The Yard

	This photo shows the crossovers to get to the yard throat.
Here is a shot of the yard throat with a set of Kato and Atlas bridges for the Mountain Line.
	Just to the left of the bridges we see some hobos relaxing by a box car. I'm guessing that they are wondering when the next train is coming by and where it would take them.
Here is the other end of the yard entrance. The Mountain line was recently added by Jim Semikoski.
	When we first started ,all rail lines were run from this shelf with large MRC power packs. This photo shows the Aristocraft radio controlled Throttles we used to use. The power-pack shelf is no longer used. We are now using Cooler Crawler Radio Controlled throttles and it makes it nice (no more radio hits). When the yard was originally built, it had an end loop to turn trains but as the club grew we needed more storage tracks, so it was modified to the configuration in the picture. It has since been modified again & the newest photo is below.
Here's the yard in it's current configuration. All the track has been relaid using sheet foam similar to Woodland Scenic's new roadbed foam. This is foam that Jim Semikoski and Marc Hass found to make roadbed for their layouts. They used some of this roll to relay the club yard too. Jim said "Atlas once made similar roadbed which we planned on using on our layout. But the manufacturer didn't want to make lots in as small a quantity as Atlas wanted so cancelled any further production for them. So Marc and I searched far and wide for something similar. We finally found a substitute at Texas Rubber in Fort Worth in a 4 X 200 foot roll. So we made a jig so we could cut what we needed." Needless to say the club will have roadbed for a long time to come :-) This foam is more dense than Woodland Scenic's foam & makes great roadbed. Your humble webmaster was lucky enough to scarf up some of this roadbed they made & it will be put to good use on my modules & home layout. You can view Jim & Marc's web pages & their layouts by clicking on their links above. The middle sections of the yard modules are built to be interchangeable, so if we have to set up in a smaller configuration than we normally do then all we have to do is not include all of the middle sections.
	Here's a shot of the left yard panel.. Charlie Linck designed a logic system using Tortise Switch machines for turnout control. You select the Red, Yellow, or Blue line & which yard track your train is on to bring it on or off the selected main line.
This is a shot of both panels together. The yard is split into left & right sections so a train can come into the yard while another train is going out. There is a Shinohara double crossover so you can have access to all the yard tracks.

Back to the Modules Page

Last updated 1/29/2007