03-18-2009, 12:11 AM
Let's see - here is a track schematic for your plan, with tracks labelled:
![[Image: nomad_schematic.jpg]](http://i404.photobucket.com/albums/pp124/steinjr_1965/forum/nomad_schematic.jpg)
First - I like the way it looks! It really conveys the feeling that this is a longish unhurried run.
Some things you may already have considered:
1) Track P - will work great as an interchange track - you have inbound cars from the other road left there before the session starts. Yard switcher goes left, backs up into track P, grabs cars, pulls left onto main, backs rightwards into yard, classifies cars.
Session ends with outbound cars stashed at the interchange track. Fiddling (rearranging the cars) is done between sessions.
Not so sure it will work equally well a staging track, from whence you will bring in a whole train and where a whole train will depart to. You only have one track - so nowhere to hide more than one train. So scratch simulating quite a bit of traffic before you have to stop the session and fiddle.
And since track P branches off the main in the same direction as the yard branches off the main, you will have to "saw" going both ways - either back up towards the left from staging onto the main before driving rightwards into the yard, or drive leftwards from staging onto the main and then back up rightwards into the yard, and something similar when your foreign road train is departing the yard for staging.
It can be used as staging, but maybe not quite as flexible as running multiple staging tracks down along the left wall.
2) Run from yard to peninsula down the left wall, curve around, up left wall and into peninsula.
I am a little ambivalent about this run. On one hand, you get a very nice long run for your trains - gives a feeling of a train really going somewhere. This is a great scenic feature, and really gives a lot of look and feel !
On the other hand you more or less lose the opportunity to run several switching jobs simultaneously - having one person switch the industries on the peninsula from the right side, while another switch along the left wall from the pit between the left wall and the peninsula.
As set up now all industries on this run would basically be switched from the pit between the left wall and the peninsula and most action will happen at the lower end of that pit - not really a lot of space room for more than one operator at a time there, without people bumping into each other.
Also, design length for trains were initially 10 cars, and you can only run around about 12-13 cars out on the peninsula. But with all the industries around the pit between the left wall and the peninsula, 10-12 cars won't take you very far.
But no law saying that you have to switch all industries on each run. Real railroads aren't too fond of going back and forth along the same line several times to get more cars, but you can always run the switching by taking the first 10 cars from the yard out, switch some industries, come back to drop off the cars you picked up from the first batch of industries, and then go back out with cars for the next batch of industries.
Also, I suppose you could always mirror the industries on the peninsula if you wanted to provide for working the peninsula from the right side of it, but the lead for switching the peninsula would still be the same track that is needed as a lead to switch industries F, G, H, J and K. If you wanted to support switching these (peninsula and industries on the left) as separate jobs, I think you might want to both mirror the trackage on the peninsula, and add a yard lead for the peninsula industry support yard, curving around parallell with the main around the curve at the top of the pit.
If one operator is what you are planning for, not a big problem.
3) Industry L - you will need to do coupling and uncoupling between the industry and the wall. It might be a better use of this space to drop this industry track and use the space for a double ended siding (or possibly two) along the wall - either intended as staging or as a passing track/runaround track if you want to run several switching jobs at the same time.
4) Pensinsula industry support yard area - looks good, but I maybe would consider adding one extra single ended track below E in the track schematic (along the pit as it is, towards the right if you mirror the plan for the peninsula), to provide somewhere to stash some cars to give you a little extra work space while you are switching.
Hope you don't feel I am kicking your plan - I really like the way it looks, and if it works the way you want it to work (if you want an interchange track instead of staging, one switching job at a time instead of two), then you have a pretty neat design there!
Smile,
Stein
First - I like the way it looks! It really conveys the feeling that this is a longish unhurried run.
Some things you may already have considered:
1) Track P - will work great as an interchange track - you have inbound cars from the other road left there before the session starts. Yard switcher goes left, backs up into track P, grabs cars, pulls left onto main, backs rightwards into yard, classifies cars.
Session ends with outbound cars stashed at the interchange track. Fiddling (rearranging the cars) is done between sessions.
Not so sure it will work equally well a staging track, from whence you will bring in a whole train and where a whole train will depart to. You only have one track - so nowhere to hide more than one train. So scratch simulating quite a bit of traffic before you have to stop the session and fiddle.
And since track P branches off the main in the same direction as the yard branches off the main, you will have to "saw" going both ways - either back up towards the left from staging onto the main before driving rightwards into the yard, or drive leftwards from staging onto the main and then back up rightwards into the yard, and something similar when your foreign road train is departing the yard for staging.
It can be used as staging, but maybe not quite as flexible as running multiple staging tracks down along the left wall.
2) Run from yard to peninsula down the left wall, curve around, up left wall and into peninsula.
I am a little ambivalent about this run. On one hand, you get a very nice long run for your trains - gives a feeling of a train really going somewhere. This is a great scenic feature, and really gives a lot of look and feel !
On the other hand you more or less lose the opportunity to run several switching jobs simultaneously - having one person switch the industries on the peninsula from the right side, while another switch along the left wall from the pit between the left wall and the peninsula.
As set up now all industries on this run would basically be switched from the pit between the left wall and the peninsula and most action will happen at the lower end of that pit - not really a lot of space room for more than one operator at a time there, without people bumping into each other.
Also, design length for trains were initially 10 cars, and you can only run around about 12-13 cars out on the peninsula. But with all the industries around the pit between the left wall and the peninsula, 10-12 cars won't take you very far.
But no law saying that you have to switch all industries on each run. Real railroads aren't too fond of going back and forth along the same line several times to get more cars, but you can always run the switching by taking the first 10 cars from the yard out, switch some industries, come back to drop off the cars you picked up from the first batch of industries, and then go back out with cars for the next batch of industries.
Also, I suppose you could always mirror the industries on the peninsula if you wanted to provide for working the peninsula from the right side of it, but the lead for switching the peninsula would still be the same track that is needed as a lead to switch industries F, G, H, J and K. If you wanted to support switching these (peninsula and industries on the left) as separate jobs, I think you might want to both mirror the trackage on the peninsula, and add a yard lead for the peninsula industry support yard, curving around parallell with the main around the curve at the top of the pit.
If one operator is what you are planning for, not a big problem.
3) Industry L - you will need to do coupling and uncoupling between the industry and the wall. It might be a better use of this space to drop this industry track and use the space for a double ended siding (or possibly two) along the wall - either intended as staging or as a passing track/runaround track if you want to run several switching jobs at the same time.
4) Pensinsula industry support yard area - looks good, but I maybe would consider adding one extra single ended track below E in the track schematic (along the pit as it is, towards the right if you mirror the plan for the peninsula), to provide somewhere to stash some cars to give you a little extra work space while you are switching.
Hope you don't feel I am kicking your plan - I really like the way it looks, and if it works the way you want it to work (if you want an interchange track instead of staging, one switching job at a time instead of two), then you have a pretty neat design there!
Smile,
Stein