Staging Tracks are they worth it?

[BRAKIE]

Sheldon: Again, I suggest you don't blame the layout infrastructure for poorly designed operating schemes.

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I didn't blame the layout since the operational potential was there and the owner didn't use it.

It was a well design layout built for far more then just running marathons between staging yard.

The other layouts I operated on the  operation was fantastic.

Yours sounds very interesting.

[lokomotoro]

Difinitely Yes. I have three staging yards whith a return loop  and 10 tracks on each. So  normaly I operate a point to ponit sesion.The three yards are named North, Andalucia and Levante. And I operate almost 8 trains each way for session in my RENFITAS layout.

lokomtoro frm Spain.

[IVRW]

I would have to say that, track for track, they are worth the space. Watch an operations DVD and you will see that you can do a lot of things with them. You can have through trains go from one "yard" to another (i.e. both off layout), making pickups and drop offs at your yard, introducing new carloads of traffic that you would have a very hard time getting rid of otherwise. For example, say you had a logging or mining operation on your layout. If you had no staging yard, you would have to have a mill on the layout as a destination for the ore or logs. First, a mill takes up a lot of space, and second, the railcar would be making a much shorter route over the railroad, going from A to B and back again. If a car was stuck in such an operation, it could only make stops at that mine or camp, as there would be no other places for it to fill up on a similar product. If you have staging tracks, the car would be able to travel to another off line "industry" and return as an empty with another product from another unmodeled industry. Also, you could take the space used in the one big mill, and turn it into two other smaller industries. Lastly, you could have more links to the chain in the car's travel over the layout. If you model another mine or camp off layout, the car would increase it's possible milage over the layout by going from staging to mill to mine to mill back to staging, theoretically bringing in ore from both mines, rather than just the one.

[cefinkjr]

Additional thoughts on staging tracks:

Given a choice of hidden staging tracks or even one yard, I'll take the staging tracks.  This might sound like I don't like yard switching but that isn't true.  My normal job where I operate is switching a large (100+ cars) yard at the end of a branch line and I have a great time doing it.

My dream railroad would model the N&W from Roanoke to Crewe in N scale, replicating the helper service from Boaz to Blue Ridge in 1943.  On that railroad, both Roanoke and Crewe would be represented by a single through staging yard for eastbound coal, westbound empties, and extra sections of other trains.  Roanoke and Crewe  would also be represented by separate reversing loop staging for general merchandise and other traffic that does not travel in open top cars.

Passenger trains would also use the reversing loop at Roanoke.  The passenger station at Lynchburg would be on another reversing loop (freight trains did not pass through the passenger station in 1943).  Passenger trains between Lynchburg and Crewe?  Gee, you must have just missed seeing one.  Another will be along in a little while if you want to wait.

In all three cases (Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Crewe), the yard throats would be visible to road crews so that they have the feeling of taking charge of their trains at a logical place and running them to another logical place.  The dispatcher would be able to see all of the staging trackage and would modify ('fiddle with') consists as necessary.

This railroad could keep several operators busy or be enjoyable to run single-handed or run in continuous mode for an open house.

Do I think staging tracks are worth it?  Yeah, you could say I do.