Connecting Industries to the Main Line Track

Hello, and welcome to this Model Railroad Academy video in which we will talk about how to connect industries to the mainline. And well, this is, of course, dependent on how busy your mainline is, how much traffic there actually is on the main, and also how much freight your industry receives and sends away. But it all boils down to the space you have available as well. So there's some consideration to have in mind when you plan for your track work and hopefully this is a guide for you. All right, so here is the basic track work for touching an industry to siding or a main line. And the track plan you see here the industry track work, the siding here is red, while the main line is in gray. This arrangement has some limitations. One is that you cannot really pull the freight train into this siding and leave a car there because your engine or locomotive will always be first. Another obvious shortcoming is that you are blocking the main here with the freight train, while doing any switching maneuvers, which is a bad idea if you have, well, regular traffic on this track. Now you can come around some of the problems by having a switcher in the end of this industry here, but you should be aware that industries, smaller industries, very seldom have their own switcher. But if that's not a problem for you, then you can have a switcher here. It can go out on the main and pick cars from the passing freight train. Now, in real life, if this is a loading track here, then you probably want to change position. The loaded core is ready for the Porsche, while the just arriving freight car is the one to be loaded next. So then you have to again, pull them out on main, change the order of the cars, and then push them into the siding again. To solve these problems, you need two more tracks. One in blue here is the yard lead. Here you can pull the freight cars out with your switcher. And the second red track is another loading track or a storage track for loaded cars, which are ready for departure. Now to make workflow a bit more efficient, you can add another turnout, and thereby creating a runaround track. This way you can push course which are loaded and ready to the porting track and without removing cars which are currently being loaded. Now, if your mainline is kind of busy, both with freight and passenger traffic, it is a good idea to also add an arriving and departing track for freight trains. Then you simply pull your freight turn onto the yellow track sections here, and it will wait there instead of on the main while you are handling the freight cars. All right, so I don't know if you noticed, but there weren't all that much difference in space requirements for the different solutions here, but a world of difference when it comes to the possibilities to run operations on this industry. And if you're interested in learning more about track work planning, everything from the initial phases to squeezing it into your available space, to actually laying the tracks out, doing track work selection, and things like that, check out Model Railroad Academy shop because in the shop there is a class there which is a 90 minute video about track work planning. So if you're interested in this topic, check that out. It's a good class. Thank you very much for watching this video. See you in the next one.