Sunday, November 3, 2019

Never skimp on staging tracks

When I built the layout I figured that a single staging track for the Peoria & Eastern would be plenty, based on the one freight and one passenger train I planned on run each direction in sequence.  I was smart enough to make the path into the P&E staging wide enough for two tracks, but sadly didn't lay a turnout and a second track.  The reasoning at the time was that the P&E played a minor role on my layout.  Now that I'm hoping to make the operations on the P&E more realistic I'm really regretting not laying that additional turnout and second track.  Now I need to plan to rip it up and lay two staging tracks in a rather narrow and hard to get at space.

The ATSF staging yard was built as a temporary staging yard, with four tracks.  Luckily some of the tracks are long enough to hold two locals.  Now it's been in place for a while, and four tracks is proving to be constraining as the ops plan for the layout has evolved.  I'm planning on trying to squeeze a fifth track into the yard.

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