Is there a template or whatever for building a yard ladder?

  What I do is work back from the track spacing I want and see how the turnouts need to be angled and what kind of curved track needs to be used between them or if they need to be shortened.   In your case I'd draw out parallel yard tracks at 1.125" or whatever spacing I wanted then build two #5 switches and lay them on the lines at various angles to see how best they could be used. If you want a longer less angled ladder then build two #6 switches instead......DaveB

and the obvious...

Make sure that you can couple and uncouple the cars when the yard is full--a mistake I made years and years ago.

Yard ladders

Sometimes you need to put a little curve in the body tracks to keep a decent frog number.

These tracks are on pretty tight centers.  I think 13 or 14 foot.  If you modeled the track centers that tight, you may have issues getting 1:1 scale fingers in there without knocking over half the cars in the yard in the process.

Or you could have 2 lefts then make the balance of the ladder rights (or the other way, depending on the need).

You don't have to make the track as wiggly as some of these shots, though...

Those are neat photos.

Where's that yard? and what's the purpose of the track with the gray hopper on the left in the first photo?  I like the self guarding frogs so no guard rails needed..DaveB

Photos

The top two are from WSOR Janesville yard (ex-MILW).  The track on the left is a customer, they receive plastic in that style of covered hopper.  There used to be a scale on the track farthest to the left looking ahead, not the customer track.  In the second shot, one can see the concrete base to the right of the higher-style switchstand.

The bottom two are from WSOR Glendale (North Milwaukee area), again ex-MILW. 

Quite a number of self-guarding frogs in both areas, as well as many other places around the system.  This style of frog is generally only good for 10 mph, though.  Going faster and you need guardrails. 

Print out some templates from

Print out some templates from the fast tracks website and lay it out with those, should get you pretty close.

Space should be automatic

Given all left or right hand turnouts  the ladder tracks will be parallel, the distance between them is adjusted with spaces between turnouts. (In HO scale a 2in spacer between PECO No. 5 yields 2in distance, 4.6in spacer yields 2.5in distance.)  That same spacer correctly sets up a compound ladder as well (see illustration) 

This is good to read about building yards and ladders