New track plan # 2

[Bigsteel]

hey nomad,i read your thread and started to try and make up a plan for ya,its just my sttempt so feel totally free to express what you have to say (that goes for everyone) i just like to design track plans and thought you might like this.the right most leg is the main yard.the center leg is an industrial/switching district (or some other kind of switching) and the left most leg is a backwoods line that i have yet to complete.the staging in the top right will go all the way through and will interchange with both sides of the layout essentially making 1 train go in and appear there are mopre trains hidden in the staging by going all the way through.also if you want, the switching can be on the left side and the rural scenery can be in the middle. but its your layout and you can do what you want with it,hope you like this so far (im sure galen will show me up big time :mrgreen: )--josh

[Bigsteel]

the image i just posted is kinda fuzzy on my screen,so if anyone else has problems seeing ill try to just link it and make it larger.--josh

[Ralph]

Looks perfectly clear to me!
Ralph

[nomad]

Hey Josh. thanks for doing the track plan. Looks interesting, especially the idea of having staging go all the way around.
I would like to wait and see what Galen draws up. In the mean time, I took Galen's idea and drew up my own which I will post tonight. Thanks again for your help.

Loren

[nomad]

Ok, here I go again. I took Galen's ( Ocalicreek ) idea and came up with this. All curves are 22 or greater, turnouts are #6, and the grades are 1.2 on the small curve and 3.3 on the larger curve. The interchange/staging and island are at 5 inches above the table, the left area is at four inches, and then the right industrial area drops down to 0 inches so that it passes underneath the track coming from staging. I can raise the right industrial area an inch to ease the grade if needed. Or drop the left area. The right area needs something but I can not decide what. I have thought about a stock yard and slaughter house, but the slaughter house would have to be scratch built. Can not find a good kit. Maybe a scrap yard loading a barge, that would add some traffic to the interchange/staging. I also thought about a car float, but that doesn't really interest me, since there are none in this area. Anybody have any ideas?
Any ideas or criticism are welcome as always.

Loren

[steinjr]

Hi Loren --

Still curious about the staging. You have two tracks. But why do you have a turnout and a tail end on the right of the staging ?

The way you draw your staging makes me wonder if perhaps you might be thinking about staging more as "the station at the end of the line, where the train will turn back", rather than "somewhere to hide (usually) trains that will be arriving later in your operating session or have departed earlier in the session".

If you go with single ended hidden staging, restaging (setting up trains ready to appear in the next operating session) could be done in any number of ways between sessions. Wouldn't need to be done by running the engine around the train while the train is in staging

Smile,
Stein

[ocalicreek]

Loren,

First off, I have to say you captured very well what I was thinking about in my long-winded post above. I am falling-over tired right now for many and various reasons so I'll have to take a closer looksee tomorrow.

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, and Josh, you know it's never my intention to show anybody up, but you're right, I probably will. All that talent and humble too! But seriously, I like the idea of the main yard at the right as you take advantage of the longer side for train and siding length. I also really agree with the idea of creating three distinct areas.

Still, as you say, it is Loren's final decision on all the blizzard of ideas we will no doubt shower on him! (that's kindof an inside local joke since our Wild Wacky Western Washington Weather has been pretty Wierd lately.)

Good night,

Galen

[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

[Bigsteel]

well loren,your plan looks great ,i like the windy rural looking mainline in the left leg and the grades you put in also.steinjr and galen have some good points on staging also.but all in all its a great plan.now im not trying to nitpick but id make your yard larger.for the amount of tracks you have wide i would make it longer to make the tracks look "right" and be more useful.the last couple tracks wouldnt hold all that many cars.i would also make a lead completly seperate from the main,as it will really ease any switching duties there.yet again,its your plan and these are just my opinions.--josh

[nomad]

Wow, lots of information to process. Steinjr, I like that move you showed. I have never seen that before.
Anyway, all the comments seem to be about the staging. One of the things I was always told back in the day ( before family life got in the way of railroading ) was to never let your engine ( or caboose ) get trapped.
So, if you look again you will see that I have run a rounds all over the place. That is the reason for the turnout at the end of staging. It occurred to me that I could back in ( or out ), but it didn't seem right somehow. But, if that will work better, I am all for it.
But one question. Would staging be something like a fiddle track? I have a small interchange on my house layout and I pull cars into it and pull them back out the same cars next session. Kind of boring seeing the same cars, so I would like to get away from that. And again, I had only planned one staging track, the rest is just a runaround.
Keep the ideas coming. I need all the help I can get !
Galen and Josh, I have no problem moving the yard. That's where it was on my original track plan.

Loren

[Russ Bellinis]

Loren, I like the new plan. You don't really need to increase the size of your yard, if you are still making a branch line or short line with short trains and small steam power. What you might consider is to remove some of the tracks in the yard and add another industry in that area.

Before I retired 3 years ago, I use to maintain truck refrigeration equipment for a small meat packing house in the town of Pico Rivera near Whittier in So Cal. The entire facility was on probably no more than 3 acres or so of land. A couple of Model Power freight buildings would be easily kitbashed into the combination slaughter house/cold storage facility. The cattle pens were in the back of the building. The cattle were unloaded from trucks into the pens. They had capacity to hold two or three truck loads of cattle. The entire building was built on top of a foundation that was about loading dock height. There was a ramp from the pens up to a roll up door in the side where the cattle would be driven up one at a time to be killed just inside the door. The overhead crane would then pick up the carcass and drain the blood. There was a pipe running out the back of the building draining into a tank trailer that appeared to be about 500 to 1000 gallons capacity where the blood was drained off and when full it was hauled off to a rendering plant. In the front of the building was a loading dock for about 5 or 6 trucks to load out boxed and swinging beef. In between the slaughter house and the loading dock inside the building were walk in refrigerated boxes. I think the beef went from the slaughter house to the walk in boxes from the back and then would be loaded out to the trucks from the opposite side. There was a small office section off to one side of the main plant. I will be going past there on April 4, I'll leave a little early and stop by and shoot a few pics of the place to send to you. I will try to post them here, but I have never posted pictures to a web site before.

[nomad]

Thanks Russ. Pictures would be great. There is nothing in this area that I know of, so the only information I have is the internet or the library.

Loren

[steinjr]

One of the things I was always told back in the day ( before family life got in the way of railroading ) was to never let your engine ( or caboose ) get trapped.

Well, railroads try to make things flexible when they can. And make do with what they have when they have to. Here is a simulated session from from the same Industrial park as in my staging example (Minnesota shortland Progressive Rail in Airlake Industrial Park in Lakeville, MN, ca 2001).

Quoting from an old post of mine from another forum:

"Now, when they get back to the Industrial park, the park has a mainline running from west (towards the interchange with CP) to east (dead end at far end of industrial park). No runarounds, and plenty of both facing and trailing spurs.

How does Progressive Rail handle both facing and trailing moves without any double ended sidings or runarounds ? They do it in an interesting way - using two switchers, having the crews move back and forth between the two switchers during the day.

Here is a series of images showing how they break down an arriving train and start delivering the cars to industries:

Arriving cut from interchange is pulled into park by the east end switcher:


About a third of the cut is pushed into a convenient trailing spur:


The rest of the cars are then pulled as far into the park as possible by the eastern switcher, which gets trapped at the end of the layout:


The other crewmember (both crewmembers are qualified as both engineers and conductors) starts up the west end switcher, which has been waiting in some convenient industrial spur to let the eastend switcher pull the inbound cars past its spur.

The west end switcher moves out and grabs a bunch of the inbound cars, and starst pushing cuts of cars into various industrial spurs where there is room for cars, to free up the east end engine as soon as possible:


During the rest of the switching, the crewmembers will be switching back and forth between using the east end engine to deliver cars to spurs branching off towards the west, and using the east end engine to switch cars for spurs branching off towards the left.

Pretty interesting prototype, isn't it ? "

It is by no means "typical" - this is an unusual situation. But it shows that you can pretty much find a prototype for any situation.

One also still finds a local freight once in a while trundling up a in industrial spur with an engine at the front and an engine at the other end of a cut of cars, since there is no runaround at the end of the line it is switching. Crews switch over to the other engine when they are going back again.

Or to find a local freight still with a caboose at the end. Which becomes a "shoving platform" where a crew member with a radio can watch what is ahead and help flag crossings while the train backs down the a line leading to (or from) a business that still is rail served.

Never let your engine get trapped is pretty much mandatory if you have *one* engine. If you have two or more, you can in some situations disregard that rule of the thumb.

You don't have to avoid runarounds - they makes things easier. But you don't need to have em all over, either.

But one question. Would staging be something like a fiddle track? I have a small interchange on my house layout and I pull cars into it and pull them back out the same cars next session. Kind of boring seeing the same cars, so I would like to get away from that. And again, I had only planned one staging track, the rest is just a runaround.

In staging, it doesn't necessarily matter if the train at the end of one operating sessions ends up in staging with the engine on the wrong end for the start of your next operating session - you can always declare end of session and spend a few minutes restaging trains for the next session - bring it out on the visible layout, swap out cars you don't want in your next session, move engines to the other end of the layout or whatever.

Using the 0-5-0 switcher (ie your hand), or a passing siding and a turnaround on the visible layout, or a cassette temporarily attached to the layout or whatever. Getting trains in staging ready is not always part of the play - it can sometimes be part of the setup to play later.

Smile,
Stein

[nomad]

Thanks Steinjr. I think other people who like to operate will find this interesting to.

Loren

[steinjr]

Thanks Steinjr. I think other people who like to operate will find this interesting to.

Loren

Hope so - sorry about hijacking your thread with all those sketches and verbiage

Btw - feel free to call me just Stein - that is my first name. Just means "Rock", as in the CRI&P

Grin,
Stein