Yard as a Layout

[Brakie]

Track planning for a model railroad is about compromise. About balance. About understanding when to apply selective compression and when to use compressive selections. About imagination. About deciding what you want to emphasize for a specific design, and what you are willing to trade away.

And there lays the trap many fall into-WWTPD works wonders-if one has a understanding of railroads and how they thought while designing their yards and some of the leading layout design "experts" falls into that trap..

Backing a train into a yard would be done as a last resort and in tight areas and then if the yard was actually needed..

Looking at our yards they don't need a yardmaster or engine service area because they're not big enough for a terminal but,falls in line with a smaller outlaying yard found in smaller towns/cities that has a local working out of it.Marion,Ohio is a prime example of yards found on most layouts-you can look in vain for a engine house even though NS and CSX has locomotives station there..

Not really. It is not a very big yard - body track capacity (at about 75% full) is about thirty-five or so 40-foot cars. Or about four times the size of a "large" (for this yard) incoming train. If the yard instead of seven single ended 400 foot tracks had had three double ended 800 foot tracks, you likely would not have called it a "such a big old yard". It is a pretty dinky little yard.

A two or three track yard would suffice for that many cars and the railroad would use doubled ended yard tracks for accessibility and that exactly how I would have built that yard.

Believability has always been a major factor in my layout designs following my experiences while working as a brakeman,railfanning and my years studying the railroad plant in general.

Possibly more alternatives I don't see at the present time. It all boils down to what the goals of the design is. Which I don't actually know at the present time - I was just asked if Woodsriver could be crammed into a setup consisting of two 2x4 foot sections for the mainline and a 30" deep sectional table for the yard.

In this case less would be better instead of cramming a lot of track in a small area.I would keep the industries,drop the engine service area and at least 2 of the yard tracks.Now if I really wanted a engine service area I would place it inside of the wye out of the way and keep it simple with 2 or 3 tracks.

To gain track length I would angle the yard tracks off the wye and double end the yard tracks.