Further refinements

spitfire

Active Member
I've borrowed the track plan for the classification yard from John Armstrong's book and added a passing siding to the loop on the right. Also moved one of the staging tracks. I may rework the staging to get rid of some of the turnouts as there are getting to be a lot of them!!!!

What do you all think?

cheers
:D Val
 

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TR-Flyer

Member
Hi Val:
I don't know that i would reduce the number of staging sidings. There's a neat opportunity there for some automatic operation when you're operating the layout.

There are ways to automatically switch turnouts using sensors. You could actually stage three or four trains.When one goes around, it would be set to go onto siding one. When it enters the siding a sensor would flip the turnouts so a train on siding two would then leave and go around your loop. When it returns to it's siding sensors would cause the turnouts to throw and allow the consist on siding three to go around. If you add a couple timers, you can delay the departure of the trains so they are not on top of one another.

In this way it will seem that there are several regularly scheduled trains each day. Meanwhile you can be happily working the yard over at the dock. Your guests will be wondering, "How's she do that?"

Regards,
Ted
 

shamus

Registered Member
Nice plan Val, but I have added another spur just to see if you like it.


Shamus
 

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60103

Pooh Bah
Squeeze

Val:
Before you go much further, measure some turnouts, especially on crossovers. The shortest in HO I know of (snap track) are 9" long; a number 6 is about a foot. Your yard will expand a lot when you draw it to scale.
Even professional plans can be wrong. I had to drop a crossover and another track from my station approaches, because they allowed less than a foot for it.
In the staging yard, you might consider 3-way tunouts to save space.
 

msh

Member
60103 is soooooo right. Before I used Atlas Right track (and now 3rd planit) I tried going at it by hand in a drawing proggie and was WAAAYYY off. For example - the #4 and #6 turnouts are quite different and getting them wrong will destroy your real nice design. At the very least get them drawn to scale or latch onto some proper design software - all doubts will be removed.
 

Tyson Rayles

Active Member
Well I was going to say I thought the yard on the left had wayyyyyy to many turnouts to fit the space. You could save a lot of space by only having one runaround (passing siding) track and not making all the others double ended too.
 

spitfire

Active Member
David and msh that's good advice. I've been wondering if this will fit myself, so I picked up a couple of turnouts (Peco small insulfrog) yesterday - one left, one right, for accurate planning. The Peco's don't have the same numbering system as others - just small, medium and large, but the guy at the LHS said small takes less space then Atlas #4 with a slightly wider radius.

Shamus, thanks for the spur.

Tyson, I understand what you mean in theory, but I'm not sure how I would lay it out. If I can remove some turnouts without compromising operations it would be a very good thing. Could you elaborate a little please for this newbie?

Ted, that sounds cool! I thought maybe the staging area could be a second yard, possibly scenicked as well.

cheers
:D Val
 

Tyson Rayles

Active Member
Val I will try to get something posted this evening. BTW I would not use Peco small or Atlas #4 switches if you are going to run steam.
 

Ralph

Remember...it's for fun!
Hi Val!

Things are really taking shape here! I'm agreeing with Tyson about the double ended yard and suspect you'll shortchange yourself on track length that way. What if you removed the turnouts at the end of the yard and just let the yard tracks continue on as stub ended? Then you could lengthen your passing siding on the far left of the yard a bit more to let your loco get around your train for switching. I'm also w/ Tyson on using #6 or better turnouts. My experience with #4s even with four axle diesels hasn't always been great.
I have a feeling you're on the verge of building! :)
Ralph
 

Tyson Rayles

Active Member
Val keep in mind I work in N-Scale not HO so take some flex-track and a few turnouts or templates and play around a little, you might be able to get more in then I think. :) This (the attached drawing) is what I had in mind. Make sure that the track just past the runaround turnout on the bottom left is long enough to hold your longest steam loco and tender or 2 diesels and still clear the turnout. It would be an ideal place to use the mirror "trick" to make the yard seem even bigger. Just build a industry that's on both sides of the tracks and connect them with an overhead walkway or something to camoflauge the top of the mirror. Hope this is of some help. :D
 

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spitfire

Active Member
Thanks a lot Tyson, but there's just one thing. Won't that plan make it too easy to get to Canada Malting (the large structure at the bottom)?

How about if I do something like this?

cheers
Val
 

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spitfire

Active Member
Tyson, I'm curious why you don't recommend the curved Peco Smalls - the guy at the LHS told me they were equivalant to a 24" radius. Mind you, another guy at the same store told me Peco didn't make code 100 insulfrog and that's just wrong as I have one in my hand right now! Also, the mirror idea is cool, but what about seeing trains in mirror too - that'll confuse me no end I'm sure! Maybe I could have the track disappear under an overpass....

Ralph, do you mean to have the stub end on the left or right side? BTW, notice the Inglis Appliance Factory there is going to be a big customer for sheet steel - probably in unit trains! - that should keep that steel mill humming!

cheers
:D Val
 

railohio

Active Member
That would make it more difficult to get to the one industry, but at the same time, would render your yard about useless. It'd require way too much work to get trains in and out of it. I'd suggest just adding a switchback on the industry spur and leave the yard layout alone.
 

Tyson Rayles

Active Member
Val, Brian's right, if an engineer for a real R.R. designed that last yard you posted he would be fired! :D The R.R.'s tried to make things as easy as possible (and you would get tired of the "challenge" real quick I think). Nothing wrong with the overpass, it would work just fine. I also don't think you are going to have room to fit that last plan in that space. The reason I don't like small or #4 switches is 6 axle diesels and lead and trailing trucks on steam locos tend to derail on them. Small diesel switchers and 0-4-0's tend to stall on em'. I also don't like curved turnouts for the same reasons (although #8's and larger seem O.K.), but then that's just been my experience and others may not have had the same results. :)
 

railohio

Active Member
Another thought of mine concerned your industry. Most industries large enough to serve ships as well would probably require more than one track to them. How about adding a small yard to provide cars just for the industry and giving it its own switcher to shuffle them around?
 

spitfire

Active Member
Oh geez! I've just been demoted! They sent me to work as a ticket agent! Guess you guys were right.
BTW, that original plan was straight out of Jonh Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation (but then, he's retired now and his job's not on the line) hehehe.
I guess it's back to the drawing board for me!

cheers
:rolleyes: Val
 

60103

Pooh Bah
How complicated?

Val:
Putting complications into your plan will depend on how you want to play the game. If you are going to have friends over to operate and run to a time table, you want your process to runsmoothly. If you're playing solitaire, you might want to make things hard for yourself. (Like a golf course with bunkers and hazards vs one with metal troughs leading straight to the holes.)
You could get slightly longer sidings by running the switches at the bottom end the other way, so that the third track is the one that continues on...not like keeping it as the mainline, unfortunately.
 

railohio

Active Member
Originally posted by spitfire
Oh geez! I've just been demoted! They sent me to work as a ticket agent! Guess you guys were right.
BTW, that original plan was straight out of Jonh Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation (but then, he's retired now and his job's not on the line) hehehe.
I guess it's back to the drawing board for me!

cheers
:rolleyes: Val

Val, that was the first thing I noticed when I looked at your plan. That is a great design for a small yard, as is, but you might want to make a few modifications to it.

My first thought is to move the industry track so one doesn't have to traverse the whole yard to get to it. My suggestions would be to mirror the yard, putting the main on the front edge of the table, and the bowl tracks in the rear.

You may also want to rework the yard lead and remove the run-around parallel to the lead and extend the switching lead around the curve a bit. This will save a little track in the yard and at the same time make the switching lead a little more useful in daily operations.
 
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