Mike, I think I can give you some answers from experience

working on reefers that I blue flagged in yards.  I have worked on equipment at U.P.'s Yermal staging yard, an obscure yard in the Los Angeles harbor area, as well as Amtrak's Redondo Junction, U.P. City Of Industry Yard, and U.P.'s Los Nietos yard.  None of them had any of the tracks numbered.  The crews that worked there just knew which track was which.  I don't think they ever worked both ends of the same track with two different crews for safety reasons.  It is complicated enough for the engineer to keep track of his own crew and his crew to keep track of  where the train is and what moves it will be making.  To have two different crews working both ends of the same track at the same time is inviting accidents, and train equipment is so big that accidents often will result in death or total disability for life.

Numbered tracks

Most of the yards I have worked in have the track number on the switch stand.

Also, each and every track should have a name of some sort.  That goes a long ways to help reduce confusion. 

Coffee pot only if facilities are provided.  Coffee only stays in the body for a short time...

The yard job might be more productive if one guy stays on one end of the yard, and another works the other end.  A double-ended yard could have two crews working, one at each end, but they would need to be in contact with each other to avoid wrecks and derailments.  Kicking cars would help too, but the physics don't really scale down to allow that.  Providing large aisles would be a requirement.  Some of us exceed plate C clearances...

The smaller yards I work in don't really have arrival-departure tracks.  A track is a track, use them as needed.  Not much traffic, so longer trains get built right on the main line, as those are the longest tracks. 

Unprototypical prototype

Our model of Sudbury Yard is almost exactly a track for track reproduction of its prototype.  We only shortened it to about 2/3 its length and left out 2 tracks, which are missing from one each of the last two outer track groups; so ours is 20 tracks wide, and the prototype is 22 tracks.  The tracks are numbered from in front of the station, with track 1 ending about a third of the way from the east end, where it merges with the eastward main track under the bridge.  Crews working the east end of the yard have to keep in mind that the first track is actually track 2; again, this is prototypical.  There are no numbers anywhere, the crews just know how to count out the tracks, (usually.)

We usually run two yard crews, an East and a West crew.  The east end of the yard has a double yard lead, which would allow two crews to work that end, but we haven't seen evidence that it was used that way.  The double lead is handy sometimes when a train is switching the east end, and picking up or setting off on the first 5 tracks, because the switcher can keep working on the rear 15 using the second lead.  More typically, though, the yardmaster used the second lead to store excess cars, because the yard was usually overflowing and shoving a trackfull of cars out the south lead was an easy way to make some space.

The west end doesn't have a dedicated yard lead.  This flies in the face of Yard Design 101 according to model railroad gurus, but CP didn't take that class, apparently.  The third track heading west is the Nickel Sub mainline, which splits off just past Elm St.  It is usually used as the west lead track.  Just past the yard throat there is one track to the engine service, and then a little farther along another track splitting off to the west.  This track is the Webbwood Sub mainline, which is fairly busy with local traffic, a couple of passenger trains and a couple through freights.  Trains entering from this line have to use the Nickel Sub track to either enter the yard or cross over to the double track Cartier sub main if they are heading further east or need the station platforms.  Any train entering or leaving the yard via the Nickel sub or the Cartier sub mainlines also use the lead track, so just about anything that happens at the west end of the yard interrupts switching.  Interestingly, the west end of the yard is the one that sees the most switching.

The Pulp Train is doing its runaround move, and keeping the yard engine waiting on the ladder from its duties.

When I designed the model yard, I determined from the beginning that it would have access from both sides.  One side is for the Cartier sub mainline crews to use, while the narrow one along the yard track side is exclusively for the two yard crewmen.  (We occasionally tolerate a local train crewmember going back there to facilitate a runaround move or something...but only sometimes.)  This came from my experiences operating quite a few yards at various places; I found if the yard crew had to share the space with mainline crews, especially if the aisle was narrow, it made for a very frustrating operating night.  This way, the yard crews can work in peace.

Access from both sides makes it more comfortable for all the operators to do their thing without getting in each other's way.

We also have a rather wide area at the west yard throat, which is definitely the choke point of the operation.  Most of the locals operate out of this end of the yard, engines moving to or from the engine facilites pass through this area and, of course, the yard switcher is using the space often.  Any smaller than it is would have been unworkable, as we have half a dozen or more people in that area at once quite often.

The yard works quite well.  The only real sticking point is that people tend to loiter at the very narrow spot beside the station on the mainline side, which blocks the aisle for people trying to get through.  The layout has a lot of narrow aisles, and that would be a worse problem if the layout were any smaller than it is.  In practice, the people are spread out enough that they don't interfere with each other too often, and passing areas have been included so people can get by each other more easily.  Yes, bigger aisles would be nice, but it works reasonably well without them.

Russ.... Thanks.... But.... (there's always a "But"....

The issue of working the same track from both ends always bothered me.  But that's not quite the situation I'm describing.  The issue is more about two crews working from the same end.

Maybe an example would help...

You're a visiting operator assigned to one of two crews working the west end of the following large yard (only the throat, ladder and key trackage is shown):

Now, because I'm a kind and generous host, I also slip you the following paper, so you can figure out how the yard "works":

(There's a key that I forgot when I drew this one:

Black: Main
Blue: A/D
Orange: West Crew 1
Red: West Crew 2
Green: Thoroughfare
Purple: Caboose)

My concerns here are how to make it easier (through visual clues, since the tracks aren't actually Black, Blue, Red, etc....) when looking at the actual layout, to identify tracks and, second. how to keep crews 1 and 2 from bumping into each other (the operators, not the locomotives, now that the track gives each the space to operate).

Does that make more sense?
 

Mike: Track numbers in HO/N scale?

Thanks. I recall seeing pictures of switch stands (in 1:1 scale) that were numbered for the tracks.

The problem is replicating the numbers in a realistic manner that operators can actually use in HO or N scale.

This is one place a control panel with names and turnout controls really does help, as I think about it.  You don't have to count tracks on the layout, just set the turnouts on the control panel and watch the loco figure it out on its own....  (And the host can have *real* fun swapping wires before an April 1 op session.. )

The problem with double ended yards for modelers is always space.  Even if the ladder isn't too difficult to handle, adequate lead tracks at both ends can be a real space/design problem.

The best solution....

I think that really is the best solution if the yard is designed to be run from the same end by more than one operator.  In fact, I really can't think of a second solution at all.....

Of course, with 20 tracks, you need access from both sides just to reach any "situations"....

Added by edit:  I *did* think of a second solution that may be even more viable when space really is an issue and the yard is narrow enough that you don't need access from both sides:  if one is using magnetic uncouplers and switch machines rather than manual throws, separate control panels would also solve the problem.  The nice thing about yards is that, with uncouplers placed at the clearance points on the classification tracks, it's not often that you need to uncouple where there's no uncoupler....

Yard efficiency

You'd be surprised...

Well, actually, I have seen hands-off yards work fairly well, with operators well out of reach of the entire yard and relying totally on remote uncouplers and turnouts.  You need a lot of uncouplers to handle every likely situation, though, and it takes a little practice to get good at using the uncouplers.  You also need to get used to the unrealistic movements to use them, and their appearance between the tracks unless you install the below the track versions (which have their own challenges...like remembering where they are.)

My biggest question in all of this is what value there is in having two switchers at the same end of a 10 track yard anyway.  Dividing it into two five track sections with dedicated switchers for each seems unusual.  Our Sudbury yard is 20 tracks and only has one switcher at each end, and works quite efficiently.  What is the purpose of dividing the yard in this way?

My biggest question in all of

​That  yard was drawn specifically for the example.  There are things about even that end I'd do differently if I hadn't done it quickly.  In fact, when I first drew it, it had 14 classification tracks - seven off each lead.  I shortened so I I could show in a magnification my tenders eyes could handle and (almost) fit the MRH column width.

​As for working the yard from both ends, the problem is the overall length - the classification tracks and leads at each end means the overall space required just to handle the yard has to be three times the standard train length  + room for the throats and ladders at both ends.  I used a compound ladder set at 20 degrees and with only 5 tracks Peco medium N scale switches and that  throat - if it had been shortened to only one lead at that end, was about 5'.  Running 10' trains as the standard, it would take roughly 40 linear feet in N scale.  That's a huge chunk of real estate. for even a large home layout. In HO, an equivalent yard would be almost 75 feet long.  

A club could handle a yard that long, but it would overwhelm even the largest private layout.  (Of course that raises a question about what private layout needs a yard with fourteen or more classification tracks, but we won't go there....  )

As for why a double lead in the first place, see, for example, Craig Bisgeier's The Ten Commandments of Model Railroad Design (where he discusses a double lead design, hypothetically, with five classification tracks off each lead.) There's also a double lead yard in John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation  - on an 8 track yard (Figure 2-9 in the Third edition, at least)¹.  The advantage, I expect, is that yards tend to be the bottlenecks when considering mainline traffic density.  It can take longer to make up a train, than it takes for that train to complete it's run.

My problem is my interest is theoretical.  I'm too much of a "lone wolf" operator to have any practical use for a yard of that size on my layout - and I certainly don't have experience working one.  The layout I'm actually constructing is, at most, a two person operation that doesn't even have a division point yard.  Its yard serves local industries, receiving traffic from, and accumulating traffic for a mythical turn from an imagined major classification yard down the line somewhere.

​¹  If citing John Armstrong isn't like citing Gospel, I don't know what is.  

Design

The easiest way is to design its so its obvious.   Building all those exactly parallel leads makes it very hard to keep it straight.  if you would have separated the leads a little, varied the angle of one of the groups, spread the crossovers a little, moved the caboose track to a handier spot ( to get a caboose to or from  the AD tracks you have to cross 4 leads.)

You're right about the

You're right about the caboose track, of course.  

Actually, if I were really building it, I'd probably add the engine servicing facility to the left, between the main and the leads and put the caboose track (and work train track and RIP track(s) ) in there as well.  That and move the thoroughfare track between the A/D tracks and classification tracks.  That way, the locomotives for arriving eastbound (rightward heading) trains could reach the engine facility (and vice versa for outbound trains) without getting in the way of switchers (and, if I had a hostler assigned, he wouldn't add to the crew congestion.)

Something no one has mentioned yet.... I'd also try to squeeze in some sort of "interchange" tracks so the two switching crews could hand off cars to each other.  The easiest way would be placing the track(s) between the the two sets of classification tracks, but it could be between the leads if width became an issue 

Hmmmm....  This is getting to be addictive....  I may have to try to actually design the throat and ladders, rather than just throwing an example together....  

Coke or Pepsi?

I thought this thread was about where to put the sofas around the game board?

Switchers

The prototype would design the blocks so that one lead switches eastward trains and the other switches westward trains to minimize the cross traffic.  Make a class track that is accessible to both leads and that is the reswitch track. 

Quite frankly I would have one job switch both leads.

Well, it didn't take off in

Well, it didn't take off in quite direction I intended, anyway.

I think what you thought is more along the lines of what I thought when I was thinking (if I was thinking, in the first place). 

BTW, the direction it did take is still worthwhile (to me, at least).  I'm still learning from it.  So I ahve no real complaints. 

What the prototype does

As I mentioned to Andy, this thread has gone off in directions I hadn't considered, although I don't mind at all.  One of those was "what the prototype does".

There are three problems that I see with "what the prototype" does that affect yard design.  (Not that we shouldn't consider - and try to emulate, if our goal is model protoype operations.  We should.  But in conjunction with considering the problems.)

First problem is that modelers tend to run trains far more densely than the prototype does on mainlines that are far shorter than prototype has.  If we want to run using the prototype schedules, we can get around that problem in part by running a fast clock.  But there's no way break down or build trains in fast time (short of allowing the engines to fly around the yards).   The increased density and the clock problem means that those who like yards in addition to operating long mainline runs have a different balance of effort between the two.  That one affects yard design and to keep trains ready, possibly more crews than the prototype would use for the same level of traffic (but less support staff to direct and manage operations)

The second problem is one of scale.  The prototype doesn't have to deal with 1:1 scale crews working much smaller scale trains.  One suggestion I read somewhere (from Bryon Henderson?) was that we should consider ladders the place the shorter tracks (assuming single ended yards or trapezoidal classification tracks) closer to the operators so they can see the clearance points.

Final problem is real estate.  We just don't have enough to do what the prototype does the way a prototype does in a major yard.

There's plenty of literature on the track plan design accommodations we need to consider in transferring prototype track planning practices to model practices.  There are fewer on implementing the actual procedures used (like tracking crewmen or their need to move about the yard) and fewer still on what I was thinking about when I started this thread - the accommodation we needed to make for the out of scale humans running the layouts (beyond using non-prototypical track spacing so 1:1 scale fingers can handle 1:160 scale cars when a "situation" occurs).

Where's Waldo? Oh he's up in the Blimp

I have a different point of view from the way most model railroaders view "operations".

In real life there are essentially two places humans interact with trains.  Either in the cab, or standing beside the track (close as an employee, or a little farther away as a public viewer). Yes there are some over-bridges, but that doesn't change the public view height much.

So if I want to imagine myself "operating" as an engineer (realistically), driving the main, or switching, I want a from the cab view. 

If I'm supposed to be standing beside the track, I expect to see track and wheels stuff very close up, and the sides of box cars towering above, and of course any cars in the way definitely blocking my view(s) sideways. Car roofs and open gondola contents - no way.

But when I look at Jurgen's picture, I see a completely different scenario. Several people who are looking DOWN at the yard from a great scale height, who can god-like, literally see everything at once, including long distances, and act accordingly. Even with a tall yard tower, is there a real RR employee job that has that view and capability? The Monopoly analogy immediately comes into my mind.

The "webcam" technology is now becoming so ubiquitous and inexpensive, is it likely to turn "operations" into a completely different set of circumstances in the very near future? And thius will the "sofa" will become a set of located anywhere - "cubicles", each with a monitor screen and controls?

Prototype design?

The problem with the design is that it isn't designed prototypically and then people ask what would the prototype do?  The prototype wouldn't have built it that way in the first place since it won't work.  There aren't clear lines of sight if more than one move is be made at a time, there is no room between the tracks/leads for switchmen to stand.  Adding those things would create separation between the groups and make it much clearer which tracks were for what.

My suggestion is not to do it prototypically.  At the clearance point on each track stick a 1/4 inch plastic square with the track number, leaning up against the rail.  Make the background of each sign a different color for each group of tracks.

Webcam technology and the future....

This thread is spinning wildly out of control, but if I'm the OP and I'm contributing to the problem, does that matter? 

Andy, you don't think far enough ahead....

Operating a train by webcam gives a hint of a whole new possibility (well, actually, it already exists).  Once we have the opportunity to move from actual modeling to virtual modeling, "Real estate problems" disappear.  Scale problems disappear.  We move to the world where the person in a cramped apartment with no space for a layout can build one bigger than Miniature Wunderland.  A lone wolf like me can interact with more possible dispatchers and more trains than the entire US (or European) railroad network.  And it'll be a lot cheaper, too.  All it will require is the software and sufficient disk space and a processor capable of building the images to the accuracy we want in real-time.

Think of it....  No time spent constructing table work.  No time wiring. Or ballasting, or whatever one hates doing most.  And we can visit and operate any layout in the world the owner puts on line, without the owner worrying that our ineptitude will break anything.

(Note: none of that is sarcastic in the least.  It *is* a real possibility.  When I look for videos of layouts on YouTube, I keep seeing the option to look at virtual layouts.  In fact, my kids gave me Microsoft's Railroad Simulator years ago. Merged with the concept of a virtual videocam, anyone can run a cross country empire that doesn't exist.  We have interactive online games today that involve killing elves and orks and other players and have fantastic graphics.  Think about how much better the values taught if they involved cooperating, instead.  At any rate, imagine the insomniac in some isolated location with the sudden urge to participate in a "prototypical" operating session or even friends who were geographically so separated that they couldn't put together such a session, in spite of the commonility of their interests.)

A very viable solution

A very viable solution.  Not unlike the idea I'd posted somewhere (not this thread, not even sure if it was this forum) that I was considering using "Whistle" markers - except with a "U" on them instead of the "W", to mark the location of hidden magnetic uncouplers.  I still haven't decided if I will, but these are the types options I'd originally envisioned this thread being about.

Well I do have a 12 camera system now. . .

8 static and 4 mobile. All selectable on a common monitor, 1, 4, or 16 at a time, which is the same monitor for JMRI. And I could let the monitor go onto the web. But I'd need a different system if more than i person tried to access it on-line.

OTOH, without all the electronics, I was wondering whether to take Jurgen's picture and
sort of "invert" it.  Lay the yard on plexiglass instead of plywood and at just above head height.. . . . (Gasp!) 

A few longitudinal slots between tracks and a bunch of cheap miniature versions of those periscopes like they used to have in the trenches in WW I, and Bob's your Uncle. Each operator can stand UNDER the yard and virtually pop up alongside the yard tracks just about everywhere they want.

And no extra space needed for aisles  

plexiglass layout problems....

Yeah, but with the tall guy in the maroon shirt operating the layout in Jurgen's pictures, you'd have a heck of an expense raising the ceilings....

Books help

I want to repeat what an earlier poster said.  You can get help on some, not all, of your questions by studying TRACK PLANNING FOR REALISTIC OPERATION by John Armstrong, available from Kalmbach Publishing, Amazon and other sources.

There's even advice on how to shape your yard so that turnouts are near the aisle!

Re: John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation

Thanks for the great advice.

And I know it's great advice, since I'm the "other poster" who said it....

Marking magnet locations

I've seen and used three methods of marking the location of under track magnets (whether electric or permanent doesn't really matter unless you use both).  (1)  Paint the ends of the ties a certain color, white or yellow or whatever.  (2)  Throw down an old tie adjacent to the magnet.  (3)  Use some slight discoloration in the ballast in the location of the magnet, whether a slight variation in actual ballast or spilled sand or spilled grain, etc.

Distinguishing Yard Tracks

To help distinguish these tracks even better than just numbers, I would have the A/D (blue) tracks fully and neatly ballasted.  For the first classification section (orange),I would use ballast and some dirt.  For the second classification section (red),  I would have the tracks almost completely in the dirt.  Visually this would separate the areas.