Early thoughts about a possible future layout

[faraway]

I am thinking about a possible future layout to overcome a problem all my previous and the current layout have.

The room is about 4 meter (14') by 2,5 meter (8'). The north side is a four track staging yard without scenery. The south side is about 2' deep with scenery. The west side runs in front of a balcony door with a removable but seldom opened section. The east side spans the room door with a frequently opened bridge.

Four older pictures show the bare layout in the room. The first picture shows the west throat of the staging yard. That is where I want to do the modification and go with two lines in front of the window to the other side of the room. I explain that later.
http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...1281573126
http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...1281573125
http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...1281573125
http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...1281573125

All my layout on the south side are feed by a single track on the west and east side. The operation is limited to a train/cut coming in, dropping some cars, picking some cars and proceed. I am tired of that very simple process.

My idea is to omit one turnout at the south end of the staging yard and run two tracks in front of the window and balcony door to the layout. That would provide two two track staging yards and a layout in a Y. Two tracks/lines coming in from west (w1 , w2) and one from east (e).

That should open up a bunch of possibilities in addition to handle the local industry e.g.

All lines belong to one RR but there is traffic from e - w1 and e - w2 but also from w1 to w2
w1 - e belongs to RR a, w2 belongs to RR b. RR a and b must interact some how. RR b might end at the layout and only interchange with RR a but is might also have tracking rights on line e and proceed from w2 - e.

Some more thoughts:
- It should not be an industry area with switching only. It should be lines with trains. The trains will be short due (e.g. 3 - 6 cars + cab) to my space limits. That does not happen anymore this days. Todays "trains" would not fit into the room at all. I would go back into the transition area to run Geeps etc.
- Location might be southern Texas as I would like to stay with the light colors and the sandy soil but still plenty of green.
- Preferred RR might be Santa Fe. I like the Zebra look and got two Geeps. Might be I will use very late steam as an option (2-8-0 with a short local).

The problem is the prototype.
I have got a great book about ATSF in TX. All "Y" I could find are either on main lines and will have very long trains (e.g. Temple) or they are closed or there are no tracks to form a layout (e.g. Cane Jct.).

Question 1 : Could you point me to a prototype situation I could use as starting point (for compression, simplification, modification etc.). I would like to get rid of a totally fiction layout as I had it in the past. I urgently need an elevator ally:-) The books shows lots of elevators in TX but I do not remember so much corn, wheat etc. fields around Houston? What do south Texans put into their elevators? Rice?

Question 2 : What kind of additional operation do I really get with a Y instead a passing thru line? What did a RR in 1960 do in a small town where two line meet and form a Y?

ps. The book is "Warbonnets Bluebonnets", "Santa Fe in Color Series, Volume 3, Texas" by Joe McMillan.

[BR60103]

Reinhard:
for the Y, all I know is a location in Streetsville, Ont on the Credit Valley Railway (now CPR). Their 2 main lines split there after leaving Toronto. The original line became a branch as the new line ran to Detroit. The junction was a Y (or wye) with a yard along it. I'm not sure how it operated. The branch line used to go much farther than it does now and had a good traffic load. I think trains probably went to Toronto, but the Y may have been used to turn locomotives. One leg of the Y has been removed and the branch operates as a completely separate railway, exchanging cars at the junction.

[shortliner]

Reinhard - it might help you to look at an article from a way back MR called "Shift Time - don't be a slave to the 24 hour clock" If you send me your email address, I have it on my computer. It might help with your "mainline problems, by suggesting a different way of looking at it.
Jack

[faraway]

... If you send...

done

[Russ Bellinis]

Reinhard, have you joined the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society? <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.atsfrr.com">www.atsfrr.com</a><!-- w --> There are also a couple of Santa Fe Yahoo groups that have a lot of information that are free to join. I model Santa Fe, but my main interest is So. California, so I'm not familiar with Texas. Gary may be able to help you out there.

[faraway]

Reinhard, have you joined the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society? <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.atsfrr.com">http://www.atsfrr.com</a><!-- m --> There are also a couple of Santa Fe Yahoo groups that have a lot of information that are free to join. I model Santa Fe, but my main interest is So. California, so I'm not familiar with Texas. Gary may be able to help you out there.

I am a member of the Yahoo Santa Fe group. There has been a similar question some time ago with a list of possible locations. I did scan the locations and visit them with Google. They are all much more north. In Kansas etc. the Santa Fa had much more short lines to serve the wheat farming. The other observation is that locations with interesting traffic are too large to be modeled and possible after scale down fitting locations have no interesting traffic.
I do assume I did also think in the wrong direction. It would be very unlikely by the way how RR operate to exchange cars/cuts on the route between locals. That would lead to the situation to send a car for customer X to classification yard A to be exchanged with an other local origin in classification yard B for delivery. That would result in chaos in the hierarchical system. The car would go to classification yard B and be delivered by the local origin in B.
Exchanging cars between locals on the route would be great fun for us modelers but it would seriously hamper the way RR work. However, there might be exceptions where it is done but that are exceptions I do want to have as a base for the next layout. It should be a common process I model.