Staging and Yards

[jlcjrbal]

So I am just trying to get a hold on something so I thaught I would post it here..


A Staging area is where the consists have been built and are just awaiting an engine?
And a yard is where the switcher builds them and puts them in the staging area???

Just wodering after readiing a few posts, I was thinking a staging area was just an out of the way yard for the modeler.. Joseph

[dehusman]

A staging yard represents the "rest of the world".

We all model just a part of the overall railway system. The cars and many times trains that operate on our railroad originate someplace other than the portion we model and cars and trains that operate over our layouts often terminate at someplace beyond our layout. The staging yards represent those places.

For example if you model the PRR between Pittsburgh and Altoona, there will be trains that operate between Chicago and Philadelphia. The train started at a place off the layout (Pittsburgh staging)and ends in a place off the layout (Philadelphia staging).

To use the theater analogy (it is after all, staging) the layout is the stage and the staging yards are the wings. The actors/trains wait in the wings/staging yards until its time for them to perform/operate and then they enter the stage/layout, do their thing, and then exit back offstage into the wings/into staging.

Staging can be open or hidden, "live" or "dead". A live staging yard is also called a fiddle yard. A person (sometimes called a "mole") will rearrange the cars in the trains either by switching them or by "0-5-0" (moving them by hand). Dead staging the trains just run out the same as they came in, same power, same cars, same order.

Dave H.

[leighant]

A staging area is like backstage at a theater. Actors are not acting and are not in character, are just waiting to go onstage.

The idea is that a layout can only cover a limited amount of the length of a railroad, at most a handful of scale miles. We can model what happens/ operates in a limited area realistically, then it goes off somewhere else and disappears.

My layout doesn't even have a yard as such!

(By the way, Rio Viejo and Lost River are two ends of the same staging tracks...the same actual tracks with two names to represent two different places.)

It represents one town along the mainline with a station and a few industries.
Mainline through trains come from staging, run through Johnston and then disappear into staging again. The layout is not big enough to model all of a 50 mile or 100 mile run of a train, only about the visible 1 mile of it that is in between major terminals, which does not include the start or end of the journey.

A local peddler train runs eastbound one day and westbound the next. It does not start or end in my modeled town of Johnston but comes tfrom staging, drops off cars and picks up cars, and then continues to staging.

I have a short logging railroad. It has some trackage at a mill that is supposedly a mile or so off the mainline on its own trackage--actually only a 7 foot run from the mainline connection. Not enough trackage to call a yard really, but it is the only place where a train originates and terminates at a visible spot, and whose operation is run realistically at that spot. A log train gathers empty log cars from the mill pond dump track, carries them to the mainline connection and to a log "reload" spur where logs are loaded from trucks. A cut of filled log cars has been set up before the operating session.

http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/aap.jpg

The log train leaves the empties and pulls the loaded log cars back to the mill. Its days work ends when it delivers the log cars to the mill pond to be dumped, and then the logging loco returns to its enginehouse. That operation of making up and breaking down the train is not modeled anywhere else, but only suggested by staging. I swap cars by hand to vary the trains that run through town.

I hope on a future big layout to have what I call a "WORKING" yard. I will make up trains realistically there, but part of their operation will be represented by staging of one sort or other, probably two or more staging locations.

A 20-car train southbound from Chicago, Kansas City and Fort Worth (actually from the north end staging) will arrive at 65th Street Yard and a blocked cut of 8 or 10 cars will be pulled off, and maybe 6 cars will be put on to continue going south to the Texas coast. Some of those cars are destined to be placed at industry spurs along the railroad in the town of Santa Vaca, and those will be given to a local peddler train. Some may be going to interchange to the port railroad and a transfer run with take those cars and deliver them. Some will be going to points on the line that runs generally east from 65th street. I will just imagine though that the junction with my railroad is just north of the modeled portion, so the train to east Texas will start out going north from 65th Street and just go directly into the north staging area. So that one staging yard stands for two different places.

A switcher may make up a train at 65th Street, then a road engine and caboose will tie on and the assembled train will operate to staging.

The yard is not a place to "park" trains but to assemble cars coming from several sources and sort them out to send to different destinations.

Any clearer now?

[IRONROOSTER]

Staging can be tracks with whole trains and represent the unseen mainline beyond the layout. It can be tracks with cuts off cars that represents interchange, industry, etc. off the layout. While staging is usually at the ends of the layout, it doesn't have to be. You can have staging tracks in the middle. And of course you can have multiple staging areas.
Enjoy
Paul

[Big_Boy_4005]

I can see where there might be some confusion over the word staging. Generally, it has come to mean a place not represented on the layout. Most model railroads do not have enough space to represent everything, so modelers will choose a section of the railroad to model. All of those places that aren't represented on the layout can still send and receive cars by using staging. An eastbound train would go past the last town on the east end of the layout, (off stage) and go to a hidden place, where it could wait, or be broken down depending on the type of operation.

A yard is just a collection of parallel tracks, connected on at least one end by a number of switches called a ladder. These tracks are used to sort cars by destination. Cars heading in the same direction are put together to form a train.