QUOTE (Robert Stokes @ 8 Mar 2008, 10:55)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Being a Midland modeller, I don't like that facing entry to the goods yard.
Not ideal, apart from junctions they always try to go for trailing points as they are safer but with his original diagram for direction of flow he had got that right, just I pointed out we run on the left!
It's a learning point for anyone but if you give people a list of how it's done on the real railway you risk making it very daunting for new modellers, ( also you will invariably find an exception where they 'did do it that way') This forum is very good in that it can cater for those that just like the models and want to run them and those that want to model a railway in miniature.
I have a fair idea of signalling as it's my job but I can't claim to have an exhaustive knowledge due to the variety of types on different regions and mine is all from experience on the Southern.
Maybe a checklist of basic layout planning features such as those raised in this thread would help some people who are aiming to make their layout closer to reality?
I read the articles on signalling your model railway in modelrail recently and I could have pointed out several flaws but if anyone is that interested they would probably do deeper research anyway. I was quite surprised to see that evidently Tokenless block is obsolete as we have it all the way down the West of England line!
In model railroader there's a cloumn that looks at a lot of the issues in real v models and pointed out how the train never waits for the manual points, in yards, as it would do in reality as we always move ahead and set them up in advance.