RE: (erielack) track plan advice?

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

Brad,

Some excellent advice in the other posts. First off, I'll say that 
Schuyler's club photo shows some beautiful trackwork, some of the nicest 
I've ever seen. Hats off to you guys. Having said that, I see lots of 
40'-50' cars, these are very forgiving in terms of lining up couplers. If 
you're using 89' cars with 66' wheelbase, you have to take care with your 
design. The bugaboo here is the reverse curve, illustrtaed by Paul's 
diagram, that does in fact, show the first two tracks of a compound ladder 
design. With 89' cars you should not use #6's here, just getting the cars 
through (you wouldn't dream of coupling/uncoupling here). Same with Xovers; 
if it's on tangent track, the Xover has a built-in reverse curve (you can do 
a Xover on curved track with no RC); use nothing smaller than a #8. No 6's 
are fine for 89' cars on a straight ladder.

On to couplers. On the prototype, the couplers don't have centering springs, 
so as I think Paul said, in some cases on a curve they have to align them by 
hand prior to coupling. They also tend to have bigger size t/o's and lesser 
curvature, of course. So with our centered model couplers, we have to pay 
attention to alignment. You find a range of philosophies here. Some modelers 
clip off the coupler trip pins and uncouple with a device inserted between 
the knuckles. I have never seen one that works reliably, even assuming 
you're eyesight and ambient light allows you to see what you're doing and 
you can reach the spot. I don't want someone bashing away on my couplers so 
I don't permit this on my layout. I prefer magnetic uncouplers and try to 
avoid the "hand of God" look. I have almost 4 dozen on my layout, mostly 
electromagnetic (and except for staging, all are under-track). There will 
alwys be locations with no magnet; here I use a Z-shaped wire that uncouples 
by pulling the trip pin to the side (as in a magnetic uncoupler).

I second Schuyler's statement about KD's being the best couplers on the 
market; I don't use any others. They all couple, but only KD's will UNcouple 
reliably. Trust me on this. The scale-size are also the best-looking on the 
market.

Finally let me tell you about my freight yard. Including the double-Xovers 
at each end, Binghamton yard takes up two walls, with a 90-deg turn in the 
middle. The class yard is along one wall, the east-end tail track on the 
other. I use a single electro uncoupler at the west end of this tail track 
and delay uncouple, then shove the cars around the 90-deg curved/compound 
ladder to their spot. I had some apprehension about this design but it works 
perfectly; the resistance of the ladder curvature helps keep the pressure on 
the coupler faces. I can classify a 20 car train in under 10 minutes. The 
design lets me maximize the capacity of the 6-track classification "bowl" by 
keeping the ladder to only 4 linear feet; the shortest tracks are 60" 
between clearance points.

Paul B 


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