yard advice

[tomikawaTT]

Howdy, Kyle,

Just a few ideas you might consider:

• Move the crossover from your front tracks (top left end of yard) to the rear tracks, with the farthest track being the engine escape (with company service cars on the short spur.)  That way road locos can reach the engine house and service facilities without having to switch back, and the entire length of the front track is available for classification
• Connect that rearmost track to the diverging curve to form a true wye.  The engine escape track becomes a reversing section for electrical purposes.  Now you can operate locomotives front-end forward, and pull trains out of staging and switch ends without using the 0-5-0 or running a lap around the loop to get loco and caboose on the correct ends of each train.
• Add a short spur to the engine service area for fuel delivery - behind the coaling station for solid fuel, or just about anywhere if your motive power burns oil.  The coal spur can also service a sand house and ash pit.

 

And a suggestion.  To visibly separate the curved connector from the staging entrance - functionally - model a boarded-up industry as a flat behind the staging entrance, with a suggestion of there having been a now-removed spur to service it.  That way the curve looks like the main line, even if not operated as such.

The only other thing I see is a need for passenger facilities if modeling the transition era - even if the passenger train is only a single RDC.  In the more recent decades the station buildings would have gone from boarded up to demolished or recycled as restaurants or antique shops.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[train lover12]

hey all, its me again. I've got what i think is a pretty good layout plan, here it is: this time my main question is about the yard. so first some background, I'm modeling a freelance branch of the, well i haven't actually decided yet. i do think it will be in the northeast. i'm thinking of the NH. So, the junction with the rest of the RR is in staging, from there the branch runs through two towns. there is a classification yard at the end of the branch, my idea is that there is no yard anywhere near on the mainline so all trains with deliveries for the branch or the branch off of the branch (represented by the continuous run connection). the leftmost yard track is the A/D track and the track next to it is an engine escape track that can hold about 3/4 cars above the x-over. the rest are just normal yard tracks. thyere is also an engine house. my questions are: 1. will the layout of the yard work well? I've gone through ops in my head and it seems to work, but is there any way to improve it? 2. is there a better way to put in some engine storage? i dont really like how its put together now but i cant think of anything else to do it. 3. and last. do you see any major problems with the layout? any at all? thanks, Kyle