# freight yard



## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Hey guys, i am wondering if their is any specific way that a freight yard should be designed? Like using a certain switch, or a certain turn radius. Idk, if you could help, that would be great! thanks!!


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## D&J Railroad (Oct 4, 2013)

Your yard is going to be a function of your railroad. If you have a small layout, the yard will be in the same ratio, unless of course your layout is designed to be just switching the yard. Plenty of options. Turnouts would need to be sufficient to handle the motive power that will be driving over them. Smaller layouts, i.e. 4x8 sheet of plywood would typically stick to #4 turnouts to save space. I use #6 & #8 turnout in my yard because I have the room for them.
Design of the yard should be to have an arrival/departure (A/D) track where your road locomotives can stop and drop off a train. A yard switcher will come to the A/D track and move the train into the yard for sorting. The same in reverse. The yard switcher will put the train together in the yard then move the whole thing to the A/D track. For smaller layouts, the A/D track can be used for assembling the outgoing train or for breaking down the incoming trains. 
A yard can be designed so that passenger service can bypass the yard while yard operation are going on. 
The picture below is the yard on my layout. The two tracks on the extreme right are the mainline that bypass the yard. The next two tracks from the right are the A/D tracks and the rest of the tracks are the sorting yard. Looking at the bottom of the picture, you can see the A/D tracks merge together and can go one of two ways. To the right for access to the mainline and two the left to the fiddle track. That is the track that the yard switcher takes to move trains to and from the A/D tracks. The yard funnels down to the fiddle track which is what the yard switcher uses to shuffle cars from track to track in the yard plus pull a train from the yard to shove out to the A/D tracks.


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## rkenney (Aug 10, 2013)

D&J has the right idea! 

Try googling a city near you and following the tracks around in Earth view. Most cities have yards stuck all over the place. They mostly fit the area that's allotted to them for whatever need.


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## dave1905 (Jul 7, 2013)

Yards are designed a bit different depending on their purpose.

Assuming you want a classification yard, where you switch cars and make up trains, a lot of the design depends on how many trains will be operating at once and how many trains the yard has to handle.

Yards have several different tracks in them. The most fundamental tracks are the classification tracks, they are the tracks that form the body of the yard. They are normally parallel tracks and can have switches on one or both ends. You typically need as many class tracks as you need classifications or "blocks". If my yard sorts out local industry cars, hold cars and outbound cars north and south, then I would need at least 4 class tracks so I could sort each type of car (local, hold, N, S) into a track.
There is also a switching lead, which is handy if there will be multiple trains operating at once. That is a track that holds you longest cut of cars and the switch engine and has access to the class tracks. The switch uses it for tail room to switch the cars and stay clear of the main track so the through trains can go by without delay. If you are only running one train at a time, then a separate switch lead isn't really necessary. 
Another type of track is an arrival/departure track. It is a long, typically double ended track that can hold an entire train. It is a track that trains originate from and terminate in. It can be used as a siding. A yard might have multiple A/D tracks. If you only run one train at a time, an A/D track is not necessary.

If you want the full enchilada on yard design from a 1920's perspective, search Google for books by Droege, he wrote texts on both freight and passenger yard design.


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

Small towns had, and some still have, small yards used mostly to
store cars...some empty, others full of whatever the local industry
might produce. Back in those days my little home town in coal
country had about 4 or 5 tracks paralleling the main line. Local
switchers would take empties to the mines, and return with loaded
hoppers. Later one would built a coal train to the St. Louis
power plants. There was also a spur to the local flour mill
a less than carload freight dock,
a small cattle pen and a dairy. 

My room size layout has 2 small yards of 8 tracks each, but due
to space limitations, none were longer than about 5 or 6 feet.
There is a ladder track that leads to the yard tracks. My yards
are strictly the storage type, rather than classification. One has
a caboose track, one has fueling and sand services for 4 locos,
and there is a track reserved for maintenance of way cars.
I used Peco 'small' turnouts (about same as Atlas #4) for all
yard and mains.

I use a diode matrix panel control system to throw the yard turnouts.
You push ONE button in your destination track and all turnouts
in the route to it throw to give you a clear route. It sure
does make switching cars a whole lot easier.

Don


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## FishTruck (Feb 18, 2015)

Great idea googling mapping rail yards. I find the ones near OHare airport interesting, with the airport, truck yard, and tracks all together. Following the tracks to the river, to the old Pullman yards South of the city, along the old canals is really interesting


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

Here's a pretty good one in Flint, MI which is adjacent to a GM plant. You can zoom back and see repair buildings for cars, vehicle loading ramps, other trackside industries, etc. as well as the variety of cars typical in a yard servicing the modern auto industry.

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=r4wr7d80nv0m&scene=9794533&lvl=2&sty=b


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

wow lots of information, was not excepting all of that!!! haha but thanks! so i want to have a "freight yard" just to store my trains/cars but it wont be on the layout, so it will just be straight tracks, probably 4. But if i put a small yard on the layout, how do i know how many tracks is reasonable, like im not going to have 10 tracks, but i just want to have an idea. Thanks


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

You can make your yard with whatever number of tracks that you
can fit in. There is no designated number in a yard. Some yards
shown here on the Forum recently had only 2 or 3 tracks.

Don


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

ya, but is there a maximum number of tracks. Like would 10 be a lot for a smaller layout?


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

ok, i just got totally confused. i watched two videos, and got totally confused. can someone please explain a freight yard. plz


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

Long answer:
In real life - freight yards can be used for temp. car storage or classification (i.e. cars came in from one destination, need to go to another, but the engine they came in on isn't going there.) The "yard" will classify the cars by destination, type, etc. (depending if it's a transfer yard, industry yard, etc.) and then cars will be hooked to an engine and move on down the line (or be moved in/out of an industry)

Big/little all depends on the room you have and what you want to achieve with it. If all you want is a place to park cars, figure out how many cars you want to be able to park, estimate the length of all of those cars and give yourself enough cars to do it.

Typically operational layouts will have numerous yards "on layout" for operations, but then will also have staging tracks "off-layout" that are used to build trains ready to enter or leave the layout from theoretical "other places"

If you take a look at my build thread I have a 5 track staging yard, each one about 12 ft long and then I also have a 5 track classification yard in the one city.

Once I do my rebuild in the 21x24 room I have available I'll have numerous yards big & small. Big cities have big yards, small towns have small yards. I'll also have at least a dozen long staging tracks on a lower level that will house ready to go "trains" all built up to have varying traffic entering/leaving the main layout levels. (I'll have 2 main levels and one staging)

If you're running operations (pretending it's a real railroad vs just running trains around) then you want enough room for an engine to enter the yard, drop of some cars, pick others up and depart without hindering use of the mainline (afterall - another train may be passing through and you wouldn't want it to have to stop outside of town, blocking roads, etc. while car switching/classification is going on.)

The short answer is - there is no right answer. It depends on the space you have and what you intend to do with your railroad.

Here is a layout that I found online that the owner has done a nice job of giving a theoretical "tour" which shows basically a "day in the life." You can see how small and large yards can work on a layout.

http://www.westportterminal.de/tour.html


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Thanks that really helped


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## Dirtytom (Jan 13, 2014)

Ken, that is an impressive layout. How big is your room and do you have an overall picture of the entire layout?:appl::smilie_daumenpos:

Thanks

DT


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Aminnich said:


> ya, but is there a maximum number of tracks.


I don't know, is there? 

http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=9527



Aminnich said:


> Like would 10 be a lot for a smaller layout?


Seriously though, as mentioned, it *really depends.* In this case the answer is probably: "Maybe?"

The number and configuration of tracks in a yard should be designed around the intended usage of the yard.

If you're just using the yard just to store trains and not for any real switching, that will look very different than if you're modeling real examples like a classification yard where cars are sorted for various destinations, or a junction or interchange yard where cars are dropped off to transfer to different lines, or a small branchline terminal or local yard to support industrial switching.

These two below responses together have given the best real-life information in this thread so far, but it sounds to me like you just want some train parking tracks, so you just want some tracks that are long enough to hold your trains, and at least as many as the number of trains.



dave1905 said:


> Yards are designed a bit different depending on their purpose.
> 
> Assuming you want a classification yard, where you switch cars and make up trains, a lot of the design depends on how many trains will be operating at once and how many trains the yard has to handle.
> 
> ...





sstlaure said:


> Long answer:
> In real life - freight yards can be used for temp. car storage or classification (i.e. cars came in from one destination, need to go to another, but the engine they came in on isn't going there.) The "yard" will classify the cars by destination, type, etc. (depending if it's a transfer yard, industry yard, etc.) and then cars will be hooked to an engine and move on down the line (or be moved in/out of an industry)
> 
> Big/little all depends on the room you have and what you want to achieve with it. If all you want is a place to park cars, figure out how many cars you want to be able to park, estimate the length of all of those cars and give yourself enough cars to do it.
> ...


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## D&J Railroad (Oct 4, 2013)

Dirtytom said:


> Ken, that is an impressive layout. How big is your room and do you have an overall picture of the entire layout?:appl::smilie_daumenpos:
> 
> Thanks
> 
> DT


Didn't see your post here until tonight. The basement is about 55' x 35'. I've been building on this since Jan 2012. The mainline is about 6.5 scale miles of double track. Several industries including the intermodal facility that is about 75' of double track from end to end and a coal facility that holds more than 100 hoppers. Lots of other stuff that you can see in the videos that I have placed on line on my YouTube page. There are videos of other layouts as well as some railfanning footage that I shot out in Arizona and California back in the early 2000s. Each video clip is titled. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiT4uS3Ib4Y_yLNQMHJAGhg


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## rkenney (Aug 10, 2013)

By this time your yard should look something like this:


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

I highly recommend the book "Track Planning for Realistic Operation" by John Armstrong.

It really does a good job of explaining why railroads used certain design and the true purpose of each section/type of trackage.

It will give you a TON of ideas for how you want to lay out towns, industries, yards, etc.


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

how do you tell the switch number????


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

The switch number is the tangent of the angle of the frog.

If you continue the frog rails out as straight lines, for a #6 switch, the point where the two rails are 1 unit apart from each other will be 6 units away from the frog.

So higher numbers are longer switches.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Aminnich said:


> how do you tell the switch number????


Look on the box when you buy it. If it's one of mine, they're all Snap Switches, which don't really have a number. They're a combination of a straight segment and an 18" curve. It approximates a #4, but real turnouts don't curve -- it's two diverging straight tracks. The Snap Switches can create problems in yard design because of the curve, they're actually turning away from the intended direction of the track.

You can try measuring at the track centerlines. A #4 turnout diverges 1 unit for every 4 units of forward motion (IOW, 4" out, the diverging track will be one inch away), and so on.

And the right answer to the # of tracks? How many can you fit without crowding. Most of us don't have the room to come anywhere close to real yard dimensions on our layouts.


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

I like #6 the best. 

#4 can trick up longer equipment unless you're moving slow through them and #8 and larger are nice, but take up a ton of room.

They all have their place though - sharper turnouts into tight sidings, etc. and larger ones where rail speed would be higher through them (interchanges, passing sidings, etc.)


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