The ROCK 3.0: Progress Report 11.14.13 + Yard Design Change

This afternoon/evening, I began to really focus on the yardmaster running through his daily duties in my head.  One thing I underestimated was the lead track.  I know....that's like yard design 101.  I was thinking that the yard could share the track into Ottawa Silica to use as the yard lead.  Two factors prevent this from working.  1) The Ottawa Local is a beast.  They will have cars scattered everywhere.  That would interfere with the yardmaster's lead to classify traffic.  2) More cars are moving in and out of the yard at Ottawa than I originally planned.  It needs a longer lead to work properly.

So, I have a problem.  I surveyed the landscape at the west end (left) Ottawa Yard.  No dice.  The lead would be short and encroach on PQ's property.  Plus, the track is further away as it goes in toward the corner to make the turn back down into Utica.  It would be hard to read the car numbers from that distance.

I moved my attention back to the east side of the yard.  How can I make this work to give me a longer yard lead?  I came to the conclusion I could add a parallel track to the lead into Ottawa Silica running along the rim of the sand pit.  This would allow for a trim job to pull out a cut of up to 15 cars or so and classify into the individual yard tracks.

I found the best way for this to work is to install a double slip on the yard ladder so I still preserve the original yard design.  I sent an email to my eBay contact to get pricing on a double slip.  I'm not the biggest fans of these (mainly because operators often don't set the correct route creating confusion), but I much prefer it over the alternative of adding another turnout to the yard ladder shortening my track capacity.

For those that might not know, a double slip turnout looks like this:

This evening, when reviewing the overall yard plan and projected operations, I decided to calculate the individual track capacities.  Here's what I found:

• Track 1 - 8 cars 
• Track 2 - 11 cars
• Track 3 - 14 cars
• Track 4 - 18 cars
• Track 5 - 21 cars
• Run around track 

So, roughly my yard will hold 70 cars.  That would definitely work for my plans.  

In other news, I installed two more panels of fascia (about 3 feet long each) in front of LOF.  My work was cut short due to the kids going to bed.  I will resume work on fascia in the morning.