More Lines – Laying out the Staging Yard

Andrew came over last night and, after we’d finished installing the last Bullfrog, we plunked the staging planks on the window sill and laid out the staging yard.

Now, Pembroke lives in our guest room cum playroom cum office. So, the staging yard needs to look more like a window sill than a staging yard. That means, I want everythng to have zero, or near-zero height. It is all going to get painted white.

There will be four tracks. The center track, from which the other diverge, was fixed by the location of the curve coming off the visible part of the layout. There was enough room for 2.5 inch spacing of the four tracks, but that would have brought the front track a little closer to the edge than Andrew was comfortable with. So, we opted for spacing at 2.25″,2.25″ and 2.5″.

The back track (nearest the window) incorporates a switchback so we can push a few cars out of the way without taking them off the layout if we want. There is also a crossover in the middle of the front two tracks to enable the locomotive of the afternoon train to escape on those rare days when we have run an extra freight. I discovered the need for this during the Brio operating session.