Yard as a Layout

[Mike Kieran]

Thanks for the links and suggestions. After looking through what was quickly available, I noticed that none are of just a yard, with the cars going off into staging to be delivered. Is this due to the propensity to "cheat" when operating by not putting the cars into the correct order when they are just going to get shoved into staging verses into an industry spur where the miskate would be made obvious? The lack of scenic options? Certainly the prefered design seems to me to be a yard with industry(s) to switch, or just industries to switch but not a stand alone yard?

jpage,

A yard only layout could be really fun, but you must also realize how much space an actual yard takes up. They can be a mile long with quarter mile drill leads. That would be 91 feet of length in HO, 49.5 feet in N. To have a decent sized yard, figure that you need 25 feet for a yard. A plan like what Stein put up or the ones that were suggested are a good comprimise between having a yard and other action involved. The Fair Haven Terminal yard can hold 70 40 foot cars. You can always add onto this yard to increase capacity. You don't want too much capacity because cars sitting around in the yard don't generate revenue.

Most railroads had land around the yard that could be sold off for industrial use. This became a strong selling point because railroad access was right there, especially being that a yard job would handle the industrial switching and the cars could be sorted into a train faster cutting down on transit times.