Take a look

Take a look at this John Armstong yard design. Very Fluid and you also have the ability to work two operators in the yard (if you have that much room) a the same time. If you will notice the yard tracks do not join immediatly with the main. This will allow you to pull a cut of cars and sort/classify them while not fowling your main line. 

One problem I see with your design is the amount of "puzzle switches" going in and out of your yard track. 

This is just my two cents. If you are happy with the design have a blast. 

A couple thoughts...

All those double slips (or are they crossing diamonds?) just don't look like they belong.  Are you going from a real NKP yard that used an arrangement like this?  They add complexity without seeming to add utility, and are definitely atypical for a prototype freight yard ladder.

In addition, I don't see a separate lead track, so you'l have to get the switcher out of the way someplace else to get a train in or out, which can be frustrating for crews. 

Are the available runarounds long enough for the moves you'll need to do to get locomotives where they need to go?  The runaround on the back two tracks looks really short, so it may not function effectively as an engine escape track for inbound trains.  Moving the crossover to the left could help.

Is this yard a stub-end (i.e is the diagram all there is to it)?  If so, some of the body tracks may be pretty small for the classification they'll be asked to perform, but that's a bit hard to judge without knowing more about the layout.

Scale/Location

David,

What scale is this in and where is this on your layout? The one thing I see is a lack of any yard lead as I'm assuming the top most track is the mainline. The Armstrong example Neil posted above is a very good starting point for any yard design. I'd also have you look at Craig Bisgeir's 10 commandments of yard design, here, as another good starting point for designing your yard. Finally, if this is going to be the yard to feed the rest of your switching layout, then you need to make sure it is sized enough to handle all cars, in whatever type of traffic flow you are going to do, that will be used on your layout,

Phil

Yard Design

Thanks. Food for thought. The length is not much of a problem (8') but the width is only 30 inches. I do like the "puzzle" as they had one at E.55thy St. on the NKP where I worked and I was trying to emulate that feeling. From a practical point however, your comments make sense. Will rethink the process and see what is most efficient. Most operators would be me - and a guest if one came over. This is an HO layout and the scale was 1" equals 1 foot. The "diamonds" (3 eastbound and 3 westbound) were put in to force switching from the two ladders. Would double slips help this idea any at all?

Puzzle

"I do like the "puzzle" as they had one at E.55thy St. on the NKP where I worked and I was trying to emulate that feeling. From a practical point however, your comments make sense. Will rethink the process and see what is most efficient. [snip] The "diamonds" (3 eastbound and 3 westbound) were put in to force switching from the two ladders. Would double slips help this idea any at all?"

Forcing switching off the two ladders is something I'll bet you'd tire of after a very short while because they force the yard to be inconvenient to switch.  Much like the dreaded John Allen "timesaver" switching puzzle, track arrangements intended for game-play considerations can become irritants once they're used for normal operations.  Swapping the crossings for double slips would add still more complexity, and for the type of yard you're building the arrangement just seems out of place.

The track with all of the diamonds, what for?

That track appears to have no purpose except to make the yard more difficult to operate.  If the diamonds are to be kept clear, that track just shortens all of the other tracks to eliminate capacity.  If the diamonds are not kept clear, the track with the diamonds can't be traversed.  Even if the diamonds are kept clear, what purpose does that track serve?  The tracks that come off of the track with the diamonds instead of having a crossing diamond and coming off of the other track are just that much shorter which gives less yard capacity.  If you replace the diamonds with double slip switches, you still have all of the same problems, with no operational advantage; but more complexity in the track work.

You don't show a yard lead, but you also don't show how the yard fits into a layout track plan, so we can't see what you have in mind. 

The engine escape in the top two tracks should have a tail track just slightly longer than you largest locomotive or consist, and the run around needs to be longer than your longest train.  As it stands now, you are going to be able to run a consist equal to the length of the train it is pulling and your longest possible train is 1/2 the length of the longest track in the yard.

schematic

Yard size, purpose

Note that in the copyrighted image posted above from Track Planning for Realistic Operation, Armstrong describes that yard as "club-sized." The same book contains much more compact yard examples on pages 26 (through yard) and 127 (stub-ended yards). Page numbers are from the current 3rd edition.

IMHO, it's impossible to know whether a yard design is "good" or "bad" without knowing how the yard fits into the rest of the layout. Having said that, the multitude of crossings in the Original Poster's yard design is not found on any real-life or well-designed model yard I've ever seen and would be an impediment to smooth and logical operation as well as making the yard look unrealistic.

Andy Sperandeo's  The Model Railroader's Guide to Freight Yards is an excellent resource for best practices in model yards. Highly recommended for anyone thinking of designing their own yard.

Diamonds on ladders

No offense, but that's just insane. There's no way a real railroad would ever do anything like that. You can only work half the tracks in the yard from each ladder, and it doesn't lend itself to running a second switcher because any move on either ladder blocks the other. Especially since there's no lead.

If you want, keep the second, outer ladder track as a runaround, but put all the switches off the inner ladder. The two crossing ladders is probably one of the worst possible designs that you could come up with for a yard.

Yard questions

David,

I have a few questions. Perhaps the answers will help guide refinements to your yard design...

1) Where is this yard to be installed -- with the mainline passing through it or as a terminal yard (where the main ends at the yard)?

2) What is the traffic level you're planning in this yard?  Heavy or light? Or somewhere in between? How many trains might be trying to use or pass through the yard at once?  If more than one and traffic levels will be more than light, you'll probably want to include a dedicated switch lead for the switch engine to use while classifying cars.

3) How many locos and cabooses do you anticipate will need to use the engine and caboose tracks?

4) There doesn't seem to be anyway of turning a locomotive. But you mentioned using steam power. Does this mean you'll be running steam engines backward from the yard?

Others have mentioned the highly unorthodox use of crossings in the double lead. I'll have to agree with the notion that these increase trackwork complexity while reducing both the unitility and capacity of the yard. Normally if a yard is being designed to permit multiple switch crews to operate at once, there is a single cross over to allow the second switch crew to access the second batch of class tracks without fouling the ladder turnouts used by the first crew. Is this what you were trying to achieve with dual ladders and all those crossings?  The John Armstrong yard design previously mentioned includes this feature. But that yard is quite large by model railroad standards.

You mentioned having 8' of length for your yard but only 30" of width. I would suggest that the 8' is much more of an issue than the 30". Refer to design A below.

Also, #4 turnouts are quite sharp. Unless you'll be using 40' and 50' freight cars and 4 axle diesels (or very short wheel base steam locos) you may have trouble keeping cars on the tracks.

Here are 4 yards labeled A - D in a 30" x 8' space (12" grid).

All designs are HO. Track spacing in all the designs in 2 1/4" - tight but still allowing for 12 inch to the foot fingers between cars.

Design A: This shows that a #4 yard ladder consumes enough length that the full 30" can not be used. Also, the last few body tracks are too short to be very useful.

Design B: The number of body tracks has been reduced to a more reasonable level. Now even the shortest tracks are a reasonable length for sorting cars.

Design C: I added a caboose track in a more traditional location.  However note how the addition of this track reduces the length of each body track by over a car. It also reduces the length of the arrival track - the space on the 'upper most' track for arriving trains from about 5' to a little over 4'.  A 40' car in HO is about 6" so train length is about 7 (maybe 8) cars plus a caboose.

Design D: A ladder made up of #4 turnouts is pretty sharp. I laid out a simple ladder using #5 turnouts. Note how this simple, seemingly small change made a big difference in the capacity of each yard track.  The arrival track is now barely 4' long.  Note also that the last body track is now so short that you can't put cars on it and still use it to route a locomotive to or from the engines track. But if you're running longer equipment, like SD 70 diesels or 85' passenger cars, a #4 crossover is likely to be serious trouble due to its inherent S-curve. (to see that S curve look at the path a train would take from the main to the first body track). To keep long equipment happy, its probably best to use #6 turnouts.

It's also possible to use #5 turnouts but have the ladder at a #4 angle.  This means there will be a short piece of curved track between each ladder turnout and the body track it accesses. An extra bit of complication, however it will reduce the length of a yard ladder to almost that of #4 ladder.

Regarding double switch engines.  Look at yard diagram C.  Lets assume that the tracks are identified from top to bottom as main, siding, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.  If you were to place a cross over between the caboose and ladder track at body track #3 (and use a double slip for the #3 track ladder turnout), plus you add another yard lead track parallel to the main extending off to the right, what does this buy you?

It's true, you'd be able to run two switch crews at once. But with now the first switch crew has only 2 body tracks to use while the second crew has 3 (but they're much shorter and track #5 needs to be left partly clear so locos coming/going from the engine servier track(s) can get through. Plus now you've got a double slip in a place where prototypes wouldn't normally put one (actually prototypes avoid double slip switches like the plague and never use them unless there is a serious shortage or real estate to accomplish the required routing).  Plus the second crew has no direct access to the main track. That can be fixed with the addition of yet another crossover. But now the capacity of the arrival portion of the main track is reduced even further.

If 8' is all the length you've got for a yard, and unless there will be lots of trains being classified, I'd recommend skipping on the multiple switch crews.

If you've got shorter equipment - 40' and 50' cars, 4-axle diesels and steam power smaller than a 4-6-0 you might find that yard design C will work well for you as a stub ended yard at the end of a main or branch track. If you move it closer to the aisle there would also be room for some buildings/industries/scenery behind the yard.

If traffic levels through the yard will be heavy, you might want to include a separate switch lead so trains can pass through on the main without interference with switching operations.

I hope this helps and didn't get too long (or pedantic).

Best regards,

Charlie Comstock

What if the ladder was parallel to the 8' side at the top,

and the yard tracks came off of the ladder at an angle across the 30" width.   Maybe even reduce it to 27 inches in width to allow the mainline to run behind the ladder or to put the locomotive escape on the ladder.  Unless this is part of a larger layout, there is no way to get a lead in 8 feet with the yard.

Train length matters too....the operational side

Forget your old diagram (for now) ...

Think about what happens when a train arrives and terminates.  The train departs the main line just prior to the yard, and enters an arrival/departure track. The engine cuts off, takes the engine runner over to the engine service area and leaves the scene.  The yard engine couples up, pulls the caboose and cuts it over to the caboose track, using the engine runner if it's at the wrong end of the yard,  then pulls the train, or at least a big slug of it, out the yard lead until it clears the switch, and starts pushing cars, one by one, into the classification tracks. It continues this until none are left on the arrival/departure track.

 Then it probably pulls a cut of cars from the classification tracks, adds a caboose, and sets them over on an arrival/departure track to have an engine added and make up a departing train.

So..you probably need at least one arrival and one departure track, full train length for your max train (or they won't fit), off the main line.  From those tracks, you need an 'engine runner' to get an engine out of the way of the switcher and over to the engine facility to be serviced and optionally turned. Now you have a bunch of cars and caboose on an arrival track.  The switcher pulls the caboose and puts it on the caboose track...so, you need a caboose track accessible from either end of the arrival/departure track area.  (Which is why it's a good idea to have the A/D area double-ended, at least one arrival, one departure, and one 'engine runner' to get from one end to the other if those two have anything on them.)

After you dump the caboose so the tail-end guys are happy and can go off-duty (which you should do before any classifying...) then you pull all or as many as you can handle of the train's cars, pull back on the yard lead (NOT the main, NOT an A/D track...you need a dedicated yard lead) to clear the first classifiaction switch and begin classifying. 

I like the previous comment about run the ladder across the top, and make more, shorter, class tracks.  You'll always have more different destinations than you can find tracks to put them on, and many times 4 track that can handle 5 cars each will do you ten times as good as 2 that can handle 10.  Think of how many different destinations the yardmaster will be asked to separate out...ideally, he'll want a track for each one.  Even though he know he won't get it.

You also need to be able to state a 'maximum train length' and stick to it.  This should be in feet.  You then need to make sure in your layout design that all of your passing sidings,  arrival/departure tracks, and your yard lead, are at least that long.  If they're not, you'll keep trying to run trains that won't clear each other, have to double-in or double-out of yards, etc.  Yards are enough of a bottleneck as it is...pick a length, design to it, and stick to it in operations.

Think about this side of things, then go look at your diagram again and see how you can modify it to accomplish them.  Then repost it and we can all comment some more.!!

railrroad yard

basic railroad yard ,sample

Yard

A lot of the design of a yard has to do with what you are trying to do.

Double ended tracks facilitate movements arriving and departing from both directions.

Number of class tracks facilitates the number of classifications you make.

Length of the tracks facilitate the train size or car volume you can accept.

Dual leads are good if you are going to have multiple switchers working on the same end AND  you have enough tracks and volume to make it useful.  Your original plan will only accommodate 1 switcher because it only really has one lead.

Here is my yard at Wilmington, the main classification yard, looking southward.  The light ballast is the main track..  The track next to the main track, to the west, is the "runner".  It is the stub end switching lead on the north end, then becomes the first yard track through the yard and on the south end becomes the lead to the engine facilities. On the north end is a lead to the 5 yard tracks.  there is also a pair of double ended tracks connecting the lead to #5, the scale track and the caboose track (the caboose track is the one with the 3 cabooses on it).  On either side of where the lead joins the runner, there is a crossover.  The south crossover is right by the caboose of the cut on the runner.  On the south end of the yard is another pair of crossovers.  The yard has 2 double ended tracks and 3 stub tracks.  I originally had 1 double ended track, then reconfigured it to make #2 double ended also.  When combined with the main and the runner, using the crossovers, that gives me 4 options to yard, build or work trains.  Since this is the south end of the railroad, all the through freights depart northward here.  Using the north crossover at the yard (the head blocks can be seen in the extreme right of the runner) I can depart a train out of any track in the yard.  With the other crossover I can work a train or cut on the main.  This is the second layout that has used this design and it has proven to be pretty flexible.

older yards

Reading this thread made me think about something some of the old heads told me. Has anybody noticed that most older yards have a track missing? It goes back to WW2. The railroads would pull up the rails on one yard track and donate them to the war effort.

Recent older yards

Many older yards now may have a missing track because the track was scavenged to use the track material other places.  In many cases the older track material isn't available, or else they are buying used material from someplace else.  Railroads will scrap out an old yard to use the rails and particularly the switch material in other locations.

At the MKT Ney yard south of Tower %% in Ft Worth, there was track that had a switch at the north end, then about 3/4 the way through, it went to one rail and then no rails and finally the switch had been removed and "straight railed" at the south end, as various track components were "borrowed" for other places in the yard.

Look to the Prototype

Unless you are modeling the New York or Chicago Passenger Terminal station tracks avoid double-slip switches at all costs. Here is a design based off an actual prototype yard design minus some additional tracks.

Tim Garland

AREA manual

Go here:  Yard design is on page 681.  This the Bible for anything related to track.

https://archive.org/details/1921manualara00ameruoft

AREA = American Railway Engineering Association (historical)

AREMA = American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association  (modern day)

Robert

Yard design

As an operator,  AVOID the

As an operator,  AVOID the Single and double-slip switches.  110%  you operators will have issues with them.  You have 4 possible turnout combinations per crossover.  That is 3 in 4 chance that it will be set wrong.