Conrail Windsor St Yard (York PA) Engineering Report

[DKS]

As an alternative to the (rather big and boring) Harley-Davidson plant, why not this? Assuming it was an actively-serviced industry in your modeling era, it could be oriented properly to the yard, and it's a smaller and far more interesting-looking industry.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Since you have the shelf layout to scratch your roundy-round itch, a point-to-point layout makes a lot of sense.

I'm not taking that for granted though. It might go away...    Plus, the dual end lets the same track serve the same train at the beginning and end of its run. That's an important space savings.  Plus, I'm a strong believer in continuous run for a number of reasons, one, for solo ops time, and also for open houses. It's pretty much a must-have in my book (rightly or wrongly).

My only concern is the staging yard in front of or below the classification yard.  That might be a problem for standing room, if you have an ops session with multiple operators.

That's a good concern, but given the space involved, I think I'll be ok. Given the actual dimensions there, I don't think it'll really stick out that much further, or at least further enough to be a hinderance. My biggest concern is doing active staging while the yard crew is working, but, well, compromises must be made somewhere.

By the way, have you considered going up, since the yard is not all that high and there's plenty of room under the shelf layout.

I thought about it briefly, but I don't want to get into that. It's already going to be claustrophobic enough, and I don't want to put anything above the yard (since it'll cause access problems, and I also really like the birds eye view currently available). Plus, there's a bunch of engineering/construction I don't want to have to do.

Will there still be a peninsula into the room from the other end of the yard?

Yep, that's the plan. It'll extend over where the current "megabench" is. I haven't worked out the details of that implementation yet though (I like the big work bench, so I want to preserve it under the proboscis if I can, but there are still things to work out (like lighting), so that's a future project.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

As an alternative to the (rather big and boring) Harley-Davidson plant, why not this? Assuming it was an actively-serviced industry in your modeling era, it could be oriented properly to the yard, and it's a smaller and far more interesting-looking industry.

I have thought about that place, actually, it might make an appearance elsewhere further down the yard though. The HD traffic is what I'm after though, not so much the modeling opportunity. I've got a bunch of 60' boxcars that I want to employ. I'm pretty ok with making it look boring.

[Philip H]

I'm pretty ok with making it look boring.

Well, like me, you do model a monochrome railroad!   

[wm3798]

crrcoal,
I didn't follow any hard and fast rules when laying out the track.  Basically, I did like the railroads would do... I took a piece of real estate, and made the trackwork fit both the space and the operations I wanted. 

Here are some "as built" photos that I took during construction.  I'm not sure what Ed's geographic orientation is, but on my layout, the left side was the west end, and the right was the east.


Here's the west throat.  The two turnouts in the immediate front of the frame diverge from a right hand curve.


Same location reverse angle.  Looks like I didn't have the curved turnout installed yet in this shot.


Here's the east end of the yard, with the engine terminal on the right.


Here it is with the scenery getting fleshed out.  You can see more of the approach tracks, and where the A/DE tracks merge in behind the little tower.


Aaaaand the other end...


The curved turnout behind the yard office/commissary.


The tracks with the cabooses were the A/D tracks, and the yard switch lead goes in front of the red truck and behind the building.

Hope this helps in all the efforts...
Lee

[DKS]

Since I didn't need to have a rendering of the whole yard in order to work on the industrial switching extension, I took a stab at a first draft. The reality of the space may contrast somewhat with the proposed sketch posted earlier--hence, Harley-Davidson is oriented differently. The flour mill and plastics plant overlap a little, but I don't think this is a bad thing; it makes for roomier sidings.



Note that I think the best way to handle the height difference is to make an almost continuous downgrade starting at the Harley-Davidson siding, and continuing on all the way down to Mt. Wolf, with slightly leveled-off stretches adjacent to the plastics plant and the paper warehouse. This may be a bit harder to build than just using prefab 2% supports around the end curve, but I think it would look and work much better.

[crrcoal]

Lee- Awesome pics!! Thank you sir!!!! They are going to be invaluable!

DKS- A big AHA! moment! I remember that yard when I went from the Timonium yard up to my daughters college (LVC).  I had meant to look it up to see what it was all about but never got the chance and soon forgot about it. Very cool that you posted it. I'm wondering if it would fit my needs? Looks like a good amount of time could be spent drilling cars in the yard and then could also work some of the industries (such as that very cool factory) that are adjacent to the yard. Not to take away from Ed's threads but your thoughts sir?

Ed- the blue area above the active staging yard; is that whole area Lee's yard?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I like this. I really like it.

Are those all Atlas #7s?

Any idea of the off-spot track will fit into the HD plant? It can just sit out along the "fence line", it doesn't have to be next to the buildings.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ed- the blue area above the active staging yard; is that whole area Lee's yard?

Yeah. It's not at ALL to scale though. It was more for "this is how it all fits in".

[DKS]

Are those all Atlas #7s?

No, it's a mix of 5s, 7s and a 10. They can be changed, of course.

Any idea of the off-spot track will fit into the HD plant? It can just sit out along the "fence line", it doesn't have to be next to the buildings.

Absolutely; plenty o' room. I've revised the draft--just hit refresh.

DKS- A big AHA! moment! I remember that yard when I went from the Timonium yard up to my daughters college (LVC).  I had meant to look it up to see what it was all about but never got the chance and soon forgot about it. Very cool that you posted it. I'm wondering if it would fit my needs? Looks like a good amount of time could be spent drilling cars in the yard and then could also work some of the industries (such as that very cool factory) that are adjacent to the yard. Not to take away from Ed's threads but your thoughts sir?

Are you referring to the yard in the Bing maps link? That is the very same said yard Ed is modeling on this layout (converting Lee's yard to serve that purpose). I think Ed may be better suited to comment on it.

[crrcoal]

Oh heck. For some reason I was thinking that Ed was modeling the yard to the west at W. Market St. 
Did you guys notice the Conrail boxcar sitting in the yard?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This one?



Sadly, it's gone now.

[crrcoal]

This one;

[Ian MacMillan]

This one...

He said sitting...thats leaning...

[eric220]

Must be going back to its PC roots.