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Track spacing in the yard?
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<font size="3">WOW!!WHAT A THREAD!!!</font id="size3">Thank you, there, mikesmowers, for this topic. Brings back some real memories - although "horror stories' might be a more appropriate attribute. You, at least, have a means of getting some guidance. I made some very egregious mistakes in yard design when I was first starting out. <br /> <br />I was in the Air Force at Moses Lake, Washington when I first got interested in model railroading. The guy who ran the local hobby shop was primarily into model aviation; he did, however, try, as best he could, to give me some practical advice. I never did meet any other modelers in the area; presumably they were around but I remained a lone wolf modeler until the Air Force transfered me to Leftover Air Force Patch in Massachusetts in 1964. One thing I never thought about asking was about track separation in yards. My <i>Pracical Guide to Model Railroading</i> (which I still have, BTW, over forty years after I bought it - its well worn, I can tell you that) gave 2 1/4 inch track spacing for double track; a yard is, <i>in reality</i>, double track so that's where I went. <font size="3">WRONG!!!</font id="size3">. Two and a quarter inches in HO is 16'4" and when you subtract the ten foot width of a car - (this knowledge came later) - you come up with a spacing of 7/16ths of an inch. One day I put a string of cars onto the ties and discovered to my horror that trying to get a 1/2 inch thick finger into a 7/16 inch space is like trying to squeeze nineteen gallons into an eighteen gallon gas tank. <br /> <br />I got smarter on my next layout - my second - and laid my track centers on 2 3/8ths centers - 17'3" in HO. That gave me a half an inch finger space between cars. Things were still too tight and rerailing could still be a headach so on my next layout - my third, and last, in HO - I went to 20' centers (2 3/4 inch - 11/16 inch spacing between cars on adjacent track) and, for all practical purposes, I stopped having troubles. <br /> <br />When I shifted to N-Scale twenty-five plus years ago I was aware that that 20' (1 1/2 inch) spacing was not going to be enough so I settled on a 1 3/4 inch track separation; that works out to 23'4". I've always thought that that looked like h*ll but according to West Coast S, I don't appear to be too awfully far off current practice. <br /> <br />Jeffery-Wimberly had, as he usually does, some excellent advice on yard design and which, had I had someone to give me that kind of advice forty plus years ago, I could have avoided numerous Excedrin headaches. <br /> <br />Keep us posted!!!
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