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Staging Requirements
Merv has some good questions:
“Just relocated to our new home and will be upgrading to a 10ft x 8ft layout. A giant leap for me, can’t wait! Before getting ahead of myself though I thought would ask – how much staging should I allow? How many tracks? Should I do continuous staging instead of stub-end staging?”
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7 Responses to Staging Requirements
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First I would say that it would depend on what scale that you are working with. The smaller the scale the more you could put in. In example with N, maybe up to 10, with O maybe 2. And the same applies to what type of yard you could put in. Since you did not say what you are working with it is hard to give you a better answer. I am working with N and thinking about something like Grand Central Station under New York City on a 3×4 or 3×6 foot board just for the staging.
For a good size on ho I would say 6 give you something to work with
Cheers
kev
Tony Koester says “add up your locos and rolling stock, get the total rail length, multiply that by two and then add 10% and that gives the bare minimum of rail to build your “staging yards”. He added that was just the bare minimum, then you need to put them where they are needed.
Staging yards on the Norwest Bend are the station yards – in full view of the world, apart from a 4 road, stub ended fiddle yard at the “down” end” which I am seriously considering turning into a hidden balloon track to aid continuous running. So don’t ask me – I break too many rules.
When I built my layout, I had a 2 track double ended staging yard capable of each track holding approx. 60 cars + power. I have the space for 2 more which I now wish I had installed
I have a mixture of staging through roads & stub ends to park locos to facilitate loco stage for change overs
Interesting, to me it depends on the type of rolling stock. I built my layout based on the market, or types of business being served. Not all rolling stock will be on the staging track. Some rolling stock will be pulled around the layout, some will be on the commodity sidings, the rest will be in the staging to be reset for the next operating session. My staging track are no longer then six cars, the shortest are two freight cars long. My layout is a shelf type 15.6 X 9.5′. Max with is 2′. My two run around tracks are 5, to 8 cars long. This makes running trains much more fun. Remember, running trains is much more fun when you now have a reason to move your rolling stock and enjoy watching them move around your miniature world.
Sit down quietly and ask yourself what do I want the finished layout to look like and what you would like on your layout and slowly build a mental picture. You could try to sketch some ideas on paper first before committing to timber and track look around at other peoples models for ideas of what you might like on your layout. Then What will your finances allow you to build, and what time do you have available whatever do enjoy the journey