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Creating a Rail Yard

Brock sent in this question for others to comment on:

“I would like to have a goods yard on my British Railways OO/HO layout. Any Advice?”

Unfortunately this question is rather vague so it will be hard for readers to provide good answers. Perhaps Brock could add some more specific details in the COMMENTS under this post.

11 Responses to Creating a Rail Yard

  • Andy says:

    Hi
    If you would like to do some shunting, you could have a slight slope on the sidings, with the top of the slope nearest the points. Just below the top, have a decoupler, so that your loco can bring the rolling stock onto the siding, then you can decouple it, and it will roll away.
    You can then use your shunting loco to put trucks and carriages in the order you want for your trains.
    Have fun.
    Andy

  • Robert says:

    If you look at old copies of the British Railway Modeller you will find lots of examples to give you ideas to work from.

  • Brock Ian Tierney says:

    Sorry I did not provide many details. My Layout is built in a box. I only Have a few inches
    To work With. I need a short goods shed any tips?

  • Andy says:

    Hi
    My layout is also limited in height: N-scale, max 7 cm high. I scratch-built my goods shed, because the kit sheds had roofs that were too steep and high. I used imitation brick plastic card for the walls, and an imitation slate roof. The windows and doors were from my scrap box.
    Hope this helps.
    Andy

  • Brock Ian Tierney says:

    Can a goods yard be outside and not have a
    Shed?

  • David Stokes says:

    Brock,
    As usual I ask you to read the Mags, watch Youtube and make your own decisions. Yards come in so many guises. A goods yard might be two tracks, one leading to a goods shed the other to a loading bank and hold only 3 wagons, or it could be 60 tracks, no shed but room for trasport (trucks or horse drawn wagons between them. Until you know what you want your yard for it is very hard to offer advice., other than read the literature.

  • Kevin Ching says:

    As a rule of thumb i make my goods yard to hold the longest train that i would operate so that the train can be bought onto the siding and then take the engine/s way to the service yard while the shunter breaks up the train and reassembles it on a different track with options of other cars that are waiting to go on the next train out or put the wagons to be unloaded beside the businesses that require them.

  • mike says:

    If you want a good fun yard to move rolling stock and make up new trains, switch locos etc go to youtube under the main heading of “lyon valley northern” you can also find their track plan it is listed as lyon valley northern track plan. I modeled my layout N scale after that switch yard. I have a total of 19 turnouts on a 6.5′ by 3.5′ layout.

    I also attach a photo of a early view of my completed track layout.

    • W Rusty Lane says:

      Wow! For not so much room, you have a very nice N scale layout. It really looks nice and well constructed with well thought out plans. I bet you have a lot of fun running trains on that layout.
      W Rusty Lane in eastern Tennessee (Witherington Place Railroad)

  • Sheldon Clark says:

    A well-known type of layout is the shunting puzzle, consisting of a single track at one end leading into three at the other. By restricting the trains to the length of the shortest siding, you can have hours of fun trying to sort the wagons into a predetermined order from some randomly arranged initial position. Look up “shunting puzzle.”

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