Yard design

[Alroy66]

I am quite new to actually building and deigning a layout. Although I have been picking up "stuff" for years I am only now in the possition that I can actually start to build anything. I would like to start to build a yard with a turntable and round house. I should mention that I am modeling in N scale and already have The turntable, roundhouse, watertower & coaltower. Now for the questions.

1. Does anyone know what manufacturers I can buy wash track equipment and an ash pit from? I am modeling the 40's - 50's area so I can run both steam and early diesel. I believe I can desighn the service end of this first section of my layout but any sugestions or designs would be appreciated.

2. The actual yard. I am not a railroad guru so operations are completely new to me. I would like to know how to design a yard. This will not be a large operation yard, If when I'm done I have 4-6 operators that will be it. and how does it work? A layout design or where I can get info on this would be great.

3. Does the passenger or coach yard use the same area or should it go somewhere else on the layout.

 This will be the first part of my layout. I'm hopeing to fit this all in a 24" X 96" area. Am I nutes or can this be done comfortably in this area. As well I don't think my trains will be any longer than about 12 units long.

Any help would be appreciated as you can tell I am not very knoledgable so please forgive me if I am asking too much.

 

Thank

Al

 

[jecorbett]

As for yard designs, get Andy Sperandeo's book, The Model Railroaders Guide to Freight Yards. Excellent source for both prototype and model railroad yards.

Every coach yard I have seen has been a separate facility. It might be adjacent to the freight yard but it will have its own tracks. I suppose their might be a prototype facility somewhere that freight and passenger shared tracks but I'm not familiar with one.

I model in HO so I'm not aware of everything available in N but Walthers makes an ash pit and wash rack in HO and much of what they sell is available in both scales. I would check that first.

[pcarrell]

Get ahold of John Armstrong's "Track Planning For Realistic Operation".  It may be the best money you ever spend on your RR.

 Also, give this a look: http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Primer , especially this: http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Yards--freight_and_passenger .

Also, a yard big enough for 4-6 people in that space may not be possible.  Your whole layout would have to be the yard (which would be kind of cool).

[Milwhiawatha]

Get ahold of John Armstrong's "Track Planning For Realistic Operation".  It may be the best money you ever spend on your RR.

 Also, give this a look: http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Primer , especially this: http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Yards--freight_and_passenger .

Also, a yard big enough for 4-6 people in that space may not be possible.  Your whole layout would have to be the yard (which would be kind of cool).

Philip he meant to say the max operators hewould have running the layout would be 4 to 6 not 4 to 6 people in the yard.

[SpaceMouse]

Hi,

The first suggestion I have to add to the above is when you design your yard, post a copy in the layout section of this forum and let others take a look at it. It doesn't have to be perfect, and you will get a lot of feedback. You may have to make several revisions, but the people won't let you walk away with a bad design (unless you want to.)

The second suggestion is a link. The Ten Commandments of Yard Design

 

[pcarrell]

Get ahold of John Armstrong's "Track Planning For Realistic Operation".  It may be the best money you ever spend on your RR.

 Also, give this a look: http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Primer , especially this: http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Yards--freight_and_passenger .

Also, a yard big enough for 4-6 people in that space may not be possible.  Your whole layout would have to be the yard (which would be kind of cool).

Philip he meant to say the max operators hewould have running the layout would be 4 to 6 not 4 to 6 people in the yard.

OK, but still, thats a lot of people to operate a layout thats occupying a 24" X 96" area.

[Alroy66]

Thanks for the feed back. I realize now I didn't explain myself well. What I meant was only the yard and sevice facility will occupy 24" X 96". My layout will eventually occupy a room 14' X 25'. Maybe I'm nuts but I would like to start my layout empire with the yard, service area and coach yard first.

[pcarrell]

Thanks for the feed back. I realize now I didn't explain myself well. What I meant was only the yard and sevice facility will occupy 24" X 96". My layout will eventually occupy a room 14' X 25'. Maybe I'm nuts but I would like to start my layout empire with the yard, service area and coach yard first.

YOU GO BOY!!!!!!

[markpierce]

Alroy 66.

Check out the following site for advice:

http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

then to go menu item "design primer" and then submenu item "yard - freight and passenger"

I'm sure you'll find lots of other useful layout-design information at this site.

Mark

[pcarrell]

Alroy 66.

Check out the following site for advice:

http://ldsig.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

then to go menu item "design primer" and then submenu item "yard - freight and passenger"

I'm sure you'll find lots of other useful layout-design information at this site.

Mark

I beat you to it!  Check out my first post.  Guess that means it must be good though, huh?

[dehusman]

Form follows function.

So the first thing you want to decide is what you want your yard to do.  Is it to store trains between the times you run them around the layout?  Is it to to switch up cars for locals?  Is it a coach yard for passenger cars?  Is it a division point that switches up every every through freight that comes through? Is it an industry support yard that only handles set outs and pick ups?

The next question is how many trains and how many cars will it handle and what are you doing on the main line while you are switching?  I you are on a busy main line and want to run 20 trains by the yard while you switch you need a different design than a branch line that handles one local freight train a day and has to let the passenger local by.  If you are planning to yard and switch one 10 car train in and build one 10 car train out you need way less yard than one designed to yard and switch ten 20 car trains.

Generally passenger and freight yards don't use the same tracks so normally the two are separated, the passenger yard being near the city center where the large passenger station is and the freight yard on the outskirts (or what was the outskirts) of the city near where the industrial area is.

 Having said that typically some things that are in a yard is one or more recieving or departure tracks where inbound our outbound trains are yarded or built.  They are typically one train long and double ended.  There are class tracks where the cars are sorted by destination.  They can be stub or single ended or double ended depending on your room and how busy the yard is.  Normally you want to put no more than two blocks or destinations in any one track.  then if you are going to be running multiple trains by the yard you will want a switching lead that allows the switcher to switch into the class tracks without fouling the main or optimally the recieving/departure tracks.

Dave H.

[Alroy66]

dehusman

I'll try and answer your questions to the best of my limited ability.

I would lke to design my yard so that the "world" will deliver and pick up cars, only to leave and go back to the "world" right away. From there the cars will be sorted into (I believe it is called)a consist, for wichever direction, East or West, for deliveries. The only train that will pass through the yard via the main line will be the passenger train, all others will stop to drop of and pickup or go to be serviced. I am planning, thinking or hoping to run maybe up to 4 freight trains 2 passenger trains and 1 yard switcher. One freight will head East, one will head into the city (East) and the other two will head West. The trains will be approximately 10 cars, 12 max.

I guess now from what every one has said I'll move my passenger yard to the City with 3 or 4 tracks.

Now all I have to do is read all the material you all have offered and start drawing. Any thoughts on drawing with a template verses CAD and maybe what type? I'm not sure how accurate either are when it goes from paper to the bench work.

 

Al

[gear-jammer]

Thanks for the feed back. I realize now I didn't explain myself well. What I meant was only the yard and sevice facility will occupy 24" X 96". My layout will eventually occupy a room 14' X 25'. Maybe I'm nuts but I would like to start my layout empire with the yard, service area and coach yard first.

14' x 25' for N scale.    How exciting.

Sue

[jim22]

I'm pretty happy with my yard, but it's MUCH smaller.  I have a runaround track off the main, two sorting tracks, and a pair of tracks with crossovers that work with switchbacks.  I can pretty much handle making up only about 1 train at a time - any other passenger or freight trains need to hold outside yard limits while the switching takes place.

As for planning and building, I used xtrkcad.  I had to use the turnout designer to enter Atlas Customline #4 turnouts that I use.  I transfered the centerline endpoints of each track of each turnout from the plan to the surface of the benchwork.  It's important to layout and connect important parts of the yard, e.g. the entire ladder network of turnouts, before spiking anything down.  I found I had one turnout which went in a little crooked, and I didn't discover it until I had spiked down several more turnouts.  I had to rip them all out to fix the problem.

One of my toughest challenges was the flextrack curve to create parallel tracks off the straight and diverging tracks of a turnout - i.e. the runaround track.  I did not want real tight curves, but I found it very difficult to have the straight turnout track on one sideof a joint and a curved piece of flextrack on the other side.  I think maybe soldering the flextrack to the turnout would have helped.  All I did was juse lots of track spikes.  I ended up with tighter curves than I would have liked because they did not start right at the turnout.

Jim 

[Cannoli]

I've found this thread to be very helpful. The links posted on the basics of yard design are helping me to answer many of the same questions. I'm building my new layout, just having moved out of the world of the 4x8.

My new layout is going to be 12'x10' with a planned area of 2'x8' for the yard and engine facilities. Since I'm modeling in HO I know this doesn't give me a ton of options space wise but since the theme of my layout is a backwoods B&M branch in the 70's it doesn't need to be enormous .

In my part of my design testing I initially came up with a 3 track yard that was connected t the mainline via a switch back. The switch back was long enough to hold a 4axle loco, IE GP9, and 3 50' box cars.I also had another track of the same length running parallel to the yard tracks as a location for trains to be assembled and taken down.

Here is a sketch, which is not to scale, of the plan, which I have layed out and tested so know it will fit. My question is, how prototypical would the switchback be for the yard?

Thanks!