 |
|
SMALL
LAYOUTS &
SHUNTING
LAYOUTS
THEIR
HISTORY, CONCEPTS & OPERATION
|
|
The status and the
perception of small layouts as well as of dedicated
shunting layouts has changed significantly within the
railway modelling community over the past two decades.
Once a modelling niche they have become a layout type
bordering on mainstream. Here's a brief overview of how
and why this happened, the advantages of small layouts,
and how they relate to shunting layouts. |
|
|
SMALL
LAYOUTS
How small is "small" ?
|
|
Describing any object
as small is, of course, not a very accurate label as it
requires a point of reference: small in comparison or
relation to what? In addition, we all know that certain
objects can change their dimensional qualities. |
|
 |
|
When
compared to its G scale counterpart, an HO scale
locomotive will appear to be quite small, but
that very same engine will appear big when we
view it alongside a Z scale model. The notion of size in
model railways changed as smaller scales were
introduced over time: HO (1:87) in the early
1920s, TT (1:120/1:130) in 1945, N (1:148/1:160)
in 1962, and Z (1:220) in 1972.
A similar
change - although only partly linked to the
introduction of smaller modelling scales - has
occured in the perception of just how small a
"small layout" can be for it to be
worthwhile to build and run trains on.
|
|
|
From a historical
point of view, the implicit message of the increasingly
popular (and therefore influential) model railways hobby
press was to "think big" and to be inspired by
modelling giants such as John Allen (whose Gorre &
Daphetid layout filled an entire basement from floor to
ceiling in his California home) or the Pendon Museum
layout (which fills the entire sprawling ground floor of
a building in Oxfordshire). In his 1978 Creative Model
Railroad Design, John Armstrong concluded that,
based on a Model Railroader survey, model
railroaders were indeed "denizens of the
basement" as that was precisely where 51% had their
layouts. 20% were located in a spare room, 7% in a
garage, 4% in the attic, and another 4% had a
purpose-built added room. In other words: at least 86% of
the participating modellers in the late 1970s indicated
having a spacious setting at their disposal - and thus
felt no constraint to not go for a "basement
empire".
|
|
This was
not, however, the case with British and European
modellers, who have seemingly always been plagued
more by a lack of space than their American
colleagues - and the more restricted options
available to them ultimately created the
archetypal British "branchline terminus to
fiddleyard" layout. In terms of
track design, the fiddle yard is a
simple staging area with a number of tracks which
allows the rearranging of trains off the layout
proper. It's true importance, however, lies in
its conceptual design:
"The basic idea is simple. You
just end the layout in a few parallel
sidings, and carry out any necessary
rearrangement by hand. These sidings
represent the rest of British Railways."
(Freezer, 1961)
The fiddle yard started to appear in the late
1930's when British modellers wanted to operate
small layouts in a realistic manner; in the
1950's, Cyril J. Freezer would regularly feature
fiddle yard to terminus type layouts as editor of
Railway Modeller and as such had an
enormous influence in spreading the concept and
making it popular - adding his own design,
"Minories", to the classic track plans
of that layout type.
|
|
 |
|
|
The example shown here is from the August 1961 issue,
in which Freezer pointed to another feature often
associated with terminus to fiddleyard layouts: the L
shape.
"The principle of the L is to occupy two
walls of a room, one leg being a small terminus, the
other a set of fiddle sidings. These are perhaps the
greatest post-war development in our hobby, since
they have enabled the space-starved enthusiast to own
a prototype layout." (Freezer, 1961)
It became nothing less than a blueprint for legions of
British layouts and is still widely featured today simply
because it is a proven concept. Also used in European
modelling, though often for the purpose of switching
trains "behind the scenes" on a continuous run
layout, it is known to German modellers as Schattenbahnhof,
literally meaning "a shadow station", i.e. not
intended to be visible to any onlookers.
Freezer was a good friend of Linn H. Westcott, whose
track plan designs were as influential in the US as
Freezer's were in the UK. However, this didn't stop the
concept of what would be called a "small"
layout going off in completely separate directions in the
UK and the States. While
UK modellers were busily building what would come to be
called "shelf layouts" with fiddle yards, a
small layout to their American cousins was more like a
solid plank measuring 4'x8' (120 x 240 cm).
|
|
 |
|
When Model Railroader
published a collection of track plans in 1981
from past issues of the 1960's and 1970's,
prolific track plan designer Ed Vondrak presented
"a small track plan designed for
growth": a solid 4'x8' (or preferably
even 5'x9') continuous run which could be
incorporated into a larger pike later on - and
the accompanying design once again pointed model
railroad planers to the basement or a spare room. One
or two truly small layouts are present in the
publication, but they were labelled
"portable layouts". And again, it
ultimately all pointed to a much larger setting.
|
|
|
"Portable layouts offer the chance to
model railroad with a minimum outlay of space,
expense, and time. They allow us to practice the
fundamental concepts of layout design which we will
need to understand when the time comes to build that
larger, permanent layout." (E.S. Seeley
Jr., in Hayden 1981)
|
|
Driven by an entirely different perspective
and mindset, British railway modellers continued
to develop the concept of the "terminus to
fiddle yard" further, effectively shrinking
it from running around two walls of a room to a
short linear layout - and the resulting
"shelf layout" formula gradually became
an accepted mainstream practice for those who
wanted a layout but lacked the space and/or the
inclination to build a fully blown mainline
setup. The prototype settings modelled continued
to be mostly backwater branchline terminus
stations, but the approaching line of track got
shorter and shorter. |
|
|
A
very compact (4'-6" x 13" / 135 x 32,5
cm) example of this type of British shelf layout
is Dennis Beale's "Raikes Street" (an
article on this layout appeared in the January
1995 issue of Railway Modeller), which
differs from other shelf layout settings by
featuring a moveable piece of track concealed
within a factory building which drastically cuts
down on the speace needed for its runaround track
arrangement. |
|
 |
|
|
In contrast to this, back in
December 1992, Model
Railroader featured a project layout built to the
"classic US" 4'x8' oval continuous-run formula
and labelled it as "a small layout anyone can
build". This is not to say that short
and narrow layouts were unheard of in US modelling - but
they were the exception to the rule and generally few and
far between. |
|
|
Small
layouts: (almost) mainstream modelling
|
|
But things were slowly changing -
the popularization of the internet since the
mid-1990s gave new railway modelling ideas a
massive boost as the world wide web profoundly
changed the way the hobby communicates and
conducts research. The popular hobby magazines on both
sides of the Atlantic were still showcasing big
and beautiful layouts, but the railway modellers
who first took to the internet were less so
inclined. Very often, the layouts they were
building, operating and describing on the web
were small shelf-layouts, some of them even in
"minimum space".
One important
such example which became a source of inspiration
for many was Scot Osterweil's NYC Highland Terminal
switching layout, which made its online debut in 1994
(Scot presented an update in Kalmbach's 2015 How to Build Small Model
Railroads).
But it was not all virtual - in the UK, Chris
Ellis, former editor of the Airfix Magazine,
produced and published Model Trains
International, highlighting a modelling
approach which was the pure anti-thesis of the
sprawling British "Railway of the
Month" and the US "Basement
Empire" and focused on shortlines pretty
much around the globe (MTI, which had a
small but loyal readership, ran for a total of
118 issues before being cancelled in 2015 as
Ellis retired).
Gradually, the
concept of building and running a small layout in
its own right and not as a stepping stone or a
stop gap on the way to the XXL size "dream
layout" had progressed into UK (and, to a
lesser extent, European) mainstream modelling.
It also started
to appear more and more in North American
modelling, as the cover of the September 2004
issue of Model Railroader shows.
Even smaller layouts
started to appear in the UK, which were just one
little step up from a static diorama - such as
Tony Wood's Barber's Bridge (which was
featured in the January 2000 issue of Rail Express
Magazine).
An absolute
minimum-space layout, the scenic section of this diesel
fuelling point measures only 22" x 8"
(55 x 20 cm), with an additional 14" (35 cm)
of hidden track allowing for movement of the
locos onto the three short sidings. The layout
was built within a few weeks and at a cost of
just £20 at the time.
|
|
 
|
|
|
Over the years, various
concepts evolved around what came to be called
"minimum space layouts" in British
modelling terminology. Most of these center on
how to run trains on a small layout in order to
sustain interest in it, but some have taken up
the question of how small a layout can get and
still be workable, leading to a whole range of
"micro layouts" which really are as
small as you can probably get.
This
modelling concept found its master in the late
Carl Arendt, whose excellent website on micro layouts is still being run and
updated to this day: the micro and the
minimal space layouts really form a special
category of small layouts (which often also allow
the use of larger modelling scales in spite of
the small overall layout footprint, such as e.g. Jim Read's O Gauge 7mm
micro layouts).
Carl Arendt's early internet
presence (he launched his website in 2001) along
with his books no doubt helped to make the
concept more popular with North American
modellers.
|
|
 |
|
|
Just to which extent the
popularity of small layouts has grown in the US can be
seen from the fact that Model Railroader issued
a special edition on how to build and run small layouts
in January 2015. |
|
 |
|
The layouts
portrayed include a wide variety of structural
concepts (including a modular approach) but they
also illustrate that the understanding of what
can rightfully be called small is still
open to interpretation as room sized pikes find
their place as well (where possibly the
characterization narrow would be more
appropriate as they tend to run along the walls
of a room). Also
included is a portrayal of John Allen, who way
back in the 1950s already felt that modellers
should
"start
small and build well. Plan your small
railroad for operation rather than as a race
track, and build it with care. You will be
amazed at how much fun a small pike can
be."
How much the "small
layout" has shrunk over time can be glanced
from the fact that his original Gorre &
Daphetid RR - to which Allen was refering in the
quote above - had a footprint of 3'-7" x
6'-8".
Newer layouts depicted
in How to Build Small Model Railroads,
however, show a clear tendency of leaning more
and more to the (smaller) British / European
shelf layout concept.
A follow-up publication
in 2018 titled Build a Small Railroad
offered a similar collection of smaller and
not-so-small layout concepts.
|
|
|
|
Operation - the key to
sustaining interest in a small layout
|
|
|
On any layout - big or
small - you can either be running trains or operating
trains. "Running
trains" obviously is a broad concept. All it really
indicates is that model trains must be moving some way or
another. At one end of the spectrum, they might just be
orbiting on an oval of track at top speed, and the train
might consist of an American diesel locomotive, a couple
of Australian passenger coaches, one Swiss restaurant car
(complete with pantograph for overhead electrification),
and last but not least a British guard's van. However, in
railway modelling lingo "running trains"
usually indicates something at the other end of the
concept, namely aiming at creating a coherent picture of
both the trains and the environment they run through.
This would mean that American locomotives of a certain
period pull American rolling stock of (more or less) the
same period while running through an American landscape
of (more or less) the period in question. The amount of
compromise allowed may vary, but in general "running
trains" means that a layout will reflect some amount
of coherence and accuracy.
"Operating
trains" goes one step further, although it doesn't
necessarily imply a higher degree of prototypical
accuracy in terms of rolling stock and all that goes with
it.
|
|
The
word "operating" is used, above all, to
indicate that models are run to reflect - but not
necessarily faithfully replicate - one very
important and central aspect of any real railway
: there's a purpose to it. On the real railways,
trains hardly ever move "just like
that". Maybe it's to earn revenue by
transporting passengers - such as the EMU shown
here, speeding up to London and away from the
camera - or maybe it's to maintain the
infrastructure, which is the basis of being able
to run such revenue earning trains - such as the
ballast train double-headed by two class 33
diesels heading someplace south on the UK rail
network.
"Operating"
trains on a layout is an attempt to mimick this
by attributing a purpose to most or even all
moves taking place. Some of the concepts applied
in order to achieve this were formed in the
context of basement empires, others were
developed explicitly with small layouts in mind.
Some attempt to be as close to actual prototype
operation as possible, while others are loose
interpretations.
For small
layouts, the equation is a simple one: the lack
of space needs to be compensated by more interest
generated by the moves which take place on the
layout.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Operational concept: what a
small layout is all about
|
|
|
Copying the real rail
transportation system's way of functioning requires a
concept. This doesn't mean that things have to be complex
or complicated - in fact, a simple concept usually works
best. A good basic way of starting is to establish where
the model railway system is located, the era, and how it
is connected to the rest of the world, because these few
points determine the traffic patterns of a layout and thus provide a reason for its existence -
because on the real thing, traffic pattern means
customers and revenues, and without those, railways will
grind to a halt and disappear very quickly. |
|
 |
|
There are a
number of operational concepts which can be
applied to a small layout. You could have mainly passenger
services, or passenger services with an equal
share of freight, or freight only, or even a
specialised setting with specialised traffic,
such as a motive power depot or a civil
engineer's yard. One possible example to
illustrate this point comes from the preserved Kent &
East Sussex Railway,
where an English
Electric Class 08 0-6-0 diesel shunter is ready
in April 2001 to shunt stock at the railway's
main station site at Tenterden.
|
|
|
All of these options are
feasible, but in practice layouts which have a strong emphasis on what can
be seen as "localized operation" (i.e.
so-called "shunting" or "switching"
layouts) feature a predominance of freight operations or
are even freight-only. |
|
This kind of operational concept
is usually the best choice if the layout
needs to be small - simply because it
provides a "realistic feel" and
even prototypical operation within
baseboard measurements which are open to
(almost) everybody. The reasons for
this are quite simple: shunters are
usually relatively short engines, and
freight stock is usually a lot shorter
than passenger coaches.
The
example shown here is a Class 09 diesel
locomotive at Stewarts Lane Depot,
London, shunting two TTA tank wagons on a
siding. Within the space of only a few
yards details abound with loads of
inspiration for a shunting layout.
Both Tenterden and the side tracks at
Stewarts Lane convey the constrained
space often replicated by modellers, i.e.
"cramped quarters" with a lot
of track in a small space.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Certain rail served industries however tend to have
large footprints and a sprawling concourse in which
shunting takes place - such as Conrad Yelvington
Distributer's aggregate terminal in Wildwood Florida,
where the local Alco S2m presents an image of a
"switcher in a landscape" in May 2014. |
|
 |
|
|
SHUNTING
LAYOUTS
|
|
Every country has its
own approach and philosophy regarding railway modelling,
which often reflects the basic characteristics of its own
prototype railway system. |
|
 |
|
It
is therefore hardly surprising that mainstream US
railroad modelling focuses primarily on freight,
and switching layouts have been a popular facet
of North American prototype modelling for a long
time and feature frequently in magazines - such
as the Boston Union Freight Railroad, taking
center stage on the cover of the September 2000
issue of Model Railroader. Contrary to this, a
British outline model railway layout completely
devoid of any form of facilities catering for
passengers has for the longest time been unusual
to say the least. Nonetheless, the earliest
published example of a freight-only concept for a
layout seemingly comes from the UK: In the June
1926 issue of Model Railway News, A.R.
Walkley, a member of the Wimbledon Model Railway
Club (the second oldest in Britain), published an
article on his "Railway in a suitcase",
which was pioneering in terms of being H0 scale
two-rail.
The layout also
featured a system of automatic coupling (really
an essential feature for a shunting layout) which
later on was marketed by Tri-ang, became known as
the "tension lock coupler" and is still
used as standard coupler on many UK ready to run
models today (thanks to Morgan Lee, longtime
librarian of Wimbledon MRC, for much of this
information).
|
|
|
In terms of British
railway modelling history, Wakeley's layout can be
regarded as the ancestor of all UK shunting layouts, as
it concentrated entirely on freight . |
|
On a
historical note, Walkley - together with two
fellow modellers from the then newly-formed
Wimbledon MRC (A. Stewart-Reidpath and Michael
Longridge) - began experimenting with models
roughly half the size of the established 0 gauge
sometime in 1923. In the end, the three modellers
found 3.5mm scale to be the ideal modelling ratio
- and H0 scale was born. |
|
 |
|
|
Another typical
example of the "1' x 4' shunting layout" type
is Dave Howell's "63rd Street Yard" - an urban yard with a couple of freight
facilities and a low-relief backscene for added
atmosphere. |
|

Trackplan
(c) Dave Howell, used with kind permission
|
|
An American
layout as the name implies, switching moves are
taken care of by a GE 44 tonner and an S2, with
40' boxcars the staple freight stock. The 3-way
point is both a space saver and an added bonus in
creating the feel of a small and tight but
sprawling urban yard. However, shunting
layouts need not necessarily be small - they can
be enormous too, if for example they incorporate
large classificiation yards.
|
|
|
The CSX yard in Wildwood, Florida, would not be
described as overly big by prototype standards, yet it
has a spacious and sweeping layout and overall atmosphere
which would be impossible to model in a small space
without losing much (if not all) of its characteristics. |
|
 |
|
But even when you go
for a small, shelf-type shunting layout, it's not
necessarily the lack of space which provides the
motivation for this. A number of people opt for this kind
of layout because it provides interesting operational
possibilities. In
his booklet 60 Plans for Small Locations (first
published in the late 1950s, revised in 1989), Cyril
Freezer - aforementioned
grand old man of British railway modelling and layout
design - touches on the shunting layout under the title
of "special purpose layouts" and points out
that:
"It is not
obligatory to incorporate passenger facilities into a
layout, and indeed there can be very real benefits
when a small layout is designed around a specialised
service."
|
However,
only 3 or 4 of the 60 layout plans in the booklet
reflect this statement, and to this day, the vast
majority of British modellers seem to suffer from
horror vacui in the absence of passenger
facilities on a model railway layout, although
the internet - having gone from a niche interest
in the mid-1990s to now being the single most
important source of information and communication
platform for all hobbies - helped changed this
heavily lopsided approach to British railway
modelling. Searching in Google for "switching
layout" yields approximately 41,800 hits
(December 2021); the string "shunting
layout" is less frequent, but around 20,900
webpages will still keep you busy perusing their
content. Plus, layouts depicting shunting yards
or switching areas are popular topics in many
online discussion groups and fora.
|
|

Class 08 diesel shunter on the freight-only
British prototype layout Little Bazeley
|
|
|
|
Operational
concepts for small shunting layouts
|
|
|
|
As their name clearly implies, small shunting layouts
already have an operational concept and a purpose to
sustain interest in
running locomotives and stock on it: shunting -
which is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary
as "pushing or pulling
a train or part of a train from the main line to a siding
or from one line of rails to another" (its
equivalent in North American railway terminology
according to the US Department of Transportation being switching). |
|
As with any layout
regardless of its size, a good basic way to start
building up a concept is to establish the geographical
setting and the era of the shunting layout as well as how
it is connected to the rest of the world. These few
points determine the reason
for its existence - in the form of its traffic patterns,
customers and revenues. |
|
On a small
shunting layout, there's usually only a handful
of customers receiving and generating freight. If you take the following
trackplan as an example, things might look
something like this.
|
|
 |
|
|
The four customers here are
represented by the first four letters of the alphabet,
but you could just as easily use the four suits of a deck
of cards, so that A = Hearts, B = Spades, C = Diamonds, D
= Clubs. A deck of cards is shuffled and a card drawn for
each freight car on the incoming track (e.g. the lower
right hand track in the diagram above). Thus the first
car in that row of incoming traffic may draw a card of
spades and be required to be moved to industry B (=
spades), car #2 hearts (industry A = hearts), etc. |
|
 |
|
The problem
with the traffic flow generated by this system is
that it doesn't take into account the differences
between customers A, B, C and D, because rolling
stock is moved to locations regardless of its
type and thus the goods it may transport.
However, if customer A is a printer (who would
above all want to receive paper and ship printed
products), he will quickly turn his back on the
railway if it keeps sending tank cars and coal
hoppers to his loading dock. A sound concept
therefore indicates the specific types of freight
received and shipped by each industry on the
layout so that only appropriate rolling stock may
be delivered to any given industry. In fact, even
one single customer may have different
transportation requirements at different
locations.
|
|
|
In this following
example, still based on the same trackplan, the entire
layout serves just one customer, a paper manufacturing
plant. |
|
Building
"B" is the loading dock for the
finished product, i.e. it ships paper. Building
"D" along with the adjacent tanks is
the storage area for both liquid and solid
chemicals used, while "C" is the
unloading dock for collected paper to be recycled
and "A" the unloading dock for
cellulose. |
|
 |
|
|
While this is
obviously a simplified layman's idea of how a paper
manufacturing plant might work, it provides the shunting
layout with a clear concept of what is and what may be
moved where and why. On the basis of this traffic flow
concept, a detailed list can now be drawn up, indicating
which type of rolling stock may be used where. For
example, tank cars will only be dropped off at
"D", whereas covered freight cars may go
anywhere (possibly arriving full, dropped of at
"C" first and then, once unloaded, moved to
"B" for loading). Special consignments
(delivery of heavy machinery or spares) may allow for
special freight stock. Here are five views taken in April 2002
depicting the internal rail service at the cardboard
factory in Deisswil (Switzerland), illustrating typical
aspects of this type of traffic (since shut down along
with the factory).
|
|


|
|
Motive power is
provided by a small company-owned shunter (which was
acquired new in this specific case, but which could well
be a second-hand shunter bought from a larger private or
state-owned rail company). The track is both covered (in
places where road traffic needs to have access) and
ballasted, with fencing present prominently - after all
this is private property. The factory buildings represent a mix of older
and more modern structures, and different types of
freight rolling stock to meet the requirements of the
rail customer - in this case tank cars (for liquid
chemicals), covered freight cars (for solid material
which needs some protection) and open freight cars,
covered with tarpaulins in some cases, for material which
will not suffer from exposure.
|
|
The advantage of an
operational concept governing traffic flow is added
realism and an extra challenge when switching. The
setback is just as evident: the example above is
definitely not suited for a layout which boasts a
collection of 20+ coal hoppers - unless the plant
actually runs on coal. |
|
|
Traffic
flow - what goes where and why
|
|
|
|
Once an operational
concept for a switching layout is drawn up and
established, the only thing needed to finally do some
interesting and challenging switching is to generate the
traffic flow. Over the years, a number of systems doing
precisely this (generally referred to as "car
forwarding systems") have originated with American
prototype modellers. Although rarely used for other
prototype modelling, all of these systems work equally
well for any kind of standard railway system. |
|
The specified
car switch list generates
instructions for freight cars on a layout, taking into
account their type and potential delivery locations. The
basic concept of most car card systems goes back to Doug
Smith's description in the December 1961 issue of Model
Railroader. The
most popular specified car switch list system is Don
McFall's Card and Waybill
system which works as follows:
|
|
 |
|
Step
1
The waybill is slipped into the transparent
pocket of the card, and the boxcar in question is
switched to the Consolidated Tooling Company for
unloadingStep
2
Reversing the waybill, the boxcar has now been
unloaded and loaded again; it is taken to its new
destination, the Atlantic Warehouses
Step 3
According to the directions on the waybill, it is
removed once the boxcar has reached its
destination, revealing that after unloading it is
to return empty to the Westside Yard
|
|
|
Obviously, these physical cards can be - and to an
increasing extent are - substituted by virtual cards or
screen output on a computer system or handheld device
which will also take care of the chance car selection and
load distribution. |
|
Whereas the card and
waybill system centers on identifying individual freight
stock and linking these with destination orders, the Scenario
List System
focusses on customers, i.e. locations and industries,
where freight may be picked up and/or delivered. |
|
Each
industry on a layout is analysed in terms of
possible scenarios. The Consolidated Tooling
Company, for example, is assumed to receive and
ship products mainly in boxcars, but occasionally
also to receive goods transported on a flat car.
The possible scenarios here are: Customer
receives 0-2 boxcars, ships 0-2 boxcars, receives
0-1 flat car. A selection is made from all
possible combinations in order to produce the
scenarios given as example here. For every operating session, one
of these scenarios is selected for the
"Consolidated Tooling Co". In order to
acknowledge that according to the traffic flow
concept worked out for this customer some of
these scenarios are supposed to be more frequent
than others, the scenario list is broken down to
scenario cards (one card giving one scenario) in
varying numbers. As a result, scenarios 2 and 3
would appear on 5 scenario cards each, whereas
all scenarios involving the delivery of a flat
car would only have one. Shuffling these cards,
the chances of having a flat car delivered would
thus be smaller. Once the "move" is
made, the card goes to the back of the deck of
scenario cards, making sure that flat cars won't
appear too frequently at the "Consolidated
Tooling Co."
This system works well
for small layouts and is fairly realistic in its
approach: rail customers usually don't care at
all whether the boxcar used to ship their goods
is brown, green, yellow or pink as long as they
turn up on time and in sufficient numbers.
|
|
 |
|
|
Due to its flexibility
regarding choice of rolling stock to be used, this system
may not produce challenges in the sense of asking you, by
chance, to switch the most awkwardly placed boxcar to the
tightest spot on the layout - but there's always the
possibility of creating additional rules if things seem
to get too easy. |
|
|
Getting
real - car spots and the "modern
minimalist" approach
|
|
|
|
The majority of shunting and switching layouts are
rooted in what could loosely be called the steam/diesel
transition era - for two reasons. First, as seen above,
the concept began to be popularized in the 1950s and
1960s, and secondly both motive power and rolling stock
from that era are considerably shorter than their more
modern counterparts (e.g. 40' boxcars rather than 50' or
even 60' boxcars) and therefore allow for smaller
layouts. |
|
 |
|
Combining this era (when even
less-than-carload traffic by rail was still
common) with the necessary compression of railway
modelling very often results in single-car
industries on shunting layouts. For modellers who
want to replicate current railway operations,
however, this conceptual formula simply doesn't
match up with the real world. For several years
now a number of modellers - who almost
exclusively model North American railroads - have
come up with ideas and answers on how to adapt
the shunting layout formula in order to make it
both workable and realistic for modelling the
modern railway scene.
Amongst these, Lance Mindheim is probably the
best known, as he combines stunning modelling
with a fully fledged concept of how to design,
build and operate a realistic (modern) switching
layout which he has highlighted in four books
published between 2009 and 2011 (How to
Design a Small Switching Layout, 8
Realistic Track Plans for Small Switching Layouts,
How to Build a Switching Layout, and How
to Operate a Modern Era Switching Layout).
His various Florida industrial park and spur
layouts have almost become a model railroading sub-genre,
inspiring many subsequent Sunshine State
switching layouts; Mindheim also runs a blog on
model railroad design in conjunction with his
commercial layout planning service.
|
|
|
Mindheim takes his cue from the essence of what
characterizes contemporary railroad companies: their
striving for efficiency in the face of strong competition
from road transport, which - if we take the example of
Norfolk Southern's Creed - translates as "we
will provide quality service, always trying to reduce
costs to offer competitive prices". He then
transposes this to modern railroad operations and
stipulates two main principles: |
|
1 |
|
Keep the trackwork simple
A switch is a costly device: it requires handling
in the process of switching (costing the railroad
time while it's doing its job) and needs
maintenance (which actually costs the railroad
money). Therefore, contemporary track layouts
have done away with all unnecessary switches,
resulting in some cases in single track
industrial spurs of substantial length - which in
model form could mean a switching layout with
just one or two sidings.
A runaround track requires at least two switches,
and having the locomotive run around its train
consumes time and fuel, so the trackage in a
modern industrial park will most likely only have
switches pointing in one direction so that the
switcher can push and pull cars without the need
to run around its train. Therefore, you should
aim to not put a runaround where the prototype
doesn't need or have one. |
|
|
2 |
|
Designate
multiple car spots for one switching
destination
The "one car customer" is, in
all but a few exceptions, a thing of the
past, and has been replaced either by
large rail customer complexes or by
switching destinations (such as a
warehouse) which in effect serve multiple
customers.
Therefore, you should have structures on
your layout with at least two designated
places where freight cars can be set out,
most probably serving more than one
customer. |
|
|
|
Putting these two principles to work on a modern
switching layout does take it very close to being
prototypically correct. The result from a
"traditional perspective", however, is a very
simple track layout which looks rather bare and most
probably also lacks one of the railroad modeller's
favourite devices, the runaround track, as well as other
"complications" such as switchback sidings
(which is why I refer to it as the "modern
minimalist" approach). |
|
However, unlike the traditional
steam/diesel transition era layout, the
operational "spice" on such a modern
switching layout is not generated by the
trackplan, but by the way the spurs and
industries situated along them are switched - by
using so-called car spots. As railroads merged and lost their local
foothold, names or random numbers given to tracks
serving customers became incomprehensible to a
centralized dispatch structure.
Parallel to the introduction of
computer systems in the late 1960s, US railroads
drew up industry schematic maps for their road
crews. They list industry information such as
where to spot loaded or empty cars for
unloading/loading for a specific customer, the
track capacities, and other pertinent
information, all in a consistent format.
Different US railroads use(d)
differing terminology for this car spot
designation system; the acronym SPINS is an
abbreviation for Southern Pacific Industry
Numbering System - it originated on the SP
but was also used by e.g. BN. CLIC (Car
Location Identity Codes) was a Santa Fe term
for the same thing, as was ZTS (Zone, Track,
Spot) on Conrail.
The example shown here comes
from the 1987 Conrail ZTS for its New England
Division - and really explains it all. If a
freight car is to be set out at 04-829-07, then
the ZTS map will tell any crew that its
destination is car spot 07 on track 829 in Zone
04, and that the customer in question is the
Generic Inc.
It is also easy to see how requiring freight
cars to be placed in specific spots can add not
only additional realism to a modern era switching
layout but also beef up the challenge of
operating it considerably. All of a sudden, that
single industrial spur doesn't seem that bleak
anymore.

The United
Warehouse in Wichita illustrates what this looks
like in real life, but even a drastically
shortened building can provide operating interest
on a switching layout using car spots if it
either serves several customers or a single
customer requires specific goods to be delivered
to specific locations on his spur.
|
|
 |
|
|
Switching on a "minimalist modern" layout
will mostly consist of pushing and pulling cars in and
out of sidings until the required order is arrived at -
and as such is in fact very similar to switching an Inglenook
Sidings puzzle. Just like the latter, cars could be
assigned spots by e.g. the random throw of a dice; in his
books, Lance Mindheim suggests setting up the switching
order yourself but making the most of the switcher's
moves by imitating certain prototype procedures and
remembering to take it slow as switching in 1:1 scale is
a time consuming job. |
|

The conductor is
throwing a switch in Wildwood FL yard in May 2014 as CSX
"road slug" GP39-2 #2383 and GP40-2 #6983 are
busy pushing and pulling cars as described above -
although in this case they are not serving car spots but
rather "blocking" a consist, i.e. making up a
northbound train.
|
|
Again not necessarily small in size, a modern era
switching layout can offer a lot more operating potential
than its simple trackplan might suggest if a car spotting
system is used. Naturally, many prototype locations still
have more complex trackwork in evidence today (a fact
Mindheim and others are more than willing to admit), but
it is becoming the exception. And ultimately the simple
track layout has the same advantage for the modeller that
it has for the real railroad company: fewer switches and
less track means spending less money on infrastructure
and less time on maintenance. |
|
Probably
the main attraction of a "modern
minimalist" switching layout is that it
allows the use of contemporary rolling stock with
single car payloads - which has become a rarity
in the age of the "block train"
(carrying a long string of freight cars loaded
with the same cargo, e.g. containers or coal) but
which used to be the railway's daily bread. Using
"car spotting" thus works just as well
for a 1950's or 1960's layout and is not
restricted to any geographical area at all. The new goods shed in
Peterborough embodied British Railway's
perception of modernised freight working by rail;
goods vans could be unloaded either into the
goods shed (where a conveyor belt helped in
moving the goods to their correct storage space)
or outwards onto road vehicules which distributed
the goods elsewhere.
|
|

A long row
of 12t goods vans standing at the newly
modernized Peterborough goods shed in 1960
|
|
|
It was a 1960's
version of a transload facility, which certainly required
the goods vans to be set out in the correct order so that
they ended up being "spotted" where they were
needed. |
|
|
From a
shunting layout to a shunting puzzle
|
|
|
|
All of the systems of
operating a shunting layout discussed above have one
purpose: to generate interest by means of a consistent
traffic flow. Although they may come up with some awkward
shunting moves, they are not designed to introduce such
complications deliberately. Most of the time, things will
flow easily. A
shunting puzzle, however, is a shunting layout which
deliberately introduces complications which need to be
solved in order to get the shunting done. Usually, these
complications are generated by a set of restrictions or
rules. For example, sidings can be short and thus require
the operator to think ahead of his moves unless he wants
everything clogged up, or rules may require a certain
specific order into which freight stock must be shunted.
The example layout used
above to illustrate a possible operational concept based
on a paper factory, by the way, uses the "Timesaver" trackplan - the classic US switching
puzzle.
|
|
More about Shunting
Puzzles
|
|

|
|
|
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY Freezer
Cyril J. (1961) "Another layout for the
holidays", in Railway Modeller (August 1961
issue)
Hayden Bob (ed.) (1981) Track
planning ideas from Model Railroader, Kalmbach
Publishing
|
|
Text,
photos and illustrations not labelled otherwise are © Adrian Wymann
Page created: 26/JAN/2001
Last revised: 17/MAR/2022
|
|