I'm going to add an engine & caboose terminal to my layout, between the yard ladder and where the lead curves around to the main. My layout is set in the early 1970s, so this is a diesel only facility. I think I've got the basic track plan down.
Option 1, turntable at far end:
Option 2, engine house instead of turntable:
I'm leaning toward option 2, as there is a wye near by to turn engine and I like the look of the engine house. I'm also contemplateing angling all the tracks more toward the yard office, and increasing the track spacing some.
Comments? Ideas?
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
While I like #2 better, #1 is somewhat representative of the RDG Darby Creek Terminal. It had a concrete engine house with the service tracks along side of it and a turntable at the far end. The two "service" tracks would go through the engine house and to the turntable. The two ready tracks would become the service tracks.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Based on Dave's comments here's option 3, both turntable and engine house:
To me, this option looks a little cluttered. It also requires some rearranging of the service and ready tracks.
Make the tracks through the diesel house connect to the turntable and you'll have Darby Creek. I would lose a caboose track and a ready track.
The service tracks are the tracks outside the diesel house. If you have to have 4 engine tracks they should be, from the yard office:
Caboose
Fuel/sand track
Service track
Ready track
Engine house #1
Engine House #2
The service track, ready track , and both engine house tracks connect to the turntable.
Dave,
Thanks for the ideas. I'll move some things around tomorrow, and see what I can come up with.
I planned for two caboose tracks, because I have a large number of cabooses. I like both your and Chip's idea about a supply track. Maybe the track along the aisle, instead.
John, you bring up a good point too. The turntable does add a good deal of operational flexiblity.
I spent some time in the layout room this morning moving things about. Here's what I came up with:
Two tracks now run through the engine house to the turntable. The service track also connects. To fit the ready track in, it looks like I'll have to add an extention to the front edge. Hopefully, I can tie that track into the turntable as well.
I kept the two caboose tracks, but angled them more toward the office, and added a supply track. This track probably won't run entire length of the facility though.
Thanks for all your suggestions. What started out as simply a place to store/display my locomotives and cabooses, has evolved into a center of operation in it's own right.
Is there any place else you can move the caboose track? That looks like a very inconvienient place operationally and caboose tracks were more commonly found near the yard lead than in the engine facilities. That would free up real estate to put the ready tracks over there and avoid the bump out.
It appears that the engine facilities is on the "right hand" end of the yard. By putting the caboose track in the engine facilities, a switch engine on the right hand end of the yard will have to run around the caboose to shove it into the track or will have to pull a caboose and then run around it to be able to put it on a track in the yard. The switcher on the left hand end of the yard will have to come all the way to the other end of the yard to add or remove a caboose from the tracks. While switching out cabooses you will block all movements in, out and around the deisel shop. By relocating the caboose track to the yard itself and flipping it to point to the left instead of to the right, you will cut the number of moves required to handle cabooses by half. If I was working the yard, I would probably just set the cabs over to yard track to hold them while I did switching. I would probably only go to the cab track if I was totally out of cabooses because it would require such a unhandy move.
The left end of the yard dead ends into the wall, so I really can't move it that way. I've included some of the ladder in this shot to give a better sense of the space.
I moved the caboose tracks to their own lead, in an effort to minimize the impact on the engine facilities. In doing so, I also gained a few more lengths of room in both places, and was able to move the engine house away from the turntable some.
It is hard to see in your photo, but couldn't you attatch your cabin track to the yard area and move the yard office closer to the engine house without loss of space.
The fact that the cabin track faces the opposite way from the ladder pretty much means the switcher has to take the cabin quite a ways and maybe even run around it.
Something like this:
One option would be a double ended track along the ladder. Another might be the yard track along the aisle, I designated the run-through, that the engine terminal branches off from. Because the yard stub ends at the wall, some type of 0-5-0 fiddling will always be necessary.
Exactly. The double ended is a nice touch.
It'll give you a lot more room in your service area as well.
Hmm....so far I haven't found a configation like that I like. I'll rearrange things somemore and keep you posted.
Well, I let the plan sit for a while and had another wack at it.
I moved the caboose tracks out entirely, rearrange the spacing some, and eliminated the bump out:
The only issue is I lost a connection for the Supply Track. I'm think either a seperate turnout off the yard ladder or possibly a 3 way (not to wild about that idea though). I'd also like add some storage tanks, (like from Walther McGraw Oil)
I moved the addition to the area behind the door, where it will be less intrusive:
I had concidered Yard 2 or 3 as the Caboose track, because of the the open space between them, but they are two of my longest yard tracks. So I decided up front would be good. You can also see the cabooses better. I may flip the Running and Caboose tracks, to provide some protection for the cabooses.
nbrodar wrote: I moved the addition to the area behind the door, where it will be less intrusive:I had concidered Yard 2 or 3 as the Caboose track, because of the the open space between them, but they are two of my longest yard tracks. So I decided up front would be good. You can also see the cabooses better. I may flip the Running and Caboose tracks, to provide some protection for the cabooses.
How long reach from edge of layout over running track, caboose track and yard tracks to industry track (?) along wall ? Looks like it might get to be quite a reach with the extra two tracks up front.
Stein