08-27-2010, 10:00 AM
It is a good start, but I think your staging wastes a lot of space that could be used for more operation. If you are going to use one staging/interchange track, put it in the back of that last section and put some more industries in front of it with buildings, trees, etc as a partial view block. Make sure the end of the staging track is not visible, so the train appears to have come from beyond the layout room. You might even move the industrial section that starts in the corner down a bit and put the yard in to go around the corner, allowing the "tail" at the other end of the yard to be a bit longer to allow more room for a locomotive set to run around.
Another consideration might be to make the yard a stub ended yard with a cross over between two of the tracks to allow an engine to escape. The S.P. had a lot of small yards, some stub ended, some double ended, all over the Ls Angeles area. When the U.P. took over, they thought the S.P. had been crazy to build all of those yards, and closed them. Within 6 months, they found out why the S.P. had all of those yards and reopened all of them. What the S.P. did was to build small yards at just about any location where they had a lot of rail served industries with in a radius of 5 miles. They would shuttle cuts of cars to those small yards from the main yard, and work the industries out of those yards. Empties from those industries or loads going out from the industries would be transferred to the main yard to be classified into trains going elsewhere in the country. Most of those small yards did not even have a tower, or any sort of yard master. The switching crew would pick up a locomotive or two if needed, and run light to the yard with their switch list and grab the cars needed for the day's work.
Another consideration might be to make the yard a stub ended yard with a cross over between two of the tracks to allow an engine to escape. The S.P. had a lot of small yards, some stub ended, some double ended, all over the Ls Angeles area. When the U.P. took over, they thought the S.P. had been crazy to build all of those yards, and closed them. Within 6 months, they found out why the S.P. had all of those yards and reopened all of them. What the S.P. did was to build small yards at just about any location where they had a lot of rail served industries with in a radius of 5 miles. They would shuttle cuts of cars to those small yards from the main yard, and work the industries out of those yards. Empties from those industries or loads going out from the industries would be transferred to the main yard to be classified into trains going elsewhere in the country. Most of those small yards did not even have a tower, or any sort of yard master. The switching crew would pick up a locomotive or two if needed, and run light to the yard with their switch list and grab the cars needed for the day's work.