New track plan # 2

[steinjr]

I also kindof agree with Stein on the staging. Two tracks can be two trains, staged between 'sessions'. Run them as trains from the connecting road, or just set a couple cuts of cars back there for your own switcher to get as a transfer run. IN that case you may want a more active staging with the runaround. But a passive staging where a train lives until it makes an appearance and is physically changed between sessions is what I had in mind originally.

Oh, now I understand what Loren meant by staging/interchange.

You certainly can do without staging entire trains from the other road - just start a session with some inbound car that "has just been dropped off" from the other road somewhere, and end the session with cars being dropped off "to be picked up later" by the other road.

But that place where the cars from the other road have been dropped off can be pretty much anywhere on the layout - including:
- a hidden single track somewhere
- a visible siding on your layout somewhere
- a track in your yard

You can also start a session with a full train (instead of just dropped off cars) from the other road somewhere on your layout - it having "just pulled in". Allows you to uncouple foreign power, and send it off to a short staging track, a side track somewhere to wait out of the way, to engine refueling or whatever, and then towards the end of your session hook it up to some outbound cars and leave it "just about to depart".

Anyways - so what you have there is not really hidden staging - it is an interchange with another railroad. That rightmost turnout I wondered about is just to allow your own engine to escape after dropping off cars for the other road? You are not actually going to model trains from the other road arriving on or departing from your layout ? Or ?

Btw - there is nothing that says that the engine has to be on the front when you are delivering cars to the interchange track. One of the more creative contortions I have seen when it comes to interchanging cars when you don't have a convenient siding and and don't have a runaround goes like this:



Switcher from shortline pushes it's cars (yellow) up along the track and leaves them 2 train lengths (and a little) ahead of the turnout where the shortline joins the mainline, and then the shortline engine ducks back into it's own track.



Arriving mainline train pulls ahead until engine is almost at the dropped off shortline cars. Drops off cars to shortline (green).



Both engines hook up to their new cars and departs - shortline train down its own track, mainline train back towards where it came from.

Not something that would be convenient to model on a model railroad - it is pretty wasteful of track length - on the mainline track you would need need room for two train lengths (plus a little work space) to the right of the turnout, and at least one train length to the left of the turnout.

But it goes to show that railroads can interchange cars in a lot of different ways - it is e.g. not a given that both trains will arrive engine first and depart engine first.

Anyways, getting back on track - I guess what I am trying to say is that I thought that having trains from the other road arrive and depart was one of your design goals. Will you be getting that with the type of interchange track you are planning instead of staging, or have you dropped that design goal ?

Smile,
Stein