Re: (erielack) More yard questions

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

Bison was not just the most modern EL yard, it was the only modern EL yard. 
All the rest were old flat yards or manual retarder. I don't believe I've 
ever seen a scale diagram of Bison. Steve, do you know of anything in the 
Archives?

An entire hump yard is way too big for most people to model, and as you 
point out, the physics does not support realistic operation in 1/87 scale. 
There is/was a model RR club in the NY area (Model RR Club of NJ?) that 
modeled an operating hump yard. For retarders they used a network of tubes 
terminating between the rails blowing air. It was ingenius and I admire them 
for trying, but I've seen a video and what happens is the car careens down 
the hump at warp speed, destroying any semblance of realism and IMO making 
the whole exercise rather pointless.

Much more practical is to model a smaller secondary yard located on a 
mainline that serves a small to medium-size city and/or region, such as 
Akron, Gang Mills, Binghamton and Scranton. Some trains run through, others 
stop and s/o p/u cars, and locals and perhaps one or two through trains can 
be made up. Such facilities can provide endless hours of operating 
enjoyment.

Paul B


From: Bradley Butcher <llyengalyn_@_hotmail.com>
Subject: (erielack) More yard questions

So while I was looking into Marion yard, Bison yard occured to me. Was Bison 
the most modern of EL's yard facilities? I see a basic diagram of Bison in 
EL in color Vol 2. But it has not scale and is kind of hard to read. Does 
anyone have a lead on an easier to study track diagram? I'm kind of striking 
out on google. Google keeps leading me to the NS rebuild diagram, not the 
correct historical connatation.

Still struggleing with myself in my design of an EL HO layout. I think it 
would be really neat to have a yard included, but they take up so much dang 
space. Perhaps a justification could be to do "open staging" and have the 
yard be the staging area at one end and therefore free up more realestate 
for it.

Might consider making a non-functioning part of it the hump yard as they are 
pretty neat, but require something like divine intervention to make work on 
a model as I understand.

Brad Butcher
ELHS 3900
 


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