HO Hump Yard

[John Honeck Sr]

Has any body build a HO layout with a working Hump Yard? To simulate  the worlds biggest yard in North Platte NE. Is it possible to push cars up or down a Hump into staging sidings? Thank You in advance for any info.

[jward]

for some ideas on how to construct a hump yard, refer to the atlas book "HO king size plan book".....

there is a hump yard included in plan HO36 the oregon pass lines.

[Limey]

Hi John,
             I also live close to a hump yard up here in Canada and looked at constructing one, I also studied the hump yard in the suggested plan HO36. Oregon Pass Line. That one is quite simplistic in design in as much as it is merely a section of plywood and cork road bed which is raised up above its surrounding area by a bolt screwed up from underneath. This will make the cars roll down by gravity, however, as was pointed out to me by a friend who was a track foreman for C.N., you have to have some method of slowing the momentum of the cars so that they don't crash into each other but rather couple up more gently. In the prototype this is accomplished by some kind of braking system attached to the track though I am not sure how it works. I was toying with the idea of a sort of brush set up mid track to brush against the underside of the car or perhaps even a magnetic system. I am still in the thinking stage regarding the whole thing.
    In retrospect there must be a reason why there are so few hump yards and so many flat track sorting yards in the real world, perhaps even in the real world the complexity, maintenance and cost are just not worth the trouble.

Regards, Limey.

[captain1313]

The mechanism is called  a "retarder".   Cant remember if they were hydraulic or air operated.  Sensors along the track would measure car speed and signal the retarders to slow the car down by squeezing against the inside of the flange.  I've seen these operated at Santa Fe's Corwith Yard. 

Kevin

[Nigel]

Over the years, there have been many operating HO scale hump yards built.  There were articles about one or more in Model Railroader in the 1950's (that DVD of 75 years of MR Kalmbach is offering is probably worth buying before you start an endeavor like this).

Hump yards take space - lots of acreage.  You need to get the freight cars up high enough to let them roll down to the yard tracks.  You have to control their speed with some sort of retarder - and the amount of braking applied with vary from car to car, and where in the train they are supposed to end up.

For most, if they can figure out how to do an HO scale hump yard, they figure out they have not got the space or the time.  For those 0.1% who have the skills, the knowledge and the space, the hump yard is an incredible model.

[jward]

if you look carefully at the palns for the oregon pass, you'll notice that not only is the grade off the hump into the bowl tracks adjustable by the thumb screw, there is also provisions for adjusting the grade of the yard itself. with a little care you should be able to adjust the slope of the bowl tracks so that a car will roll slowly to the end. as such, you'd have a yard where cars never rolled fast enough to do damage to each other or derail.

i have seen other layouts in person with hump yards, but their system of braking the cars was complicated (often involving compressed air blown up through the tracks) in an effort to overcome the momentum of the cars. john armstrong, who designed the atlas plan, figured out that if the cars don't come off the hump fast, their speed can be controlled by gravity itself. it is just one example of why he was a master layout designer.....

[rogertra]

As you cannot scale mass nor friction, HO hump yards rarely and I mean very rarely work.

You need an out of scale hump, out of scale grades and then your cars will roll at slightly less than warp speed and only for a few feet.  They will not roll at a scale walking pace for the 10 to 12 feet needed for even the smallest of HO hump yards.

[Desertdweller]

Back in 1979, I had a neighbor who built an operating HO hump yard.  He solved the problem stated by Roger by weighting the cars, and by paying attention to the rolling qualities of the trucks.

His biggest hurdle was designing and building a capacitor-discharge system that would operate a matrix of switch machines so he could select routes the cars would roll into.  It really worked neat when he got it done!

Yes, the layout was pretty long.  You need a long straight track for shoving up the hump (only a gentle curve would work, if at all).  The bowl tracks can be gently curved.  You don't have to actually run past the hump:  you can pull a bowl track up over the hump, then shove it back a cut at a time.  The bowl tracks are assigned by destination for the cars going into them.  In this way, even a long train can be quickly blocked.

I live fifty miles west of North Platte.  There are several humps in that yard.  Two sets of locomotives usually work a hump together.  The hump engine itself (that does the shoving) is operated by remote control by the person who makes the cuts at the crest of the hump.  Switches are lined by remote control by a tower operator at the crest.  Another engine set, the trimmer, works the bowl tracks, pulling assembled cuts and making hooks if the rolling cars fail to couple.

I operated my neighbor's hump yard on many occasions.  It was a lot of fun, and worked well, but you would need a long room to build it in.


Les

Les