# Steam serivce yard



## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I've been reworking my design around the turntable lately and realized yesterday that I had a lot of open space to provide a double track, thus allowing incoming and outgoing lines. I spaced the tracks at 2.5" centers (HO scale) to allow room for adding coal, sand, and water stations plus an ash pit. Also there could be times when I'll need to double-head a pair of locos for the mountain run and the outgoing line has plenty of length to stage them now. Both of the lines come out to the double mainline and I thought it would be useful to have each of the yard tracks attached to a separate mainline track.

For reference, the brown lines are 3-foot narrow gauge. The green lines are the 12" reference grid.









It kinda bugs me how long those two yard lines are, but because of the other track there's not really any room to move the turntable further right. I'm working with a 65' turntable, so my largest locos will be 2-8-0. I also have a car shop at the upper-right corner of the image, and it's unfortunate that I can't directly connect the two areas together. I'm trying to achieve a balance between interesting functionality and obscenely overcrowded (like the area leading into the yard at the right is approaching). I do want to retain some open area for scenery, but for some reason those two long tracks from the turntable just bother me...

So I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions on the area? My target year is around 1904 so I believe oil bunkers would not be used here. I think I'll have a steam crane to load coal from a pit, but the ash and sand will be hand-shoveled. The track that runs beside the roundhouse will be used to park gondolas of sand, and the two short tracks in front of the machine shop would be for storing wheels. Otherwise I don't really have any other plans. Perhaps once I fill in those services those tracks won't seem to long, but in the meantime I'm open to suggestions about what else might be a requirement for the time period.

Thanks...


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## 1905dave (Sep 18, 2016)

I would pick one of the two tracks and disconnect it from the turntable. That would be my supply track. It would hold sand, ash and coal cars, while the other track was the lead into and out of the roundhouse. If I were doing it I would have the road run off the back edge of the layout and only model the backs of the buildings, not modeling the street or the second row of buildings. That would open it up a little bit. 

You could then eliminate the dual gauge on the supply track and instead of the switch and crossing, just put a switch to the supply track in the upper lead.

There looks to be some sort of tracks in the street connecting to a turntable? Why would you need a turntable? If its a street railway you don't turn the car on a turn table, the motorman just swaps ends on the trolley poles, walks to the other end of the car and takes off, they are bidirectional.

Another option is to lose the car shop.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

This is the Main Street for my industrial town. The shops at the top of the image will be backed up against the beginning of a mountain range, so no real space behind them anyway. As for the tracks through the street, that'll be a horse-drawn trolley, so the turntables are to give an easy way to turn the assembly around and allow it to run back and forth automatically.

I had originally thought to put the ash pit off a small side track from the turntable, as locos may need to sit for a long time in that spot and I didn't want to completely block access to the turntable. The idea of a second track came from checking images of other people's yards and seeing what could be done in the space I have.

I also considered a dedicated supply track and tried adding a third line coming up to, but not attaching to the turntable. Functionally this is probably ideal but I wasn't too happy with how it looked. Since this is meant to be a smaller railroad they would have probably tried to save money when possible, so my thought here was just to make the rails into the yard multipurpose and share the supply line with the turntable traffic.

The previous drawing had both of the turntable tracks going to the first mainline, without any crossover. For some reason that style appeals to me more, even though the drawing above seems like it would be more functional during busy times. Here's what that one looked like, any thoughts on that change?


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