Re: (erielack) Tools for calculating yard sizes (sorta EL related, at least to me ;)

[JJordan <eltrainmaster_@_copper.net>]

Paul-

A couple of questions about Croxton (selective compression), does making up 
trains include a hump yard?  Is Croxton a "removable" (off-line) or 
permanent yard?  Will you include a Hoboken Terminal and its related 
functions which do include spurs and sidings for customer deliveries?

My quick assesment of how many yard tracks do you need is add up the car
lengths of spurs and sidings that cars will be "delivered to" and multiple
by two.  This should give you plenty of room to receive and break up trains
and make up trains.

To put this in prospective, you can visit the "ultimate" Erie Lackawanna 
layout (east end) diagrams at:

http://www.20thcenturyhobbies.com/trainnut/BWLayoutImages/EastCroxtonYardMap
.JPG

which includes a 6 track hump yard (H1-H6) and one runaround track (H7), a 
four track arrival yard (A1-A4) and a storgae yard (S1-S5), a hack track
(C-1) 
and of course, 2 mainline tracks running on the south side of the yard.  

http://www.20thcenturyhobbies.com/trainnut/BWLayoutImages/WestCroxtonYardMap
.JPG

For those interested, you can view the entire layout story and related
pictures at:
http://www.20thcenturyhobbies.com/trainnut/BWLayoutImages/BridgewaterLayout.
htm

Happy calculating!!!

- -Joe Jordan
20th Century Hobbies, Inc.
www.20thcenturyhobbies.com/
non-ELHS member/subscriber/person and entirely neutral



At 03:45 PM 12/16/04 -0500, Tupaczewski, Paul R (Paul) wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>	In doing my every-so-often layout planning, I was thinking ahead to
operations. I plan on modeling, as many of you already know, the Boonton
Line, from Croxton to Port Morris. West of Port Morris is represented by a
staging yard, but the east end "is" the staging yard. Trains would
terminate at Croxton where two crews would go about breaking down trains
and making new ones to be sent out (for example, road freights would
arrive, crews would break up the trains into locals, which would then go
out and disperse the cars, then return with cars to go out, Croxton would
arrange these into westbound road trains, and repeat).
>
>	My question is, has anyone ever done any sort of calculating to figure
out how many yard tracks you'd need for a typical operating session? I
originally envisioned Croxton as a 12- or 13-track yard (how's THAT for
selective compression!), with 15-20 foot tracks. Then my analytical mind
started going, and I began to wonder about the following variables:
>
>	* Accounting for trains coming in off the "Erie side" (staging)
>	* Accounting for traffic fluctuation (7 car trains one day, 23 car trains
another)
>	* "Bottleneck" times - when many road freights arrive in rapid-fire
fashion, will there be enough yard room?
>
>I was contemplating doing some Excel spreadsheets to figure out what's
happening in the yard, but then the variable and other factors made this a
non-trivial task, so I was going to write a database-driven application to
simulate a "day of operation." It would show the yard at different times of
the day to see how clogged/capable it is in terms of handling the traffic.
I can also do "what if" scenarios to see how elastic the yard's capability
is. The database would contain the trains, train arrival times (for road
freights), train time "out on the road" (for locals), and eventual car
destinations (down to the local train level, not town). The program would
then be able to easily flag if the yard would be able to handle the traffic
desired for the session. If not, I could modify the number of yard tracks,
length of tracks, or number of trains. Would anyone be interested in this?
(freeware, if I actually complete it)
>
>Yes, it's tangentially EL-related, but to me, it's completely EL-related,
so any advice anyone can offer is greatly appreciated.
>
>	- Paul
>
>
>Paul R. Tupaczewski_______________________
>Lucent Technologies
>Mobility Solutions                              Phone: 973-386-4966
>MASD IMS/CDMA Trials and                 Fax: 973-386-4147
>Demonstrations Group
>67 Whippany Road, Room 15D-116  
>Whippany, NJ 07981                            
>_______________________________________________
>
>
>
>

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