Yard Layout

[rockislandmike]

I'm trying to come up with a layout for my small yard (HO Scale). The track that passes by on the top is for the Santa Fe and SOO Line railroads - pretty much used for access to the yard only (an hidden express route will eventually travel underneath the yard in the final layout).

The ROCK trackage is much more significant in the layout I'm working on now, and will have the majority of traffic for the foreseeable future.

I was thinking of a yard that was parallel to the ROCK line, with links to the Santa Fe line, and a caboose track in the top right corner, but I thought I'd pass it to the group for thoughts as well.

The diagram represents about four feet left-to-right (edge of pic on left, to the top of the ROCK loop), and about 2.5 feet top to bottom (where the ROCK spur ends). There is considerable wiggle room left, as none of this has yet been constructed.

 

[Drew1125]

Since I'm not familiar with your operations, I'm probably shooting in the dark here...
Is there a way you could have a passing siding on the SF lihe to serve as an interchange with the RI?
If you could, in this way provide some access to the RI yard, you could send a RI switcher on a transfer run up to the interchange track, & pick up cars from the SF.
The switcher could either drop the cars in the yard for later, or work its way back to the RI main for a train to pick them up there.

 

[roryglasgow]

Michael,

Here are a couple of yard plans that I came up with based on the real yards in Taylor and Hearne, TX that are on and around an old Missouri Pacific (now Union Pacific) line. Maybe they will be of some use...

The Taylor yard (top) features a wye for turning engines around. It crosses with the BNSF on the right. The interchange is cut off because I was only thinking of modeling the MP/UP and using the BNSF as a dummy line.

There's a good sized yard in Hearne on the SP line. (This line is now, of course, owned by UP.) As I recall, the two lines aren't actually linked--that was my own modification. Other than that, it is a fairly accurate representation of the yard and various sidings and spurs.