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Hi Raymond, Two books that have been thrown around on this forum, which are of great importance to any model railroader are John Armstrong's THE RAILROAD, WHAT IT IS, and WHAT IT DOES, and HOW TO OPERATE YOUR MODEL RAILROAD by Bruce Chub. You can get both these books at Amazon.com or they might also be available through Model Railroader/Trains Shops at this site. There are also several other reading sources I could suggest to you. They are: Track Planning For Realistic Operation-John Armstrong Freight Yards-Lynn M. Stone Railroad Yard-Paul Ditzel Also, for more information concerning yards, goto Yahoo.com, click on "Groups" search for and sign up with the following groups: LDSIG YARDMASTER HUMPYARD LDSIG also publishes a Journal that you can get back issues from them for various prices depending on the theme and size of the issue. Get this one, it is a must! LDJ-7 6/92 (80 pgs. $9.00) -Freight Yard Design Theme. Benefits and opportunities of freight yards. John Armstrong 1955 MR Reprints-Prototype and Model Yards; 1992 Epilogue. Yard Throats. Five Rules. A Design Primer. Crossovers. Modeling SP, D&H, and BN Yards. Simulating Yard Jobs LDN-1 11/87 (52 pgs. $4.00) Emerging concepts about layout design, prototype modeling, railfan themes, yard themes. Design guidelines. Realistic right-of-way. Design and construction for operation and realism. Urban modeling. Bridge selection. Prototype information sources. Staging. Waterways, roadways, big scenes, and space-savers Also, when you join the LDSIG group, you can inquire about their on-line primer for layout design. It has a lot of good information about train yards, operations, and the rules to design them. I do not have the URL handy, or I would give it to you here. Finally, check out the NMRA. TONS of information there, and when you become a member, their Kalmbach Memorial Library is completely available to you for any need you may have. To answer one of your questions... They sort trains in two types of yards-main yards anyhow. There are other types too, like industry switching. The main type of yard today is the humpyard. The humpyard contains a grade slope that from one end, arriving trains or car consists are cut off and sent down the hump. The cars travel down the hump on their own power. The speed is controlled by what they refer to as track retarders and there are several sets of these. The cars enter classification tracks depending on their load and where they are going. These classification tracks are really long, and sometimes number in the hundreds. From the classification tracks, the trains are built-up and moved out for other arriving cars. When the train first arrived the diesels and caboose (if any) were cut off the train, and these went their own way, bypassing the humpyard and down the yard into the caboose track-where the caboose is dropped off. Then the engines went to servicing, where they get fuel, water, a cleaning and any servicing/repair is also done here. When departing trains are ready, engines hookup to them, pull the trains from the classification tracks onto departure tracks, cabooses are then attached to the train rear (again if any-they use mostly FREDs nowdays), and then the train is off. The other is the flat switching yard with classification tracks, but this yard does not contain a hump or grade. The yard operation works similarly to the humpyard though. Both of these yards work in conjunction with smaller auxiliary yards, which do the servicing of cars and locomotives and provide the cleaning and care of such. I thought I read somewhere that when a diesel is reversed and cabled to the front diesel, it is giving the front diesel more power. Someone will correct me if I am wrong though. Unit trains, which carry mostly one commodity, be it Intermodal cars or coal cars, have numerous diesels. I have seen coal unit trains attach other motive power at the end to help with the heavy load, and to provide more braking power to prevent derailments. I hope that helps. -Wolv33
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