Rail yard...newbie here

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Yes, I do want the ability to sort/arrange cars etc. with my locos and not by hand. The other side of my layout plan shown below(its a wrap around the room in a 7x9 foot space) includes a farm area with industry (stock yards, big grain elevators etc. aleast on paper right now) It also includes a wharf area with a small gulfcoast town. I will include the other part of the layout on here. I am modeling kind of a protolance. North florida farms, coastal town, pine forests etc. CSX in north florida gulfcoast area. Also have an interchange as I want to run UP as well since I have had the same UP engine since I was young and want to run it. Since they both run into Louisiana gulfcoast its not entirely unrealistic.

I think in order to properly Iron out the details of your track plan, we need to get more information.

For example, If you're modeling CSX or UP, you might not need more than a short track set aside to handle normal engine maintenance. If a diesel fails more than what can be handled on that short track, I'm sure they'll haul it dead-in-tow to a larger maintenance facility that handles the whole region. I'll have to dig around, but there was also a "Perspectives" article in an old RMC I have, where UP parked an SD40-2 outside set in the ground, where fuel trucks and things could pull next to it. It also didn't require an engine house, since the routine maintenance could be done where it was, and when it needed to be checked at the shops, it left on the next train to the region shops facility and another locomotive replaced it.

On the other hand, if you DO go the "Freelanced" railroad route, then having the engine house in some form might not be a bad idea. If the two track engine house looks like it will take up to much room, You might get away with a single stall engine house and a stub track, similar to Charlie's experience.

This is totally dependent upon what you want to do, since different railroads have different operations and different needs. This is why its important to know what you want train-wise before you plan a layout.

You might need to make the hard choices and sacrifice less important things in order to better accomadate the railroading you really want.

Also at the top of the plan, extend the passing siding around the top along the main line as a switching lead. That way you can switch in the yard and pull the longest yard track without interfering with main line movements. It should come off the siding just below the word "engine" and extend as a stub track almost to the little blue building at the top.

RO has good point here. If you want to keep your mainline open (and it seems like you might if you have a passenger stop), then a yard lead is a must. It might be a good idea to include one regardless of what you do.

That said, there are plenty of times where the real railroads do pull out onto the main to switch the yard, within "Yard Limits". Again, its important to know what your intentions are. If this isn't a busy line, switching onto the main a little bit might not be a huge deal.

Ditto that short little siding in front of the station, which would likely hold only a single car train. Make it a longer stub track to hold a commuter train off the main in front of the station. Any longer passenger trains can just stop on the main line.

This is really another whole can of issues. RO is right, you're not going to get much of a passenger train on that track.

Most passenger cars are just about a foot long. What sort of passenger trains do you have in mind? If you're sticking to the modern day (1980s and up), the only passenger trains I know of in Florida (besides Amtrak, which isn't going to be running any short trains) are the "Tri-Rail" trains. These run in relatively short 3 car sets, so they could fit on this layout without to much trouble, but you would need a longer siding to accommodate this train, at least 4' long.

The problem with modeling Tri Rail is that the only thing you can get is the cars. Walthers long ago ran an F40PH in Tri-Rail colors, though it wasn't very accurate, and their current F40 variant looks stretched (F40PH-2C). IHP ran the F40PHL-2, a very interesting locomotive, but another model you will have a hard time acquiring. I know Mike Bartel, and I'll ask him if he has any left over, but its very unlikely. Your best bet is a GP49, which came from an NS GP50, but rebuilt. decals are here

I wouldn't even know where to begin with Tri-Rail's "New stuff", those monstrous DMUs, equally monstrous hyundai-rotem bi-levels and those new BL36PH locomotives look too tricky to be kitbashed easily.

You could also just free lance the passenger trains too, but unless you're running with RDCs (nobody makes the new DMUs as far as I know), you're still going to need a larger station area.

Ultimately though, if you're not into passenger trains, you could probably do without them. I don't know what the minimum curve is on your mainline, but 24" is probably the minimum. The boxes may say 22", but I am increasingly finding that most of these cars operate with poor reliability over these curves.

A good contract car shop will have several buildings for repairs and rebuild programs including the finishing buildings - the sand blasting shop and the paint shop.Most has a 4-5 track yard since they need the storage space.In fact a contract car shop could be a one industry layout.The majority of these shops has a locomotive to move cars around the shop area-including a shove from one work station to another on the same shop track-some times its a one car length shove.

The best way to model a car shop on a small layout is the contract shop interchange track.

Fortunately, this can be easily compressed. "Star Trak" on the Boontoon line does this sort of work on old equipment for the URHS here in New Jersey, and its a fairly small building with 4 tracks, 2 going into the building, and 2 along side these tracks for storage. The building is essentially a roof built on top of shipping containers with some metal siding around the side.

I'm not sure I think its a good idea for this layout, since I'm sure the space could be put to better use, but its not a bad idea.