO. The old sugar plant (recently closed and torn down) had it's own locomotive servicing the plant there.

  Did you ever get to see the big Great Western Sugar plant in Longmont?  It was impressive.  They used to have a 0-10-0 steamer that worked it.

Many more industries have locomotives than have yards.

[Texas Zepher]

Well, the cars need to be sorted for destination, don't they?  (Be it on-site or off)

Yes, and that is the point.  If it is off-site, then the industry doesn't really have a classification yard.

[E-L man tom]

Texas Zephyr,

I used to live in the Denver area and I've been up north to a little town called Millikin, CO. The old sugar plant (recently closed and torn down) had it's own locomotive servicing the plant there; it was a much smaller facility than the Coors plant, which I have also seen. In addition, many larger grain elevators have their own locomotive to move cars around. I think the location of a fairly sizeable industry relative to the main line makes a difference as to whether an industry needs a locomotive. The sugar processing facility in Millikin was along the branch line Great Western RR, in which case they might see a locomotive from the servicing railroad once a week.

[pcarrell]

Well, the cars need to be sorted for destination, don't they?  (Be it on-site or off)

[Texas Zepher]

Yards inside an industry are not really "Yards" to me.

... the same kinds of movements for the same basic purposes are performed.  They're just performed with fewer types of cars and for fewer customers.  Operationally they are the same in most respects though, don't you think?

Hmmm, interesting.  But I don't know. Does the industry classify incoming cars or just fish out the one they want at the moment.  Does the industry care where the car goes when they are done with it, or do they just throw it on a pick up track?  Do they classify loaded cars in their yard as to where they go, or do they just set the cars there and let the railroad worry about that after it is picked up?   The only industry we have in Denver big enough for their own locomotives and a "yard" is Coors. I've always considered it more of an interchange rather than a yard.  I suppose I'll have to go watch the operations for a day or two to find out. I can't recall ever seeing a Coor's loco "working" the yard.

[Anonymous]

I am of the opinion that most model railroads are way over yarded.  Why can't one yard serve both the mine and the steel mill?  Together they might actually have enough traffic to justify it.

I agree with this.  When I look at some of the layouts in MRR and see one yard after another and very few businesses/industries, I think to myself  "why do they need 3 or 4 yards for just a few businesses?"

The recent issue issue has a layout like that.  Huge layout, big yards, not many businesses.  I don't know, maybe I'm missing something.

[pcarrell]

Yards inside an industry are not really "Yards" to me.

In one sense I suppose that's true.  They don't serve the wide range of businesses that a typical yard would.  But then again, the same kinds of movements for the same basic purposes are performed.  They're just performed with fewer types of cars and for fewer customers.  Operationally they are the same in most respects though, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

My plans have trains coming from staging TO one yard for classification to the three towns on the Falls Valley. Just need to get the space for it at some point in the future. But I would just use adequate staging and just one yard.

Yards inside an industry are not really "Yards" to me.

The Coal mine will need to be of adequate trackage with a run around so the engine can swap the empties for the loads.

Also from a expense point, one yard to me is enough, it just needs to be long enough to handle most trains.

[Texas Zepher]

I am of the opinion that most model railroads are way over yarded.  Why can't one yard serve both the mine and the steel mill?  Together they might actually have enough traffic to justify it.

[pcarrell]

Steel mills are big operations and require a lot of space.  A coal mine doesn't take up as much room, unless it's a huge mine.  Really all you need there are two tracks: empties in and loads out.  It's basically a car dump.  I'd lose the coal yard and limit it to a couple of tracks.

The only thing I'd add is to make sure that you have a runaround track at the coal mine.  It doesn't require a full-service yard.

On the other hand, you can never have too much staging!  Provide as many tracks as possible, and make them as long as possible.  When it comes to staging, more is ALWAYS better.

Chuck (who operates from staging to staging, with an engine change point in the middle)

Agreed!

[jecorbett]

That would depend on whether you want one or both ends of the line to represent a terminus. If so, you don't need a staging yard beyond the visible yards. If either yard is an intermediate one, trains would logically be leaving it in both directions and a staging yard is needed for traffic leaving the visible portion of the railroad.

[tomikawaTT]

Steel mills are big operations and require a lot of space.  A coal mine doesn't take up as much room, unless it's a huge mine.  Really all you need there are two tracks: empties in and loads out.  It's basically a car dump.  I'd lose the coal yard and limit it to a couple of tracks.

The only thing I'd add is to make sure that you have a runaround track at the coal mine.  It doesn't require a full-service yard.

On the other hand, you can never have too much staging!  Provide as many tracks as possible, and make them as long as possible.  When it comes to staging, more is ALWAYS better.

Chuck (who operates from staging to staging, with an engine change point in the middle)

[pcarrell]

Steel mills are big operations and require a lot of space.  A coal mine doesn't take up as much room, unless it's a huge mine.  Really all you need there are two tracks: empties in and loads out.  It's basically a car dump.  I'd lose the coal yard and limit it to a couple of tracks.

[ARTHILL]

First, you need to decide what you want

If you want realistic opperations, that will decide your yard issues.

If you want more scenery, as I ussually do, you need space.

Personally, I now am in need of more yard for staging. When I started I only had one engine. I now have a dozen and some fine trains for them to pull, and I have already added two staging yards and need another. That is a difficult ballance, but if you like to run trains, save lots of staging yards and places to park small trains.

[don_csx]

I'm just about done with laying track on the lower level of my layout, and started thinking about my yards. I have plans for a yard on the upper level a yard on the lower level and a staging yard on the lower level also. Do I need 3 yards?? I really do think I do. So which yard should I get rid of.

I'm modeling a steel mill on the upper level of my layout with in a operating session I will need a yard to do a little switch of the mill cars.  I'm modeling a coal branch line on the lower level so I think I need to have a yard for the classifying the coal cars and the staging yard which is use to store cars.

I was thinking If I do away with the yard in the lower level it would give me twice the space for scenery and another coal tipple or a town and I could use the stage yard for my classification / storage.

What would you guys suggest??

 

Don 

D&D MINING & STEEL