Staging yard evolution

The design keeps evolving, hopefully for the better.

The first design was simple and clean.

The second design seen the addition of a separate car storage track for the industries which was double ended.  This would allow the switcher to get on the other end of a car so I could have spurs on the blue industry track that would face both directions.

I retained the two green tracks for the two through freights.

One of the yard tracks would now hold pre-consisted locomotives that could be rotated through for each additional operating session. After each session, the current consist would be placed on the left end of that track and the consist on the right would then be shuffled to the engine facility. This would give me the chance to use a different set of power for each session and add variety.  

It would also give a timeline where I could service the consists.  After every rotation or every other rotation, I could service and clean the consists, or even change out the consists with a new batch if so desired, thus giving me even more variety.  In a future post I'll explain more why I'm using pre-consisted power sets.

This next design had a few more refinements.  From suggestions of a friend, I added two shorter car storage tracks, the idea here was that it might resemble a smaller interchange yard within the main yard.

The consist storage track became the running track and the consist storage track was moved to the rear track.  Moving it to the rear was done as he said having the consist on the third track might make it look like a dead line   But then again, what would modeling The Rock Island be without dead power?

I wanted a simpler yard design to go along with the simple operations that I came up with awhile back.  So time will tell if the yard goes through another design evolution.  But for right now this is the one I'm planning on.