I am working on building a 4 track Pennsy yard that would be based around Harrisburg. I am curious to know what compontents a yard would contain besides huge repair facilities. So far, I will be adding a coaling tower, sanding tower, and ice house for interchange. What else am I missing? Should I add a water tower? I am not interested in adding huge buildings, but rather small ones since this is a small yard. My modeling era for the layout is 1940-1950. Would a small diesel facility seem at right? I plan to use mostly Walthers cornerstone with some other manufacturers for small items.
A 4 track yard would not have a huge repair facilities. A huge yard would have huge repair facilites (4-10 arrival and departure tracks, 30-60 class tracks, 10 track local yard, 5-10 track forwarding yard). A 4 track yard might not even have any engine servicing facilities.
What facilities you have depends on what you are doing at the yard and where its located. If its at a major city, then there is probably a larger yard nearby andthat has all the repair facilities.
Water towers were pretty common. There would be a yard office, a single story building, maybe with a bay window. There would be two or three maintenance buildings (a tool shed, handcar shed, roadmaster's office/section locker room), there would be one or two mechanical department buildings (car foreman's office/carman's locker room, tool shed, oil tank, caboose supply). All of this is pretty small.
Once you go above this it starts taking up a lot of space and isn't typical of a smaller yard. You can have an engine house, sand tower, coaling tower (those require their own tracks). You can add a rip track. which might have a repair shed.
Icing facilities are actually pretty rare on the east coast. They normally are at places that ship or recieve a LOT of reefers (that means hundreds of cars a week, not a dozen cars a week) or are several hundred miles and several days from the place they are loaded. The enroute ice docks are mostly a western thing. Cars were not necessarily iced for interchange.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
NS6770fan I am working on building a 4 track Pennsy yard that would be based around Harrisburg. I am curious to know what compontents a yard would contain besides huge repair facilities. So far, I will be adding a coaling tower, sanding tower, and ice house for interchange. What else am I missing? Should I add a water tower? I am not interested in adding huge buildings, but rather small ones since this is a small yard. My modeling era for the layout is 1940-1950. Would a small diesel facility seem at right? I plan to use mostly Walthers cornerstone with some other manufacturers for small items.
A four track yard is more like a holding yard for a industrial area not a major terminal.
P.RR did have small yards at the begining of a branch line or in a small cities like Bucyrus but,it was nothing fancy. This yard is still being used today to hold cars for Bucyrus Railcar Repair..
T&OC had a engine house,a car repair shop and a small yard here in Bucyrus. Today the buildings and yard is being used by BRR.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I strongly suggest trying to hunt down a copy of Andy Sperandeo's Kalmbach book on freight yards, which for some reason Kalmbach has allowed to go out of print. He gets into the functions of a yard, prototype and model, and how to skinny down the parts of a freight yard into a practical size for a model layout. He gives some very good examples of excellent model railroad yards and points out what makes them good.
Every now and then Model Railroad Planning magazine (annual) focuses on freight yard design or has a good article on the topic. By careful shopping at swap meets I now have a complete set of MRP issues and I refer to them often.
Dave Nelson
dknelsonHe gets into the functions of a yard, prototype and model, and how to skinny down the parts of a freight yard into a practical size for a model layout. He gives some very good examples of excellent model railroad yards and points out what makes them good.
Hre's the rub.. If we skinny a yard down to much that 10 stall roundhouse,500 ton coaling tower and 120' turntable can look mighty silly unless its a engine and crew change point even then we speaking a lot of space. Don't forget to add the yard support buildings.
IMHO the ideal model yard should have at least 12 including a inboud and outbound tracks to make that 10 stall roundhouse lookl good since the yard looks like a busy small city yard like PRR's Crestline yard back in the day..