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dlobmwm3

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My 4 yr old son and I have managed to build this layout in our garage. He has helped somewhat if you count destroying the pond...before it dries...:rolleyes:. I has 2 main lines, a yard on one end and a city on the other. Thanks for everyone on here that has answered my questions whether it was related to rolling stock, loco question, or track.
 


Nice layout but I'm a little mystified about the yard too. It looks like the yard lead's not connected to the main. :confused:
 
Sorry guys. I will post a new pic from above. BTW, can anyone tell me where to feed the leads to my yard from my bus line to? I'm getting ready to wire the yard but not sure. I only did the other turnouts 8 months ago and can't remember how I did it. They are Peco ST-240 and 2x SL-88.

I guess what I am asking is. Should the leads go to each switch or each straight part of the track. These are insulfrog turnouts btw.
 
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OK, I can see how the yard connects to the main but it's completely backwards from what would normally be done. As your train pulls into the yard, you only have the two short tail tracks for the motive power, the rest of the train will be fouling the yard lead. There's no runaround and it would seem to be impossible to be able to put cars in the middle of the train inot any of the yard tracks. It looks like you are still early in construction. If there's any way to make the yard connect to the main from the bottom left of that picture, I would do it now. As it sets, that yard is going to be a source of unending headaches.

There's a good article about Insulfrog turnouts at http://www.loystoys.com/peco/about-insulfrog.html. Assuming you are using DCC, all you need to do is wire the frog so it's live all the time. If you are using DC and power routing, you need to wire the diverging and straight routes so the frog remains dead until the points are thrown for the direction of travel.
 
As Jim said, there's no way to pull more than one car at a time from either track. In fact it looks as though only one car can fit entering or leaving the yard, with no loco?
Turning the yard around would allow you to pull multiple cars and also add greatly to the operating possibilities.
And fun! :D
 
There is no way to to connect from the bottom left. But I do plan connecting in the bottom right. This is all that I have to work with due to the switches left and how I don't want to deal with a reverse loop since I don't know how I would wire it from the bottom left. The intention originally was just to store cars and not make it active. UNLESS you think a Peco SL-244 double RH curve will solve the reverse loop issue on the bottom left??

UP2CSX said:
OK, I can see how the yard connects to the main but it's completely backwards from what would normally be done. As your train pulls into the yard, you only have the two short tail tracks for the motive power, the rest of the train will be fouling the yard lead. There's no runaround and it would seem to be impossible to be able to put cars in the middle of the train inot any of the yard tracks. It looks like you are still early in construction. If there's any way to make the yard connect to the main from the bottom left of that picture, I would do it now. As it sets, that yard is going to be a source of unending headaches.

There's a good article about Insulfrog turnouts at http://www.loystoys.com/peco/about-insulfrog.html. Assuming you are using DCC, all you need to do is wire the frog so it's live all the time. If you are using DC and power routing, you need to wire the diverging and straight routes so the frog remains dead until the points are thrown for the direction of travel.
Click to expand...
 
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First, you don't have a reverse loop issue that I can see. The yard lead comes of the main and doesn't reconnect back to main by any other track. If you had a balloon loop, where the yard lead connected back into itself, then you'd have a reverse loop. Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see a reverse loop in your current trackage.

Here's what I would do. Take up that switch from the top track and move it down to about where your red arrow points. Tear up the current yard. Use the switch in the new location as the starting point for your ladder and use flex track off each switch to curve into each yard track. You should be able to straighten it out after the curve. I'd have to sketch it out but I think that plan would work. You'd pretty much reverse the yard layout you have now with the exception of adding curves to follow the curve of the lower mainlines. I know this is probably not what you want to hear but I hate to see you waste all that track and switches on a yard that's basically non-functional.
 


Mine is a dogbone style kind of like yours but I have a longer central section. It's 68" long by 29" wide. I have two 4' by 4' sections on each end. I decided to go with a single track main line so I'd have more room for scenery. Since you have a child, a double track main like you already have might be better so your son can run a train without worrying about hitting another train. My minimum radius is 22", which is enough for all but the largest locomotives and freight cars. I think you actually have a pretty good layout if you fix the problem with the yard that we've discussed.
 
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