The Mockingbird Industrial in Z

[Chris333]

I remember this! 

[Rivet Miscounter]

Couple more pics and some elaboration...

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So this is looking down the right side aka the "River Side" but with an overall view showing some of the yard side as well.   Although it doesn't look like it, those industrial tracks will be parallel to the backdrop, and there are two industries.   The closest is a single spur serving a random warehouse.  (I want to say they manufactured boxes during my era maybe?  Been a bit since I researched that and not sure I had any definitive info then.)   The second spot is two spurs that serve the Dallas Frito Lay Plant.   Both of these industries will be flats, with the Frito Lay building having covered structures over the tracks.   A road bisects the two immediately past the end of the warehouse spur.

The two tracks on the other side of the backdrop are for the Coca-Cola plant.  Also (mostly) a flat, and again the tracks are covered, by what honestly looks like your standard open-air white car port.   Moving over to the yard, adjacent industries are "front flats" mostly.  The middle two tracks of the four that appear on the far left edge of the photo are an engine track and a short spur serving a sand offload.  The farthest spur with the bumper serves a front-flat warehouse that will again be somewhat generic so I can spot either covered hoppers or reefers/boxcars.  I'll cover the rest in the second pic.

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Here is a good overview showing the yard side and the "bottoms"...aka Brookhollow Industrial, the branch that splits off Mockingbird Yard and heads in a northerly direction into northwest Dallas.  To continue with the yard, the spur closest to the bottom of the pic is a representation of two different multi-track corn syrup offload facilities on the west side of Mockingbird Yard. (one is Dr. Pepper, I'm not sure about the other)   I can spot 3 corn syrup cars there, and will have a small corrugated metal "front flat" office building and then chain link fence along the perimeter, both to set the scene and to keep the cars from falling off the layout.   And although unconventional, there is another industry spot between the turnouts of the runaround track.  It will consist of more chain link and an N-scale hoist to represent an industry that (re?)manufactures rail wheels...my thought is either a wheel car, load of steel, or load of scrap would be spotted there and always be the first order of business in an ops session to get it out of the way.   And the aforementioned industries on the east end of Mockingbird Yard round out that area.

Also mentioned the Coca-Cola plant which is in the far top corner of the bottoms area.  Just left of that is a runaround track which is the center of ops and feeds four other industry spots.   The first one of note is a hidden spur that runs behind the Coca-Cola plant and an interchange track of sorts, representing a portion of the Brookhollow Industrial branch that splits due north right before the Coke plant and serves  a few additional industries.   Typical traffic would be steel coil cars, centerbeams, and pellet hoppers.  I intend to have 2 or 3 cars hidden there as an additional spot for ops. (a small section of the Coke plant is not a flat, and the roof will be removable for the inevitable/necessary access to that track)  Next up is US Gypsum plant on the far left, served with covered hoppers.   Finally there are two perpendicular spurs jutting back toward the yard.   The leftmost (shown) is a generic plastics company, (pellet cars) and there is one to the right (not shown) serving a paper company. (boxcars)

So, plenty of spots should I want to do some ops.   I'm still not 100% sure how feasible ops are in Z, but that was one of the goals of this layout is to see.  If nothing else, visible interest as a background for the loopty-loop of mainline trains and commuters.

[squirrelhunter]

Nice progress! I'm curious how your operations in Z will work out, are the couplers only going to be activated by magnets or can they be separated with a pick?

On a side note, over the past year I've been playing with modeling roughly the same area you are about 15 years earlier, circa 1985-90 in the late MKT/early UP era. I started with a compressed version of Mockingbird Yard but it was too much for a one man crew to cover in an hour, so I've scaled back to just the Airlawn Industrial Lead serving the Coke plant and 4 or so nearby industries. I've been meaning to start a thread, I suppse I should do it soon.

[basementcalling]

Only thing I can suggest besides keep on keeping on is to see if you can add a crossover in the mains on the yard side so you have a shorter run around for the switcher. Otherwise you are going to play haywire with the commuter schedules trying to get the engine on the right end of some cars for those trailing point spurs if you have to run from one curved turnout set to the other all the time.

[Rossford Yard]

Nice progress!  Should have looked at it when I was there last weekend......

Agree on the crossover at the yard throat, hadn't noticed that before.

[Rivet Miscounter]

Only thing I can suggest besides keep on keeping on is to see if you can add a crossover in the mains on the yard side so you have a shorter run around for the switcher. Otherwise you are going to play haywire with the commuter schedules trying to get the engine on the right end of some cars for those trailing point spurs if you have to run from one curved turnout set to the other all the time.

Thanks for the feedback.   The following is more "thinking out loud" than some resistance or indictment of your idea, so bear with me.       My thoughts:
1. Looking back I might have moved the curved crossover on the far end around the curve (toward the yard) to the tangent, but I think adding the third crossover would look excessive.   
2. I'm no ops expert so maybe I'll be proven wrong, but it seems like a solution without a problem.  In my mind, once yard switching (industry or classification) starts, the commuter line becomes single track and the trains run the inside loop as a complication until I need the main and I simply wait for the commuter to pass, stop the commuter on the river side, do the switching moves, and then start the commuter back up once I'm done.   There doesn't seem to be a long enough run to really do anything else, and the commuter trains are so short that I doubt there's anything I couldn't do on the rest of the layout with the commuter parked on the river side.
3. Aside from the far end of the Brookhollow Branch (and in relation to the orientation of the yard) there is ONE facing point spot on the entire rest of the layout and that is the corn syrup transload.
4. The Brookhollow Branch has a runaround track, as does the yard adjacent the corn syrup spur.
5. I thought that with 23 turnouts on what amounts to a slightly overgrown 4x8, that last feedback I would get is "you need more switches".   

Like I said, I'm still taking this all in.  The more I think about it....to my point (1) above I think the answer might be add the crossover in the yard, and then also add another crossover on the tangent on the river side....and eliminate the curved crossover altogether.  I've always thought the river could use a little more interest, but another crossover really didn't add anything to the function and....well, turnouts aint cheap and they are always the number one source of problems...less is more.   But I suppose this solution would spread out the three crossovers fairly equidistant around the loop.

Let me sleep on it.  Part of me is heeding that "keep on keeping on" advice and not wanting to do major surgery right now, too.   Anyway, thanks again for the feedback, I do value the input for sure.

[Rossford Yard]

Looking at it again, it's manageable.  Which end or direction do you envision freights entering the yard?  If from stub end, then switching is easy.  If coming in from the ladder end, you have a bit longer runaround than is maybe ideal, but not a huge problem.