What are some good reasons for a staging yard?

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Cascade suggested one for a model Trainz layout.

I just made one for my indoor G Scale Trainz layout.

They are common on outdoor garden trains because rolling stock can be housed inside and protected from the weather when not in use. Usually the G-scaler makes a yard hidden from the main layout inside a garage or room in a house and then the trains emerge from a hole in the house onto the main layout.

I use my staging yard to stow trains out of view when I want low-density traffic on my visible line. I can pull more trains out to make my line traffic-denser on and off. My visible prototypical yard has limited space and I have numerous long trains. I can stow a couple of short trains in my prototypical visible yard.

Making my mainline less traffic-dense makes night Trainzing more realistic because it makes for a quieter atmosphere. During the day time, I might have nine or ten engines on the mainline and hear constant whistle-blowing because there are about seven crossings on a loop about 7.10 scale miles. That's four whistle toots for seven crossings for ten engines or 280 toots for a complete loop of the circuit. The mainline circuit takes about 15 minutes to run so that averages to one whistle blow heard every 3.2 seconds since whistles can be heard clear across the layout. When trains are removed from the main line, I can simulate a scenario where maintenance is done on the tracks. I can run my speeders mow trucks and crane train out for inspection and repair. It's also more realistic to run a road-switching train when mainline traffic is sparse. Road-switching ties up the main line. The road-switching train picks up and delivers rolling stock to and from customer sidings to and from the visible yard.


Why do you like staging yards if they are used by you?

 

[JCitron]

I use staging yards where I don't want to use portals. I have a very, very large route that I run quite often. There are a gazillion portals which I use for through traffic, but for more local traffic, I use a staging yard to represent the train going off somewhere else and coming back sooner. This was much easier than trying to use the Portal Control rule where you need to setup specific consists, schedules, etc., and besides, the local traffic only runs in a specific section and not all the way down the line. A few route endpoints are setup with the portals in the middle surrounded by the staging yard like a trolley system. Each staging yard is setup as a balloon loop and the consists pull up to a trackmark and wait so many minutes before starting the schedule again.


The staging yards came into play when there was a problem with portals at one point in TS12, and they have remained on the route ever since.

There is a disadvantage to the staging yards though. The number of consists on the route is more limited due to the lower number of trains on the route, making less traffic when they are used exclusively. This is, however, an advantage because fewer trains helps the route run better. With the recent addition of the new consists tab from T:ANE SP1 and up, portals in some ways are obsolete, and even staging yards for that matter. You want a train, grab a consist, or build it on the fly. Close the interface and a driver is added automatically ready to accept a schedule. Now with TRS19 it's even better because adding and removing drivers is much easier so we can just add trains if we want on the fly without drivers.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

I'm now using my staging yard on my model trainz layout. It's handy for scale models built on benches. I have the staging area hidden behind a HUGE wall backdrop in another room of the building. I can't use a dig hole to make a tunnel in the backdrop wall spline as I can ground, so I used a piece of almost-black wall to simulate a dark tunnel entrance with a piece of concrete spline on top to resemble something of a portal. This portal to the hidden yard is on the back side of my visible train yard that is part of the main route scenery and functional for a limited amount of small consists. The longest trains get hidden in the staging area when not in service. I leave the assigned drivers in and too just grab a train if I want to field it on the main line. When the main line, a small 7.10 mile loop, is light in traffic, there are much fewer signal delays and yellow lights. This is ideal for a night scenario when freight cars are being switched from local customer sidings to and from the train yard. Less conflict with mainline trains that way. Also, having too many passenger trains slows up the line because they periodically stop at my station in town along the main line from 3 to 5 minutes per stop.

Some railroads have trains scheduled and other routine operations scheduled so as to minimize bottlenecks on main lines. Road switching, yard switching involving the main line, and main line track maintenance should be done at hours when there is little or no through freight traffic or passenger service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOmqYFXJHdE&feature=youtu.be

 

[ray_whiley]

In the UK, staging yards are known as fiddle yards or hidden sidings and were introduced during or after WW2 when materials for modelling were in shoirt supply. They were often used in conjunction with a simple terminus to enable trains to be fed into and from that terminus without taking up either too much space or too much material. They were frequently used in plans by Cyril Freezer, and his six feet long city terminus Minories has been copied many times, with hidden sidings or a return loop.

In my opinion, with the extra space offered by Trainz and the fact that they seem much more obvious when trains are tracked into them by the viewing camera, I prefer personally to avoid them on a model railway simulation and instead to use a scenic feature such as another station - which to feed a terminus might be designed as a dummy through station. A Trainz baseboard represents a room around thirty feet square for a UK 1:76 scale layout, so plenty of room for two stations and some running line.

However, I have also toyed with the idea of making a backdrop incorporating a hole to enable trains to run into a hidden area or another room, and in fact made a few short lengths named "MR Fiddle Yard Screen" designed to be place at right angles to the track on a narrow baseboard. I can't remember whether I uploaded these but will check. The problem is that although these might suit my needs, the hole would not necessarily suit anyone else. An alternative solution would be to run the feeder track through a tunnel below baseboard level and thus not needing a home in the backdrop. Might be worth an experiment.

Ray

Checked - these were not uploaded, but there is one by itareus on the DLS

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

In the UK, staging yards are known as fiddle yards or hidden sidings and were introduced during or after WW2 when materials for modelling were in shoirt supply. They were often used in conjunction with a simple terminus to enable trains to be fed into and from that terminus without taking up either too much space or too much material. They were frequently used in plans by Cyril Freezer, and his six feet long city terminus Minories has been copied many times, with hidden sidings or a return loop.

In my opinion, with the extra space offered by Trainz and the fact that they seem much more obvious when trains are tracked into them by the viewing camera, I prefer personally to avoid them on a model railway simulation and instead to use a scenic feature such as another station - which to feed a terminus might be designed as a dummy through station. A Trainz baseboard represents a room around thirty feet square for a UK 1:76 scale layout, so plenty of room for two stations and some running line.

However, I have also toyed with the idea of making a backdrop incorporating a hole to enable trains to run into a hidden area or another room, and in fact made a few short lengths named "MR Fiddle Yard Screen" designed to be place at right angles to the track on a narrow baseboard. I can't remember whether I uploaded these but will check. The problem is that although these might suit my needs, the hole would not necessarily suit anyone else. An alternative solution would be to run the feeder track through a tunnel below baseboard level and thus not needing a home in the backdrop. Might be worth an experiment.

Ray

Checked - these were not uploaded, but there is one by itareus on the DLS

The thing is I don't have any space on my existing Modelz layout to tunnel into the ground to access a hidden fiddle yard such as in a basement. Real estate is now very tight. The only option was a hole in the train room wall. There is an image of a hill on the backdrop mural so it appears there is a tunnel in the "hill". It's as if trains are going in and out of a bunker. The staging area was an afterthought once my layout was "completed" which it never really is. I used a small piece of 10 m dark brick wall embedded in the backdrop to give some appearance of a tunnel entrance since one can't place a dig hole in a spline wall object, only ground, train board.

 

[ray_whiley]

Understood. I thought from your previous posts some time ago that you were planning a HUGE model railroad. The only solution then would seem to be a subterfuge like you suggest, or if you are able to use Blender or GMax to create your own backdrop with a hole where you need it. Just a simple vertical plane is required.

Ray