06-19-2010, 07:06 PM
Gary S Wrote:Ralph, excellent points and an interesting read with the photos. But dang it, I thought I was satisfied with my "on-the-layout" staging and fiddle yards with storage underneath. Now you have me thinking.
Since my freelanced shortline is called the Almeda Terminal And Gulf and is set in Houston, I need to take care of the "Gulf" part by having a branch which goes to Galveston. This could be accomplished well with a track that goes into a hidden area - and I think that would be pretty cool. It would give me an off-layout destination to sort cars for, and receive cars from.
AAARRRGGGHHH!!! I don't even want to think about it!
Gary the only reason to have staging yards on your layout is to have storage for excess rolling stock. You could run a track at one end going behind a large factory building to simulate the connection one way. A similar set up at the other end could go to the Galveston warf. The only reason to have a staging yard as such on your layout is if you have so many freight cars that you want to move some off the layout. What you could do in that case is make removable cassettes that would have holes drilled in the center of the tracks on each end to drop in a nail to keep cars from rolling off of the cassettes. The cassettes could then be stored on the walls around the room, and changed out to refresh the rolling stock on the layout.