HAhahahah Well hopefully the next section of the yard will get raised on its frame this weekend… more running room…Hopefully the yard will be operational by Mid July!!!
Okay, but a piece of wood and 2 screws could sure save some beautiful equipment.
Alllrighty! The move is complete! This afternoon I was able toassemble the 2nd frame and lift the other half of Cassville Yard from the dirt! Fromt here on out its new construction!
Funny…its seemed a lot smaller when it was down on the ground!
Congratulations! Okay, so now what? You got this well under way -
Where do your thoughts wonder after you complete the yard? Where are you planning to continue off of this yard? Is the stub alongside the shop, the yard lead? I know the track next to the yard lead goes into the shop, so that doesn’t continue on or does it come out the other end of the building? Is one of the stub tracks headed to the main? Will this whole thing connect into the rest of “Your World” off the back of the shop? Is “Your World” really flat and you fall off the edge if you get to close? FILM AT ELEVEN
Valid Questions! The two largest blocks on the diagram are the current sections of the Yard at a 40" height. The switch to the indoor locomotive storage area isn;t shown on the digram because at the time I wasn’t sure exactly how the Shop would be oriented in reguards to the yard. orwhich side of The Shop the line would be oriented too. In reality the Shop Switch is a LH No6 right at the end of the three way switch. Continuingstraight past the Shop Switch will lead into the Staging Yard area. In its simplest form it might only be a 12 ft 2x8 shelf of one train capacity or it might evolve into something more extensive depending on operational needs.
The next model to be builtwill be off the opposite end of the yard and willsupport engine terminal facilities. Dispite being shown as a 2’x 8’ section on the diagram, I’m considering making it a full 4’x8’ frame with plenty of room for servicing structures. Also I may do away with the switch and track that runs down the center on the diagram and place a combination passenger /freight depot here that serve both terminaing Mainline trains and trains off the branchline with a track on either side of it. An advatage of the 4x8 frame would be to extend the storage spur (2nd from the top in the diagram) to a point where it would be just behine the engine facilities allowing working a coal dock and sand house into the operational scheme. I may extend the track all the way to the TT and make sure the TT could accomodate one freightcar plus the switcher (about 40"I expect) and allow it to be worked from either end. The Uppermost track serves a Farmers Co op and a team track area.
The branchline leaves the yard at the lefthand end of the bottom most track and will extend to future switching area going around the corner of the house,industries here will provide a traffic base for the yard through both incoming and outgoing shipments, witht he Cassville Yard being the basis of operation for the layout. I suspect the basis for this summer will be Yard operations only with both the mainline and branchline trains being represented by staging and only the yard tricks actually being worked.
Only some of what you said makes sense to my little brain. I guess you need to start putting your new ideas and “as builts” on paper. From your explanation, it sounds to me like you’ll have to put a back door in the shop.
Don’t fret it, I’ll wait for the movie. I think you’ve got some great plans.
OK…a picture is worth 1000 words…
Operationally, the track going into The Shop doesn’t exist. Its simply there to run locomotives in and out. The Yard lead goes straight out past this switch and past the corner of the building. This will be a staging "fiddle"yard, at this point I’m not sure how large this needs to be yet. But its on the outside wall of the building not the inside.
The track that will be the branchline can be seen here coming off the closest track just to the right of the corner of the frame. It will curve around towards where I’m standing and go on out and around the corner of the house, which is behind me in this perspective.
Okay, I got it. Now, is the whole planned line going to be at 40 inches high? Is there terrain where you are coming up to ground level or going down to it?
Well originally I had planned on adjusting the benchwork so that it ended up at Ground Level by the time it got to the front yard, (would have been basically flat) But now that I have decided against doing any ground level track I’m not so sure. I may continue with everything being at a comfortable working height…Still to much planning to be done to say for sure…
Half the fun is figuring out what is going to work and carrying out the tasks. What’s really neat is when the final design works like you planned. Yeah, that actually sometimes happens. Enjoy the ride. Thanks for sharing.
Filled in the ‘gaps’ around The YArd today…1/4 hardware cloth for support covered by some nylon (I think) weed barrier…
Then covered with gravel ballast!
Now we’re getting somewhere.
That big empty triangular spot can be sed for a business, a car repair slot, fule depot, lots of stuff…
Bart,
As I said earlier, it really looks nice. I’m sure you’ve got some saticfaction with what you’ve done.
Looking good , the coupler lift bars will be easier to operate on there .
…looks good Barty…
Curmudgeon said:
Now we're getting somewhere.That big empty triangular spot can be sed for a business, a car repair slot, fule depot, lots of stuff…
Next 4 x 8 section will hold the engine facilities and the next one the turntable and engine house…so I guess its only HALF done!
Geee I can’t beleive I’ve neglected updates for three weeks! Anyways, weekend before last the WV&K crews graded the ROW into the engine facilities at Cassville yard and laid in ties.
This is gonna require laying three turnouts and about 20 feet of rail. The spur on the far side of the framework was originally going to service a hopper dump for a largish coaling structure, then of course I had a better idea…so now it will be a switcher pocket for the yard job locos. I may put a single stall engine house there, or simulate one that WAS there and subsequently burned. The center track will be a turntable lead and general loco servicing and ready track, and the right hand track will be a turntable lead and escape track for arriving locomotives. This past weekend, before the monsoons set in, I framed up my concept of a TT pit. I used 2x4 for the frame and 2x6 notched for the cross members.
I had originally envisioned this section as another 4x8 then after laying out a 40" TT pit figured out it would be impossible to fit both the TT and a later enginehouse on same section with anything like realism, so I opted to build the TT in its own little stand alone section. I can add an enginehouse on a 2’x6’ section later. I used half a sheet of 3/4 PT plywood and cut out the circle for the pit bottom, the rest of this half sheet was used for the ‘ground level’ decking. And then the rains came…
I plan on using 1/2 styrofoam for the pit walls, and having it extend up above the groundlevel enough to keep general debris out of the pit. The whole deck and pit is gonna get painted with an outdoor grade latex in a concrete color to proteck both the plywood and foam from weather damage, and eventually there will be a covering of gravel ballast…maybe a Bozai tree recessed into the plywood deck and camoed with some real dirt, never know what a fertile mind will come up with… The TT bridge itself will be very simple and low maintenace. simply a section of 4x4 post with track laid on it. I’ll add some simulated girder to the side, and walkways to the sides and call it done. I figger I’ll drill a hole in the pit bottom and used a chunk of steel rod as a center pivot resting on the patented “Ric Golding TT Bearing Surface” ( sections of coffee can lids). This coming weekend Ihave plans to get the rail down on the engine service section and get the pitwalls in and painted. The next section to be built will be the Staging yard area adjacent to The Shop that will represent the rest of the mainline. I’m open for ideas at this point. Eventually three trains will run out of staging; a General Freight, a Mixed, and a coal drag. For the immediate future it will prolly just be a mixed train. Originally I had though I’d just mount a 12 ft 2x8 to the wall of the shop and lay a track on it, fiddling each train. Then I though it would be perhaps better to install a runaround. Then I thought perhaps a pair of stub ened sidings for staging two trains would be sufficeint, then again…why not three tracks? Comments? Suggestions?
Bart,
Good to see the progress. In general, the length of your trains are governed by the length of your sidings. You have a run around in the track you already have on benchwork. So I guess the next question is, is that run around long enough? After that thought pattern is established, then you need to decide if 12 feet along side the shop is enough distance to hold the trains you want it to. I imagine you suck up 18 inches are so with a single turnout and, of course, if you have a turnout, then you need the tail track as long as your longest engine and tender to allow that tail track to be used. If the tail track equals your turntable pit diameter, you are starting to majorly impact that 12 feet alongside the shop, maybe even 1/3 of it. Of course, you could use the space alongside the shop as an “Inglenook Siding” switching puzzle
and just use the run around you already have in the yard trackage. 
There certainly is a lot of pressure in projects like this, but that is why we do it.
Exactl;y my thoughts…the ONLY benefit received by having a runaround in the plan would be to get the locomotive from a departing train back into the yard without removing the cars. Theres about 16 ft of passing siding in The yard, So limiting the train with a 12foot staging track sorta makes sense…And this sorta leads us back to the operational angle, how many cars do we move in a operating session???
Well, isn’t that part of the Operations angle of this.
The first move when going away from the yard is to get engine and caboose around to the turntable end of the yard and then forget that you are in the yard and work the Inglenook Yard.
Last move of working the Inglenook Yard is to get your caboose in the correct spot and your engine facing toward the turntable.
First move of arriving at the Turntable area is to get the road engine off and use the box cabs to move things around.
Somehow I can see this quickly manifesting in to the next level of expansion, but it sounds like quite a bit of switching work can be achieved with what you would have with building the Inglenook Yard on the side of the shop.