As I mentioned in a previous post, once I was satisfied that a model railroad produced good chemistry in my classroom, my initial thought was to add a simple yard module so that trains could actually arrive on the Inglenook from somewhere, and to develop the industries which were now just empty car spots. Even those two things, I realized, would provide many additional dimensions and allow us to incorporate a more robust rationale for the distribution of specific car types.
Although it is prototypically coherent for a short train to back into a spur to work the trailing point tracks, I really wanted to include the logical challenge of facing point setouts with a runaround. The last-in-first-out sorting processes of the bare Inglenook are plenty rich enough, especially because block cuts are allowed, but I was also interested in representing moves that are encountered during over-the-road operations. That led me to consider that a third module could just be another staging yard at the opposite end of the Inglenook.
A small town between two staging yards. Nice, lots of ways to do that, and I realized that I had enough room in the solarium area to build an elongated 4x8 style plan, town in front with double-ended staging in back. Worth considering.
But as I thought about how straight modules would work along the only place I could put them – against the blackboard – I realized that a narrow “shelf” in front of the blackboard would have almost zero impact on the way my room gets used. Because of sightline problems caused by the columns in the middle of the room the only time I put seating along that wall is during tests, and it would make no difference to put them along a narrow shelf-type layout instead.
Once I settled on that wall and started to fiddle around with lengths of things, I noticed that when my room door is fully open there is a 10” gap behind it, enough room for a four track staging yard to get tucked in.
I noticed that if I used the whole length of the 30 foot wall like that I had enough room for some respectably long trains – maybe about 8 feet. But then I went further, if I use the north wall of the room too and put the other staging area along that, things start to look like a real railroad.
But why stop there? By now I was really liking the idea of being able to set up meets, having to clear the main for through trains, etc. Why not add another town to liven things up even more? I was going to need a lot of operator positions with so many students, and the staging just kept getting pushed off until I decided it could just go into the solarium area.
As you can see these are very rough sketches with few of the industries or structures indicated but the scale is reasonable. I’m not very good at imagining the operational bottlenecks so I built what you see here in Trainz and ran it with various levels of traffic to get a feel for the arrangement.
If anyone reading this has the slightest inclination to offer warnings or criticisms about this plan please do! Although the benchwork and roadbed along the west wall is built it’s easier to make changes now than later.
I’ve included the room diagram again below so you don’t have to flip back to the other posts for it.
Jeff