# My First Yard - Input Welcome



## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

Hello everyone,

I'm not exactly new to MRR but I am just now getting back into it. Many years ago I started building a model Steel Mill yard modeled after the Union Railroad in Pittsburgh PA. I never got the railroad built, although I had it well under construction when I had to tear it all down again to move. 

I still have all the parts; track, switches, rollings stock, engines, etc. So I've decided to give it another shot. I'll be working under tighter dimension constraints this time, but I think I can make it work.

The following is my new plan for the yard only. The restrictions for the yard are 7 feet by 2 feet. It actually goes a little wider than 2 feet because of the Steel Mill, I'll try to explain with some drawings:

Here's the first drawing:










I designed this yard basically with two things in mind. The first was to accommodate the operations I'd like to preform and the second was to accommodate the extreme restrictions in layout size constraints. I'm running small rolling stock and small switchers in this yard that can easily handle these tight bends. So that's not a problem.

The operation is around the theme of a Steel Mill and Blast Furnace. The Blast furnace requires coal for fuel and iron ore to make the steel. So that constitutes the incoming freight which will be handled by hopper cars. 

The Steel Mill then produces still products which need to be shipped out and they will be leaving in gondolas and flat cars. So that's the basic operation.

In the next picture I've color-coded the tracks to better explain how I intent to run the operation:










The gray tracks at the bottom are main line tracks coming in and out at the lower left and right corners. There will be two train lines coming and leaving. One is the coal and ore hopper train, the other is the steel delivery train. 

There is also a turntable and roundhouse at the far left bottom not shown in these drawings. 

The tracks colored red are for the first switcher. This switcher uses the left-hand spur to back up on pulling cars away when tearing down or making up trains. It then uses all of the red spurs on the right as storage tracks to sort and maneuver the cars. 

The tracks colored blue at the top are for a second switcher that brings in hopper cars to be emptied into the blast furnace as coal or ore. Or bring in gondolas or flat cars to be loaded up with steel products at the crane loading area. 

The green spurs in between the blue and red are shared spurs that these two switchers use to pass the cars back and forth.

This is a tight little yard due to size restrictions allowing each switcher to only handle about two hoppers, gondolas, or flat cars at a time. 

The lower switcher on the red track can build up bigger trains and also has access to the gray main line by-pass for building up or tearing down larger trains. 

So that's the plan.

The ultimate goal is to have the whole thing computer operated so all I need to do is sit and watch it run. But that's a whole other story. 

Anyway, any suggestions for improvements are more than welcome. 

I'm sure this isn't the best designed yard in the world, but there are a lot of restrictions here due to the size. This is only basically 7 feet by 2 feet, not counting steel mill and blast furnace spurs. The whole diorama is about 3' x 7' counting the actual steel mill and blast furnace. 

Of course there's more the the rest of the railroad but this is just the Steel mill yard. 

Wadda ya think?


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## broox (Apr 13, 2012)

Doesn't look too bad, I reckon.

Can you ppen up the raxius, and increase length of the 2 yard leads?

Also someone might want to comment on 3 way turnouts. I'm not sure of their reliability, or ease of use. Especially in a high traffic situation, like a yard.

Can you post up the anyrail file (*.any)? Someone might be able to tweak it


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

broox said:


> Doesn't look too bad, I reckon.
> 
> Can you ppen up the raxius, and increase length of the 2 yard leads?
> 
> ...


For some reason the *.any file doesn't seem to want to work. It's 30kb and it uploads to my website just fine, but when I try to download it I only get a 1.6 KB file and it won't open with the AnyRail software. It might be because I'm using a free trial version?

Here's what the layout looks like in AnyRail:










The white work area is 84" by 24" that's 7 feet by 2 feet. The two spurs extending into the blue area are the spurs that will eventually be on the Furnace and Steel Mill Diorama boards. 

Speaking of "tweaking" this layout was done on the fly without much forethought for perfection. I was more interested in seeing it is was even possible to do what I want to do. 

But now that you've mentioned tweaking it, I see several options. 

First I can move the whole yard to the right until the right-hand spur bumpers meet up with the end of the yard layout board. I might even be able to shorten those spurs and optimize them for my hopper cars. No need to make them any longer than they need to be. 

This will move all the switches a good 5 or 6 inches to the right (maybe even more) thus giving me more room for those tails where the switchers will be doing all their work. Getting those tails as nice as possible should indeed be a major design consideration. After all, that's where the switchers will be running 90% of the time. 

So thanks for the suggestion. I can definitely do some tweaking. This really was a rough "first try".

So tweaking is in order. I'll get to that task as soon as I have some free time. In fact, now that I think about it, I may be able to extend the left side of that yard board a few inches with an add-on. Thus giving me a little more room to straighten those tails out a bit more.


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## Southern (Nov 17, 2008)

I have a Peco three way switch it works very well. 

have you tried to post the any rail file directly to the forum? Even the trial version can post as an attachment.


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## Southern (Nov 17, 2008)

Starting at the top, down. You could add a cross over between tracks numbers 3 & 4 and/or 5 & 6. That will give you another place to run around


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

Ok, I've added the Any File as an attachment. 

I hope that works. 

I will be tweaking this myself as I have mentioned in my last post, but it will be interesting to see what other people might do with it as well. I probably could add as much as 4 to 6 inches to the left-hand side of the board to help straighten those tails out. But the bottom left-most 3-way turnout on the mainline needs to stay where it's at. 

By the way, for this drawing I used Atlas track library for the standard turnouts and flex track. I've use a couple pieces of flex track very short too in places just to connect things up nicer.

The 3-ways are from the Marklin library. But the actual 3-ways I have are "Model Power" from years ago. I don't even know if Model Power still makes these?

Anyway let me know if this Any file works.

It's maxed out at exactly 50 pieces of track. That was a pure coincidence. I only have the trial version so I can't handle more than 50 pieces of track.

If you are also using the trial version and want to add more track just delete some of the bumpers since they count as a piece of track. There's 10 bumpers so deleting them all gives 10 more pieces of track to play with.


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## sjm9911 (Dec 20, 2012)

Thought out better and a lot nicer than anything I could ever do!


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Southern said:


> Starting at the top, down. You could add a cross over between tracks numbers 3 & 4 and/or 5 & 6. That will give you another place to run around


Actually, it looks a bit odd, but the way he's designed the operations there's actually zero need for the upper switcher to ever run around a car. There's no spurs that go in the opposite direction. If a trailing switch were to be inserted at some point, then a runaround for the upper crew would be required, but as it is, I would actually not add in a crossover between any of those upper tracks as you'd actually lose capacity if you needed to keep it clear, and it's just a waste of switches that are unneeded.

On the other hand, there's only two actual industry tracks were cars can be loaded/unloaded, so the whole yard is a bit overly large. You can probably completely eliminate the second crew, and drop a few tracks, or put in the suggested runaround and add a couple more spurs, into the empty space, but this is really turning into a spaghetti bowl of track already. Just try a few things, see how you like it.

Aesthetically, I'd try to straighten out some of those yard tracks and get them parallel, the curviness looks a bit odd/sloppy (but I'm sure this is just a rough draft).


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## broox (Apr 13, 2012)

cv_acr said:


> , there's only two actual industry tracks were cars can be loaded/unloaded, so the whole yard is a bit overly large. You can probably completely eliminate the second crew, and drop a few tracks, or put in the suggested runaround and add a couple more spurs, into the empty space,


I think this is only a section of his layout, so he may need the larger yard for other operations.


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

Personally I'd run the buildings at angles to the backdrop so that the cars don't have to go back to parallel with the length of the table each time. You could have a crossing and spurs going off both to the right and to the left to access the buildings.

Is this HO scale or N?

If you like steel mills.....Here's one to make your head spin (and give you ideas)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Vncda8ZZ4


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

sstlaure said:


> Personally I'd run the buildings at angles to the backdrop so that the cars don't have to go back to parallel with the length of the table each time. You could have a crossing and spurs going off both to the right and to the left to access the buildings.


You're right. I don't need to keep those two loading spurs parallel with the main layout table. In fact, I could even angle the entire steel mill and have it come down into the yard. That would make it more interesting.

I'm thinking modular so I can take this thing apart in sections and so for that reason I tend to think in terms of the actual tables or sections. But you're right, I don't need to actually confine myself to that. It would be more artistic and add interest to have some different angles for the steel mill and blast furnace. 

So I'll be thinking about that too. Thanks for the suggestion.



sstlaure said:


> Is this HO scale or N?


This is HO scale. 



sstlaure said:


> If you like steel mills.....Here's one to make your head spin (and give you ideas)
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Vncda8ZZ4


Thanks for the link I'll check it out. I'm on dial-up here so I have to wait until I can get over to the library to watch this video.

My father and almost all of my uncles worked for the steel mill or the Union railroad in Pittsburgh so I'm modeling areas from around my home in Pittsburgh. 

There were also a lot of coal and ore mines around too. In fact, I actually took a lot of pictures of railroad yards, engines, rolling stock and the mines and put them all in a large binder. So I have specific things that will influence my model. 

Also, in the real world situations they did some strange stuff too, although probably not quite as freelance as my original drawing.

I just upgraded my drawing to be more lined up. In some ways it doesn't have as much personality now as it did when done freehand. So I might end up doing something in between. Real railroads aren't always nice a tidy and straight. Especially in some areas where I lived. They had some pretty curvy and weird yards too. 

We lived in a really hilly area, and they would often build around the terrain so wiggly yards are pretty commonplace in Pittsburgh. Or at least they used to be at one time. 

Anyway here's the more lined up version:










I'll attach the new AnyRail file too:

Note: I'm using some flex track for tiny error corrections. Those need to be tweaked in the drawing, but I think I can tweak them in the real world easily enough when I actually build the real thing.


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

I just added the roundhouse that was easy enough.


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## broox (Apr 13, 2012)

yeah, it does lose some character with it all straight, hey.


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

I finished the whole layout, save for the automobile factory which is in another room. 

Here's the drawing of the whole layout. 










The coal mine is elevated as high as I can reasonably make it with the run I have. Beneath it will then be room for a tunnel. The outermost track remains at ground level. 

The automobile factory is on another layout in another room. The track leading to that layout goes off on the bottom left of this layout and directly into a tunnel which is just a hole in the wall going to the next room.


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

broox said:


> yeah, it does lose some character with it all straight, hey.


I agree.

It's a tough choice here. Do I want to get real formal about it and try to make everything as straight as an arrow, or was the rough seat-of-the-pants makeshift yard actually more interesting?

Maybe I can find some middle path? 

I could try adding some gentle curves and make the terrain appear to have dictated that. 

I know the real-world yards in my old home town had tons of character and they weren't all neat and straight either. But I guess some yards are. 

I'll have to think about just how much artistic license I want to employ here. 

Curvy yards were commonplace in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where I grew up. That was the norm. It was hard to find anything straight mainly because of the hilly terrain, and rivers. Everything was all twisted out of shape. That's just the way things are in Pittsburgh. 

And that is the area I'm trying to model. Not in precise detail, but just in general characteristics. And curvy is the general characteristic in Pgh PA.


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## broox (Apr 13, 2012)

Curvy yards arent heaps of fun for model trains, when it comes to coupling, etc.

Just another thing to consider.


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## mark olmstead (Jul 12, 2012)

looks good but the first turn out of the main line looks very tight . just saying . other than that i like it .


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

mark olmstead said:


> looks good but the first turn out of the main line looks very tight . just saying . other than that i like it .


Yes, I'm cheating a bit to avoid having to actual pay for using AnyRail. 

In reality there is more than enough room in the physical area to layout a nice curve there. But what happened is that I'm drawing this in pieces to stay under the 50 track limit of the trial version of AnyRail. Then I'm cutting and pasting together those sections in PC Paint. So that's why I didn't get a smooth connection between the yard and the mainline. 

Also, this mainline was just tossed together on the fly to show what I have in mind. I have a lot of tweaking to do on it. I'm just trying to get an idea of how it will fit into the allotted space. 

This whole layout will be done in sections that can be taken apart. I'll post a drawing of how I intend to cut it up later when I have time. 

Right now it looks like their be about 10 sections that you can see from the top view, plus two more sections that will be hidden from view under the mountain. 

I haven't shown it on this layout but inside the tunnel I have a by-pass track which will allow one train to go into the tunnel and a different train to emerge from the tunnel. 

The layout ultimately has three types of trains.

1. The Coal/Ore hopper train.
2. The Steel Products train.
3. A Maintenance of Way train. 

I already have all of these trains waiting for this layout to be built. 

This was a dream I had many years ago that I started and never completed. I finally decided to either built it or sell the trains. Since I can't bear the thought of parting with these trains the layout must be built. (ha ha) 

As they say, "Use it or lose it".

I don't want to lose it, so I guess I better use it.


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

Planing a layout can be a lot of fun in itself. I'm getting a lot of ideas just as I continue to tweak the layout. 

Here's the latest drawing:










I have the Coal/Ore Mine a whooping 5" elevated. In order to do that I had to start the slope way back and raise the entire back half of the main line. But that will actually be pretty cool. 

This AnyRail program is nice in that it does all the slopes automatically.

I've also been working with insulating sections of track too. I'm going to have hills and valleys in the layout that I can visualize that aren't readily apparent from this drawing.

I also added some character back into the yard. I like those curved tails so I put them back in more gentle this time. I'm going to have a river flowing along that lower left-hand track bend. That will give me a pragmatic excuse for having to curve the tails of the yard. No coupling or uncoupling takes place there anyway. 

To add artistic curvature to the right-hand side of the yard I simply extended the straight spurs different lengths to match the outbound curve of the mainline. 

Then I changed the steel mill and blast furnace spurs too. Now I'm anxious to start building the actual dioramas. This layout will be long in the making for sure. But planning it out sure helps. 

I haven't even thought about the auto factory layout board. In addition to the auto factory it will have more residential feel to it and include an entire town as well. So that will be fun to layout too. 

This model railroading can become addictive!


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

I'm on a roll. I tweaked some crucial curves in the yard some more, then wired it all up with insulators. And finally added uncouplers where I think I might use them shown as black dots on the tracks in the yard. 










I'll be glad to post the AnyRail files for this if anyone would like to mess with them. I have it on two separate files though. One for the yard, and another for the roundhouse and the rest of the layout. The layout is made almost entirely of flex track. Except for turnouts of course. 

If you have a registered version you can put the two files back together as a single file. I need to keep them separate because of the 50 piece restriction of the trial version.


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## broox (Apr 13, 2012)

looks great.

one thing...

how are you going to physically reach the coal loop if/when theres a derailment?

/devils avocado


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## sstlaure (Oct 12, 2010)

What is your minimum radius and what size is the table we're looking at?


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

broox said:


> looks great.
> 
> one thing...
> 
> ...


I was expecting this question and was even going to mention it before it came up. 

I've thought about this in some depth. The "table" measures 11.5' x 7', or 138" x 84". It's actually a low-laying layout only about a foot off the floor. So this is a layout that you basically look down at. Or sit around in chairs. In which case you still have a fairly elevated view of it. 

You can walk around 3 sides of the layout. With the left most side up against a wall. 

Because it's only 7 feet wide the furthest reach to the middle will be 3.5 feet. Which is indeed a bit of a stretch. But as you point out there isn't much in the middle save for the coal mine loop.

Derailments are not a major concerned. Worse case scenario is that I could just pick the train off and re-rail it back at the yard. I could even pick the train off using a grabber extension if need be. 

Another solution would be to place a step ladder on either side of the layout with a bridge scaffolding that I could physically walk on over the layout. That may sound like a major ordeal but I don't think it would be as I could have two lightweight step ladders and the maintenance walk bridge readily available. I don't expect to have constant derailing problems. If that were the case some major maintenance would be in order to repair the cause of so many derailments.

There is even a third option, and this is that the entire mine loop will be designed to be very easily removable. In fact, this whole layout will be modular and will be designed to be disassembled and reassembled quite rapidly. 

I'll be posting pictures of the modular design when I draw them up. 

There is only one track connection going to the mine loop. That is at the turnout at the right of the mine loop. Because of this I can have the entire mind diorama easily removable. Just unsnap some hold down latches, and you can pull the entire mine loop off the layout toward the left. This will include the entire mine diorama.

Moreover, once you remove this loop, you can easily step into the hole where it was. In fact, at this point you will also have compete access to inside the tunnel. Having a derailment inside the tunnel of course would be the worse catastrophe. That would indeed require removing the mine diorama to gain access to the tunnel. 

Putting the mine diorama back on is a snap. There will be physical guides in insure that the turnout lines back up with the grade track and all of the electrical connections will be made with a plug in cable. 

Trust me, the modular design of this layout was a major consideration before I even thought about starting on the project. This entire layout will be designed to be very easily disassembled into sections. And easily reassembled as well. Each section will be a self-contained diorama that just plugs into it's adjacent dioramas, both in terms of electrical connections and in terms of track connections. 

I'll post more about this as I draw up these modular sections and how they attach to one another.


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

sstlaure said:


> What is your minimum radius and what size is the table we're looking at?


The table size is 11.5' x 7', or 138" x 84".

I have the min radius set to 8 inches on AnyRail as I know that my engines and rolling stock can easily handled that. In fact they can handle clear down to, and including a 6 inch radius.

I used to build model railroads in coffee tables so I've mastered the art of dealing with tight turns. 

There are several tricks to this art for anyone who is interested.

1. Choose locomotives and rolling stock that can handle the tight curves you expect to work with. And then stick with the rolling stock you've chosen.

2. When laying out a tight curve using flex track always use a radius template, never try to layout a tight curve by freehand. You'll never get it smooth that way. So this is a major tip, trust me. If you have a nice smooth curved template that you can physically lay the track up against as you nail it down that curve will be totally dependable and not be the cause of any derailments. Lay the track freehand and you'll have a derailment nightmare on your hands. 

3. When laying out special bends to connect up ill-aligned tracks (like between the switches in the yard in the model I'm proposing), use track nails as "railroad spikes" at the base of the track where it meets up with the switches. In situations like this most derailments are not caused by too sharp of a radius, but rather they are caused because the end of the tracks aren't perfectly aligned. So that's the key to preventing derailments when connecting up ill-aligned switches in tight yards. 

I've learned this from building model railroads in coffee tables. Those coffee tables were only 4 feet long by 18 inches wide. I worked mostly with N-scale, but I also made some HO scale, and I made it work dependably. Although you can't do much with HO in such a small area, but I was able to do more than just ovals. 

If you go clear down to using an 0-4-0 switcher you can get away with some pretty tight bends. And then just find rolling stock that can also handle those tight bends and you're all set. 

Clearly you can't just grab any old HO scale train and expect it to run on these specialty layouts. A major key to the design of tiny layouts is to design around locomotives and rolling stock that you know will handle your tight curves. 

Compared to what I was building in coffee tables, this layout seems HUGE to me. And these curves seem quite gentle in comparison.


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## Sweet Dreamer (May 13, 2013)

Here a rough map showing how the sectional diorama boards will fit together. I'll need to tweak this as well, but it's looks pretty good just as is. 










These of course need to go together in a certain order. Putting it together begins with the main yard and everything is designed to build out from that.

The Mountain and Coal mine boards go on last. Both of these boards are elevated. 

To take it back apart again you begin by removing the Coal Mine board. To do that you simply unfasten a couple of cabinet latches and slide it to the left, then lift it off. Wiring will be unpluged in one cable.

Putting it back on it just as easy. The track will be made to line up with guide pins as you slide the diorama into place so you don't need to worry so much about getting the tract to line up. It will do this automatically as you slide it into place and latch it in. 

So the entire coal mine will come right off the layout very easily. Once it is off, you can step right in to the space where it used to be. 

The next board to be removed when disassembling the layout will be the Mountain Terrain board. It removes in a similar way. Just unsnap a couple fasteners and slide it to the right a bit, unplug is wiring connection. And to lifts right off.

At that point you have the following where you have easy access to the tunnel tracks. You can walk around in the white area with no problem. 










The whole layout can then be disassembled in a similar manner removing one diorama board at a time. There will be a sequence in which they need to be removed and replaced. But as long as you stick to that order everything will be just fine. 

This will also make it nice for working on details on each diorama board since you can disassemble this layout and just take one board to work on at a time. 

When I build this I will build all of the bare diorama sections first. Then when I have all the boards fitting together I'll lay the track taking special care to create line up pins where tracks meet. This will make putting the diorama boards together with the track on them very easy and fail-safe. 

Then when all the track has been laid and trains have been run to test it, the whole layout can be disassembled again to begin the artwork on each diorama. 

This is the only way to go as far as I'm concerned. Then you aren't tied down to one huge layout board that you can't even move. 

This can be taken down. Moved to a show, and reassembled there. 

Assembly of this kind actually goes quite quick. No fussing with trying to line up tracks. It's all done with guide pins. Just push the correct diorama boards together and lock them in place with their cabinet snaps and you can rest assured that you have a good solid track connection lined up perfectly.


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