Tips on tackling huge yards

[railrunner112]

For my route I want to expand to a town called liege in Belgium, it has two blastfurnaces and a steelmill. But to get there I first have to cross a train yard called kinkempois.. I added a trackplan.
Anyone have tips on how to tackle these huge yards? received_28152543134332128.webp

[eric]

Personally, I don't model the entire yard in cases like that. It introduces a lot of overhead into the TDB trying to build all that out, and I'd say there's a good chance most of those tracks will never get used.

What I will do is model the tracks most likely to be used in an activity, and place others leaving them out of the TDB. They're there visually, but I don't worry about the impact it has on calculating the signals or paths.

[TrainGuy6550]

received_28152543134332128.webp

That's not a yard... That's a spider web.

[ebnertra000]

For most yards, I usually put one track that's easy to keep track of through as much of the yard as I can to make sure I'm lined up right, and then start building out in small groups based on the trackwork. As long as the yard isn't too full of curved bits and other weird stuff, it can go a little faster than you might think

[RCSD505]

For most yards, I usually put one track that's easy to keep track of through as much of the yard as I can to make sure I'm lined up right, and then start building out in small groups based on the trackwork. As long as the yard isn't too full of curved bits and other weird stuff, it can go a little faster than you might think

Speaking of.. whats the best way to tackle curved yards? Let's say I have 10 yard tracks bending around a curve and i'm using scalerail.

[scottb613]

Speaking of.. whats the best way to tackle curved yards? Let's say I have 10 yard tracks bending around a curve and i'm using scalerail.

Hi Folks,

Don't be afraid of "Dynamic Track" - it's not the "Dynamic Track" of old and it - - - automatically - - - makes very nice connections between two tracks of different angles and elevations. It creates beautiful sweeping curves.

Regards,
Scott

[pwillard]

Oh really? I actually had no idea that was the case.

image.png

[scottb613]

Oh really? I actually had no idea that was the case.

Hi Pete,

Re: Dynamic Track

Yep - I was AMAZED the first time I saw it in operation - place a section of Dynamic Track down connecting to one side of your track keeping it selected - press the "FLEX" button on the left hand panel - then click on the other joint - and it magically connects the short little stub to your desired joint.

If using Scale Rail - you just need the Scale Rail track profile loaded on your route - so it blends using the same track textures.

Regards,
Scott

[eric]

ScaleRail has an extensive set of yard curvature tracks that maintain a tighter 4m spacing. Used correctly, the curves have a yrd prefix and an ordering suffix A through Z, with A being the innermost and C being the nominal curve size, which should be able to provide up to 26 tracks across. Bookend those with a yrd 5t’s and things usually line up. Depending on how much curvature you’re talking about, it may or may not work for you.

I don’t know if flex track is smart enough to avoid overlapping an adjacent track, but it certainly worth trying. It is the closest thing we have to the splines used in Some of the other train simulator platform editors. One thing I have found is that it does not seem like more than +/- 90° deflection.

[scottb613]

I don’t know if flex track is smart enough to avoid overlapping an adjacent track, but it certainly worth trying. It is the closest thing we have to the splines used in Some of the other train simulator platform editors. One thing I have found is that it does not seem like more than +/- 90° deflection.

Hi Eric,

Yeah - no overlap protection that I am aware of. I have made extensive use of Dynamic Track in yards. As it turns out - almost every yard on the L&HR is curved.

Port Morris NJ - which I'll need to rework thanks to 1m DEM - extensive dynamic track:

2026-07-15 12_00_28-Greenshot.png

Regards,
Scott

[CSRX]

I don't really have much advice on huge yards.. Is Rigby Yard in the 1970's considered "huge", no idea.. I mean, technically it is 55 tracks wide, and 1 mile long. Today it is only 36 tracks wide as most was removed when the mainline bypass for Amtrak was put into play.
As someone mentioned though.. start with one track, build it from one end to the other, and then build off from there to get the rest of your track work and layout. With the Rigby Yard, spacing is pretty tight during the 1970's era, so I did the best I could to jam everything in place, but its not to scale, in fact, it is actually a bit wider than the real layout was.. Oh well.

For me, I started with the two mainline tracks (The two in the middle) and extended them from the east end of the yard, to the west. From there, I simply built onto them with the many switches, crossovers, etc. While I understand not all tracks will be used, I found it easier to just lay out the whole thing rather than build the 2008 version of this yard.

The biggest pain of it though, was the grade changes. It is built in a bowl, but the grade changes are a bit off through the yard anyways, so I kind of just goofed it and made it believable..

Rigby Yard looking railroad west.


Looking railroad east, as you can see, I haven't finished the full Wye portion of the Turner Island branch.

[chosenfrozen44]

Wish I would have known Dynamic track has improved! It would have made this yard a lot easier! Marquette Connecting Railway yard modeled after the idea and Purpose of Belt Railway of Chicago's Clearing Yard. Nice work Shawn!
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[ebnertra000]

One thing to keep in mind is that if you intend to use an area of track in multiple routes (I do this fairly often), dynamic track might make that difficult. There may be new tools to make that easier, but I avoid the use of it for this reason

[johnnyboy99]

North Platte would definitely be a big challenge with several different yards as well as hump tracks and service stations, and 3 mainline tracks too.

[PerryPlatypus]

I built 100% of Hinkle using ScaleRail. Not as big as behemoths like North Platte, but still very large. I just took it in manageable bites, lsystematically doing one section (Arrival yard, departure yard, hump, locomotive servicing area, car repair, etc.) at a time. One large yard is the equivalent of laying dozens and dozens of miles of mainline track, so it should take a while - don't rush it or you'll regret it later when you discover mistakes. It probably would have been slightly easier to do Hinkle *not* using ScaleRail; standard "A" tracks plus XTracks has a larger variety of turnouts. Scale Rail does help when it comes to curved yards though thanks to the Xcrv track pieces.

My philosophy is that track shapes have, relatively speaking, very little impact on performance, so don't stress too much over it in that regard. Filling up the yard in an activity is where you have to be much more conscientious. But I would still rather have all of the tracks there even if I don't pack the yard very full, otherwise it just won't "look" correct to my eyes if the various areas of the yard are noticeably narrower than reality. You can get away with placing a handful of short cuts of cars scattered lightly across a hump yard, and unless you take the in-game camera up to high elevation, it doesn't really stick out that the yard isn't *actually* very full of cars.

I personally don't find a reason to worry much about large TDB sizes when using TSRE. In my experience, on the rare occasion TSRE has a TDB issue, it's an isolated incident that is relatively easy to repair if you know how to use the tools. I have never experienced an incident of TSRE corrupting the TDB in a widespread way.