Or, do I even need any yards at all?
By default, I got stuck with developing an operations section for the LSC WIKI (see elsewhere) and I need your wisdom. There are several questions that need answering here. If you would be so kind, please answer them. There are no wrong answers because there are many ways to operate a railroad.
Thanks,
SteveF
Well, you certainly need ONE.
Staging yard, arrival/departure yard.
Something to set up your wayfreights FROM and bring the result back TO.
Usually, it’s the shed, or storage area.
Mine is heated, lit, coffee pot, single track in, 5 tracks across, plus 3 storage tracks on the far wall past the turn table, one accessible from Track 5, two off the table itself.
Then there is the turntable with 4 double-length tracks and one single-length to the side, and then there is the 3-track “maintenance” yard next to the inbound/outbound track, with Track 1 and Track 2 of the primary yard feeding the turntable, so when the cars get set out for ops, locos can come in and out around each other, plus a crossover in the middle, when some yay-who goes to the head and leaves his loco just sitting on Track 1.
Depends on how big the rr is, how many cars and locos, how much is set out (over 130 pieces of rolling stock, 75 or so are “set out” initially) and what you want to have “ready”.
I have an intermediate yard at Laurel, 4 tracks across, three are “through” tracks, one stub, the stub gets setouts from various locations for the through freight to take “down the hill”.
The three through tracks are necessary for holding trains waiting for the Lilac Branch.
I also have 10 passing sidings, altho only 8 are used as such in sessions.
That’s why we can run 20 separate trains at once.
TOC
My original design was going to be loop to loop. Each loop was to have at least one siding. It was my thinking that I could use these loops as staging yards, as I didn’t want my main town to originate or terminate trains. My plan was to have a train that would be “ready to go” on each of the staging tracks. The train would leave the staging area, arrive in town where it would perform some switching then head off to the other loop where it would rest on one of the staging tracks. That could be a single ops session for one person. Or, if I felt like doing more, I could take that train on the other track and run it to the town and switch it.
My desire was to be able to change directions for my trains, as I had found out that I always ran them the same way when I just had a loop. That and I wanted to be able to leave town headed north, and return from the north…not the south!
I’m trying to think how you could realistically operate without a yard of some sort. I guess you could be a simple railroad and take coal from the mine and take it to the power plant, or something like that. But a yard adds more operating possibilities. And, a yard doesn’t have to be big!!! Maybe that should be the question?
My latest design is now point to loop, as I found out I really didn’t have the room for two loops. I have a turntable (yet to be hooked up) at the point where my yard is located.
Dave brings up some other considerations that are also very important. How many trains are you planning to run in a session? How much rolling stock do you have? How much siding capacity do you have? How long are your trains? How many operators are you planning (min-max)? All of these factors need to be brought into the discussion.
Few of us can plan for operations on the scale of Dave, Fred, or Ric; but we can certainly learn from them.
One thing for sure; it doesn’t have to be as complex as I’ve made it sound! 
I operate my point-to-point railroad as a “short line” in that crew comes on duty at point A, switches the local industries, pulls cars off the interchange track and departs for the “end of the line” at point F switching out the various industries/towns in between. When reaching point F, the process is reversed on the way back to point A.
As a result, I don’t have a “yard” per se, each of the 3 “major” towns has a “storage or holding” track for the excess cars that can’t be spotted at the assigned industry. The railroad doesn’t handle a large volume of cars at any one time. My basement sized HO layout was different, more trains operated resulting in a high volume of cars handled thus good size yards were needed to handle the switching, classifying, and storing of cars. How your “railroad” is set up will determine the size & amount of freight yards needed.
Think of a light rail commuter service. We have the Metrolink in nearby St. Louis. It is point to point. The only yard is a maintenance terminal where equipment can be stored for repair, service or storage. There is no switching and the only interchange service is a ramp where new equipment is brought on to the line and other equipment is removed form the line. There are passing tracks that have been added as the need was created.
A couple of us had this conversation, Sunday. The idea is get trains running and then create the complexity of track plans and turnouts as the need arrives for what you want to do or create.
“It started as a loop and then a turnout and storage track was added going to the garden shed, because I got tired of carrying the train cars on and off the track everytime I wanted to run a train.”
“A runaround is needed here to get the engine to the other end of the train to switch that siding without uncoupling and running around the loop.”
As my current layout is an indoor one, my space is challenged. So a yard as such is not feasible. What I’m in the process of doing (when UPS ever gets here with my turnouts) is put in a team track that will double as a small yard. Also my mainline freight acts as a sort of moving yard. Empties etc are picked up by it and taken to “Whereeverville”. Once the car gets a new assignment it’s switched out of the train for the local switcher to switch to the designated industry.
Steve Featherkile said:
.....................................There are several questions that need answering here. If you would be so kind, please answer them. There are no wrong answers because there are many ways to operate a railroad.
Thanks,
SteveF
Even with the wrong answers in a Wiki you just correct that “boneheadedness” :).
The title of this subject is “How many yards do I need to operate my layout?”
I don’t know if you really need any, because couldn’t you just use a single interchange track with destinations being all single track industries? To me, that would be with only an assumed yard.
Ric Golding said:
The title of this subject is "How many yards do I need to operate my layout?"I don’t know if you really need any, because couldn’t you just use a single interschange track with destinations being all single track industries? To me, that would be with only an assumed yard.
The answer is: that depends on your layout!
If, for a minute we assume that we’re replicating some prototype, then the answer would be: the prototype will only add yards as, when and where they are required.
Which brings up the question: what exactly do you call a yard?
Our shortlines here in the Valley have a small yard that is located at a junction. The yard has exactly two tracks with the main running between them.
Why would I call it a yard? Because they use it to sort cars going down/up any one of the three legs running from the junction.
My prototype is my pike…I am not in any way dedicated to modeling a real pike. We add yards where needed for the operation, as it evolves.
Every year we look at changes and improvements. Some improvements are to the operating ideas. We don’t want boredom or repitition to work their fat ugly heads into the fun.
One of the reasons to avoid so called “Unit Trains”, or modern intermodal “Stuff”; is that that type of railroading is basicly a boring type of operation without any “Yard Time”, or switching. They are the types of trains that could be said to “Run in circles”. Out watching real trains; those types of trains really provide little more than a “Crew Change” as a moment of excitement…!!!
But, Fred, those types of trains provide challenges for switchers working industries and way freights who have to make sure they are in the clear before the through train is scheduled to arrive. If someone is slacking at the throttle when a through freight/unit train is due there is going to be a mess to clean up and hell to pay…
If I had space, I’d run a point to point with yards at each end and an interchange yard in the middle.
I also wanted some form of continuous running, and a level route for live steam.
Well, I managed 2 loops with crossovers and one yard:
It may not be the best I can do (comments welcome!) but I can operate the layout as a twice around and with the wye, can enter the yard from either direction.
I’m busy looking for places I can add spurs, thus industries to justify dropping off and picking up cars.
The yard has 15 foot long body tracks, and be operated double-ended, although the “north” yard lead is short.
So, while not ideal, the yard is big enough to make up reasonable length trains, and has the room for 2 operators to stay busy.
I plan to have some staging tracks in the garage (where the track on the left side go into the building!)
But, I think the fun is also in making up trains, picking up and dropping off. Watching a train go roundy round gets old after a while (sometimes 5 minutes!)
Regards, Greg
Ric Golding said:
[i][/i]A couple of us had this conversation, Sunday. The idea is get trains running and then create the complexity of track plans and turnouts as the need arrives for what you want to do or create.
“It started as a loop and then a turnout and storage track was added going to the garden shed, because I got tired of carrying the train cars on and off the track every time I wanted to run a train.”
“A runaround is needed here to get the engine to the other end of the train to switch that siding without uncoupling and running around the loop.”
This spring the plan is to actually add some industrial sidings. I picked up more switches from the track sale last week.
JUST DO IT
JR
Jon Radder said:Ric Golding said:
[i][/i]A couple of us had this conversation, Sunday. The idea is get trains running and then create the complexity of track plans and turnouts as the need arrives for what you want to do or create.
“It started as a loop and then a turnout and storage track was added going to the garden shed, because I got tired of carrying the train cars on and off the track every time I wanted to run a train.”
“A runaround is needed here to get the engine to the other end of the train to switch that siding without uncoupling and running around the loop.”
That’s almost exactly how I’m building outdoors. I began with what was a single track main with a dead end. For over a year I’d run the train out to the end. Stop, then back the train home. Then I decided to add a Wye so I could turn the train. That was followed by block control on the Wye to allow staging of multiple trains and use of the Wye to simulate industries for switching.This spring the plan is to actually add some industrial sidings. I picked up more switches from the track sale last week.
JUST DO IT
JR
BTW one of the big differences between European railway building and North American railroad building is, in my opinion, that in NA the RRs more or less followed the most favourable routes, with towns being established as the rails progressed. This is especially so in the West that had very large open spaces.
Contrast that with Europe where almost every acre belonged to someone already and assembling land for railway building had two handicaps
a) reluctant people who didn’t want to give up their land
b) feuding towns and jurisdictions who fought tooth and nail to have the railway connect through their “little fiefdoms”.
“The closer the station to the village or town the better” was the slogan and moaning and groaning resulted when the engineers came up with a proposal that made perfect sense, but wasn’t to the town folks liking.
One instance on the RhB comes to mind: St.Moritz, the haggling over where the station should go delayed the opening of the last few kilometers from Celerina by one year.
Quite a bit of difference between Europe getting rails and western America. It was the railroads that made the development of the US west of the Rockies possible. Often the decision of where a railroad would put a yard or service facility determined where a town would be…or whether or not the town would survive. I feel that a lot of Europeans don’t realize the great expanse we have out here…where the distance between stations can be the equivalent of the distance across Europe.
Getting trains down and running is a far easier way to develop a layout than trying to get it perfect on paper first. Often one discovers what his true likings are after the tracks are down. It’s sad but I’ve known guys that were so afraid of making a mistake in designing their railroad that it never gets off the paper.
The town I grew up in, Wenatchee, WA, USA, actually moved lock, stock and barrel over 2 miles from it’s original platte to where the “downtown” is now, simply because the Great Northern built the depot there.
Of course, some savvy land developers had already bought up the land that the town was going to move to. That group of savvy investors was headed by one James Jerome Hill, but nobody ever said anything about “Insider Trading.” They were only too glad to have the railroad come up the west side of the Columbia River from Rock Island, through the town and not up the east side of the Columbia River, then cross over the Columbia at the confluence of the Wenatchee River and then head up Steven’s Pass bypassing Wenatchee as had been the original plan.
I guess it was easier to make a buck a hundred years ago.
Still, it was the railroad that took Wenatchee from a sleepy little native village with a trading post to a fully developed city with an extensive agrarian economy. It is only lately that humans have been able to kill off the economy. That Appleyard has dwindled to a mere shadow of its former self hasn’t helped any, either.
Warren Mumpower said:Many Easterners don't realize the great expanse of land out here, either.
I feel that a lot of Europeans don't realize the great expanse we have out here....where the distance between stations can be the equivalent of the distance across Europe.
In my salad days I ferried motor homes from Elkhart, Indiana to Spokane, WA. In talking to one of the folks in Elkhart, I bemoaned the long drive ahead of me, and that it was the third such drive that I had done that month.
He asked what the big deal was, after all, it was only across two or three states!
Let’s see, Illinois and Minnesota, 1.5 to 2 days, the Dakotas, a full day or more, Montana, at least three days, Idaho into Spokane, a day at least. This driving was done in the winter, and blizzards be damned!
Maybe that is why I consider the NYC to be a short line. :lol:
Steve Featherkile said:LOL!!
Maybe that is why I consider the NYC to be a short line.
Curmudgeon said:
Well, you certainly need ONE.Staging yard, arrival/departure yard.
Something to set up your wayfreights FROM and bring the result back TO.Usually, it’s the shed, or storage area.
Mine is heated, lit, coffee pot, single track in, 5 tracks across, plus 3 storage tracks on the far wall past the turn table, one accessible from Track 5, two off the table itself.Then there is the turntable with 4 double-length tracks and one single-length to the side, and then there is the 3-track “maintenance” yard next to the inbound/outbound track, with Track 1 and Track 2 of the primary yard feeding the turntable, so when the cars get set out for ops, locos can come in and out around each other, plus a crossover in the middle, when some yay-who goes to the head and leaves his loco just sitting on Track 1.
Depends on how big the rr is, how many cars and locos, how much is set out (over 130 pieces of rolling stock, 75 or so are “set out” initially) and what you want to have “ready”.
I have an intermediate yard at Laurel, 4 tracks across, three are “through” tracks, one stub, the stub gets setouts from various locations for the through freight to take “down the hill”.
The three through tracks are necessary for holding trains waiting for the Lilac Branch.
I also have 10 passing sidings, altho only 8 are used as such in sessions.
That’s why we can run 20 separate trains at once.
TOC
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS & Proud owner of a single raised loop of track totalling 74 feet 4.3 inches around
And a bridge.