Yard Planning

A Norfolk Southern switcher out of Windsor Street Yard in York, PA makes a short transfer run to York Rail's nearby Poorhouse Yard.

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Planning the treatment of yards on your layout is a totally different subject from designing them. Designing, which is much easier, covers minutiae such as ladder arrangements, stub-ended vs. double-ladder arrangements, etc.

Planning, today's subject, asks bigger, more important, and more difficult-to-answer questions. What are my "true" interests? How will the layout actually be used? What am I really trying to accomplish here, and what am I willing to give up? We all think we know, but, speaking from personal experience, that usually isn't the case.

Effective planning entails knowing what questions to ask and having the self-awareness to answer them accurately.

-How will we actually end up interacting with the layout? It's far harder to get a grip on than we are willing to admit.

-Effective planning requires having a real-world, lucid grip on the size, distance, and spatial relationships of track geometry and the space we have to work with. Yards take up much more space than you might expect at first glance.

-What is the purpose of the yard? Is it a scenic element? If so, fine. Just keep in mind that they are huge scenic elements. Does it serve an operational purpose? If so, do you actually enjoy switching yards? If not, how much room do you want to allocate for something you are ambivalent about? Is it for storing all of your rolling stock? Not a good plan; that's what storage shelves are for.

-Are you going to be operating mostly by yourself or will you have organized operating sessions involving guest crews? I'm going to go out on a limb and answer this. For most people, the majority of the time you'll be running solo. If you're by yourself, do you want to build and operate a half dozen yards?

Here's an example of what I'd consider a fairly "small" prototype yard on a layout I custom built recently. Even though it's small by rail standards, the model still stretched out to fifteen feet. Many yards, even in mid-sized towns, are far larger.

Yard ladders take up a lot of run length. It's easy to cheat and go into denial by using hand-drawn sketches in your design process. CAD programs are a reality check. A six-track yard ladder, composed of number 6 turnouts, measures about four feet.

There is a common trap prototype modelers fall into, and it needs to be addressed. It goes soemthing like this, "I'm modeling my prototype from point A to point E. Being the prototype purist that I am, if it's there I have to model it. First, no you don't "have" to model it. Second, it's very likely you don't have the space. If you resort to "squueezing and shoehorning", your entire run will be comprised of yards a few feet apart. Pragmatic "cropping" goes a long way.

Yards take up an enormous amount of room, so how they are feathered into an overall strategic plan is a big issue.

Let's do some math. Take an "if it's there I need to model it" prototype modeler who wants to represent a Class 1 line spanning 150 miles across the cornfields of Illinois. On that run are five yards. Let's assume he has a typical basement that gives him a 120-foot run length. If he digs his feet in the ground, models every location tit for tat, almost two-thirds of that space will be made up of yards. Yes, you can do so, but the signature feature of Illinois, the fields, are squeezed out, as is the sense of distance.

Now, let's say the same modeler concludes that Beta and Delta have greater operational and/or visual value and deletes the other three. This opens things up, creating a sense of distance and getting him away from the toy-like look. It's your railroad, and there is no right or wrong, just what fits your objectives the most. The key is to be totally grounded in reality and crystal clear about the pros and cons of each approach.

Is the placeholder, model-everything approach a better fit for you? Fine. Just know the tradeoffs. There are no free lunches.