Need to downsize my yards.

[Capt. Brigg]

Over the last several years I have modified my AnyRail track plan that goes from Yakima over White Pass, WA to Chehalis, WA. For years I have run trains on the plan using Train Player.  I'm now starting to build the layout and have discovered my three yards are much too complicated. I operate my Pacific Cascade Railway in 1969 with four axle engines handed down from NP & GN so #4 turnouts are OK in the yards with #6s on the main. More industry spurs would also be nice. If you visit my web page pacificcascaderailway.com, you can see the actual history of this route that NP surveyed in 1878 but didn't build, and Google maps will show you what does exist in the three yards.
I'm hoping, and asking, that some of you with more experience in track planning will look at this plan and simplify the yards for smoother operations. The main line with its double loop,  gauntlet swing bridge, and two small towns are OK, as is the staging yard. Thanks for any help and I will be watching here.
Capt. Brigg Franklin; CEO Pacific Cascade Railway in HO gauge.

[Tom Springer]

Brigg,

Downsize or simplify the yards?

What is the purpose of each yard?  And each of the engine facilities?  Repair or just service?  Fueling and sanding occurs where?  Do you get fuel and sand deliveries?  By rail?

Are you using the yard(s) for sorting/classification, or as simple transfer yards?  You have engine facilities, do you also expect car service?  Buildings or RIP?

Do you really want the industries in close proximity to the yards?

Would the engine facility (Pikestuff bldg) be better on the right side of the layout, maybe be more like a separate location and a (logically) point-to-point style of running?

The size of the Pikestuff bldg (541-0008) is 5.5x11 in; the size of that Walthers bldg Is ?  Will the correct Pikestuff bldg size impact the current positioning?

[Capt. Brigg]

1. The yards are for interchange with the parent NP & GN lines which run through both town and will drop off and pickup cars off my PCRy. In Yakima, the larger yard belongs to NP and the smaller to my PCRy. In Chehalis part of the yard is GN and part PCRy. This then provides a parallel to Stampede Pass "bridge" route. The engine facility in Yakima, which existed, is for small maintenance and servicing with fuel and sand delivered by NP.
2. Both larger yards will be for transferring cars too and from the PCRy and sorting the cars that will be dropped off in the two small towns between the large towns. Probably no major car repair in either town only RIP .
3. with limited space the industries need to be close to the yard. It's like that in the actual Yakima and Chehalis yards.
4. The engine facilities, turn table, and round house in Yakima are Walters. The smaller Pikestuff building is what was available in AnyRail  and fit into the space for use by my PCRy. They did not do any engine maintenance in Chehalis that I can identify.
Thanks for your interest.
Capt. Brigg

[Tom Springer]

Ok, maybe I don't understand what the downsizing you want to do involves.  Can you clarify, please?

[mrsax2000]

Maybe something like this (changes in aqua blue) ?

[Capt. Brigg]

MRSAX2000, I do like the looks of most of your ideas. Let me look at and compare a printout of your suggestions.
Tom S. how can I explain it better than I now feel I probably stuck too many switches, crossovers and tracks in the yards for smooth operations on a small layout. If I knew what will work well I wouldn't need to ask for help.
Thanks to both of you for your interest.
Capt. Brigg

[Tom Springer]

So, just simplify, then.  Just remove what you don't need for your operational plan, perhaps?  It would help to know the purpose/intent of each track, so labeling might help.  Then one would know if switches were necessary.

At a glance, the double crossover might go, because it's not really needed, and it involves complex wiring and turnout controls.  The yellow-to-green turnouts, too.  And move the green-to-green turnouts down below where the yellow-to-green ones were so the freight depot platform can be used easier without a turnout against the loading platform.

Of the 3 yellow tracks connected to the turntable, the middle one probably doesn't need to be connected.  It might be better as your caboose track, so you're not dragging the cabeese across the turntable.

If you can, set the roundhouse back one inch from the turntable; two inches would be better, operationally.  Roundhouses have doors that swing out to open and those would be onto the turntable edge.  Plus, people need space to walk into/out of the stalls without falling into the turntable pit.

Attached is a q&d attempt at some of these changes; tracks colored with pink/red are the change areas.

One thing to ask when servicing your industries:  your trains in your era have a caboose, so where is it when you deliver/pick up cars?  It's left where?

Maybe a better question: are the yard tracks separate from the industries, or an actual part of the industry service arrangement; if the latter, does the yard switcher do the industry service, and if so, the yards are just industry staging tracks, then?

[Capt. Brigg]

Tom, I feel there must be some basic rules for designing a working yard, and I have no idea what they are. I'm hoping you and other AnyRail forum readers know more about yards than I do. When designing my three yards I mostly stuck in as many switches and spurs as would fit without identifying what they were to be used for. Looking at the plan now as I am starting to lay real HO track and switches, I'm worried I over did the plan in AnyRail because it was so easy to insert things. I have visited the actual yards in both Yakima and Chehalis and viewed them in Google Maps and realize I can't build what exists in reality and am not aware of what BNSF uses each track for, and don't know how to assign a usage.
The double crossover in the smaller Yakima yard is a complex and bad idea, but many years ago I bought one because it looked so interesting, and I was looking for a place to put it in my design. I probably should just get rid of it. The small rail pocket at the north end of the NP main in Yakima is for a switch engine to pull cars off when a NP train enters from the north. The switcher can then stuff them into the yard and pull outbound cars to add to the NP train that is passing through. The same thing should happen in Chehalis when a GN train passes through, but I don't have a nice engine pocket. I will use the interchange yard leads at the bottom of Yakima to move cars between the yards and place to store a switcher. In my reality of 1969 my PCRy is wholly owned by NP, BN and Milwaukie so they can share any power and rolling stock. With limited space I could not figure out how to service city industries except to run tracks off the yards. The two smaller yards are also to stage the PCRy train that services to two small towns on the upper level on it's way across the Cascades at white Pass.  Again ideas and suggestions would be helpful. Your suggestions on the roundhouse and tracks is welcome.  Thanks, Capt. Brigg

[poppy2201]

Capt. Brigg,

I'm no expert in this area but I have found reading John Armstrong's works helps tremendously.  You might want to check the following:

https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/digital-download/mrpdf035

Regards,
Charles

[Tom Springer]

Capt. Brigg,

There is a lot of info out on the web, in addition to the Kalmbach books by Armstrong and Koester.  A number of model railroad clubs also have videos on YouTube, which can help when seeing something in actual format shows things that written words might not convey as well.  Nothing like seeing things in a "real word" situation (lab) vs. written down (lecture).  The NMRA also has basic info that helps set terminology about yard types, components, etc. http://www.nmra.org/sites/default/files/d3h1.pdf   You might also consider this site: http://www.housatonicrr.com/yard_des.html

At the same time, the issues of engine service tends to be in a separate discussion, so for things abound fueling and sanding, and related considerations, there is also a separate Kalmbach book you might want to consider: "The Model Railroader's Guide to Locomotive Servicing Terminals"

Some search terms you might try:

   
• model railroading yard design
• freight yard design
• track plans for realistic operations

Here are two videos to look at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkpyGz3bnC4
https://www.modelrailroadacademy.com/video/best-practices-for-model-railroad-staging-yards-011102/

There is also a lot of info in Model Railroad Hobbyist, which is a free digital magazine (http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com), specifically via their user forum where people have asked such questions before.

I wonder if our forum could have a section or two where we could put "recommendations" and "suggestions" from the user community about things like yard design, turntable considerations, user object creations practices, etc. 

I am by no means an "expert" in any of this just "experienced", meaning I've learned from all the mistakes I've made .... I hope.

[Capt. Brigg]

Let's take this down a different track. The question was asked, what is the purpose of each yard track, so I have labeled each yard track to the best of my knowledge of yard structure. I've even studied both of these yards and tried to incorporate what I can of the actual structure without knowing what each track is used for. If you can offer any suggestions about which track to best use for what purpose, it would be greatly helpful. Forget making the yards simpler, just make them more efficient.

Use something like this as an operating scenario; trains come through both Yakima and Chehalis with freight for those towns and the two small towns between. Occasionally even, NP and GN trains may need an alternate way to cross the cascades, or to get some of their freight across, due to problems with their own main lines, much like BNSF now uses Stampede pass as an alternate to its GN northern main. How best to use the tracks to get freight in and out of each yard so it can be classified for the above purposes? Again thanks for your knowledge and suggestions.
Capt. Brigg

[Tom Springer]

Capt. Brigg,

Not sure how close you want your model to be to the prototype you want to follow, so perhaps running a few scenarios using the yards might help determine how capable that might be to achieve.

What does an arriving train scenario look like for the Yakima yard, and how would that arriving train be handled with respect to that yard (Yakima West)?  Working through that scenario might help define and understand the yard elements and what is needed and how they should be laid out.

The yard area on the west side of the Yakima area has a track labelled as "Arrival and Departure Tracks" (plural), although it appears that there is just a single A/D track (the middle one in blue) - as the track to it's right is labelled differently, I presume that it is not an A/D track; if it is, this scenario might change slightly.

Presumably a train arrives from the south heading north, as the yard lead (drill) track is on the south side, where the blue and green tracks sections meet.

As an example, using a train with a GP30 (4-axle) engine, 1 boxcar, 1 gondola and 1 flat car - these cars are 40ft in length - and the trailing caboose, we have this train arriving and stopping on the A/D track.  You can decide which of these cars goes with which industry, and then see if the track arrangement for them works.  (I mentioned the car lengths and engine type only so that the length of the train, and hence, it's position on the A/D track would be known for this discussion, and in case TrainPlayer was used to run it.) 

Generally, the engine(s) would then detach and head for the service area, leaving the cars to be handled by the switcher.

Ok, for this arriving train, what is the movement of the engine, then?  Where does it go and how does it get there?

Next, presumably, the switcher comes up from the yard lead track, couples to the caboose, detaches it from the train, and moves it to the caboose track.  How is this movement accomplished?  What path is followed?  (Secondary question at this point, is whether the caboose track is last in - first out ordered, or does the incoming caboose need to be spotted in a particular place on the caboose track, or does it, too, go for service.)

So now on to the cars in the train.  How does the switcher handle them, in terms of movement; i.e., how do they get to the various yard tracks?  Is there any case where having a crossover between 2 of the yard tracks might be of help?

All of this is assuming that the cars go to the yard tracks on the west side.  If any go to the tracks on the east side, then where would be switcher be when moving/sorting the cars?

So how can this scenario be made to work?

* * *

Down the line, there are more questions ... there always are.

For example, another question to be looked at is how the Heier Kite Co. is serviced.  Presume that a switcher moves a boxcar to/from that industry, what path does the switcher take with the boxcar attached, and how does the boxcar get into or out of one of the yard tracks, knowing how the switcher is positioned to deliver/remove cars?  Are the tracks capable, lengthwise?  Are the turnouts cleared so they can be thrown? (Apply this question as well to the unnamed industry in the southeast Yakima area, to the right of the trees.)

* * *

Only you will know if the design configuration works once scenarios such as this are drawn up.  It may not be possible to be fully "true" to the prototype with the given space, something we all face when doing our roads.  I'm trying to model the D&RGW Tennessee Pass in N-scale and I could never get a mile-long train with 9 - 12 engines running like the prototype did, so I have to pretend I have with much shorter trains.