Who said Oval track plans aren't prototypical?

I was skimming through the Conrail ZTS charts for New Jersey when I found this-



To be fair, its just a scrap dealer, but I suppose you could get away with making this into a small, prototypical model railroad. the tracks appear to be privately owned.

At least one of the carfloat-served railyards on the Harlem River in New York (road escapes my memory at the moment) had an oval shaped track plan. It looked like some model railroader violated every rule of good design to cram as much track as possible on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood.

jaystreetcrr wrote:At least one of the carfloat-served railyards on the Harlem River in New York (road escapes my memory at the moment) had an oval shaped track plan. It looked like some model railroader violated every rule of good design to cram as much track as possible on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood.

I know the one you're talking about, and that actually has been done in model form, with very little selective compression. They can apparently get the old MDC Boxcabs to handle the tight curves. I can't remember who built the layout, but I know I've seen it.

Might you mean this?

http://www.bronx-terminal.com/

It's Tim Warris' construction of the Bronx Terminal of the CNJ.

I've seen a few others, e.g. at Ethanol plants, coal generating plants, Alcoa aluminum plant in Massena. Those are really BIG ovals, of course. This one looks small.

And that's a LOT of examples of linear switching railroads, e.g. the Jay Street Connecting Railroad in Brooklyn, or Railroad Avenue in Albany. 30 sidings there, at least two diamonds.

...and to add, many freight areas and yards which developed off a main would unto themselves be suitable for their own "layout", such as the "northern" South Boston of the 1900's - 1940's which was a beehive of activity for the New Haven Railroad with their bustling freight operation which consisted of moves in and around a large sphere. There are a lot of guys who plan actual operational strategies on their pike which this would appeal to. You could spend a whole day working moves within a 1/4" scale "Southie". (Don't forget to have the 1/4" scale railroad workers sell grapes off the boxcars to the old Italian guys in "Grape Yard" so that they can make their vino !)

Yes, it's the CNJ's Bronx Terminal I was thinking of, and that guy's trackwork is crazy cool! I guess it helps that he has his own track company. I'd love to see that at a train show...checked in on the website for the first time in a while and he hasn't been doing too much new work, busy with Fast Tracks.
Any of the NYC or other harbor railroads make for great spaghetti bowl style trackplans for those with limited space who want a lot of operation.
The South Brooklyn Railway also had a fall "grape rush" where they dropped off reefers of grapes in Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn....

RussNelson wrote:I've seen a few others, e.g. at Ethanol plants, coal generating plants, Alcoa aluminum plant in Massena. Those are really BIG ovals, of course. This one looks small.

And that's a LOT of examples of linear switching railroads, e.g. the Jay Street Connecting Railroad in Brooklyn, or Railroad Avenue in Albany. 30 sidings there, at least two diamonds.

I think when i did the math, it would technically fit into an 8'x6' area, but that was using the google earth ruler tool on "approximately" what the boundaries of this place was. The area is now a parking lot for a shipping building.

I love this Historic Aerials site- Here it is in 1979.

http://www.historicaerials.com/aerials. ... &year=1979

The now defunct Toledo Terminal Railroad, made a complete loop around and through the City of Toledo, OH. Because of this loop it connected with each railroad (NKP, WAB, C&O, B&O, TA&W, NYC, PRR, AA, DT&I and D&TSL) that serviced Toledo, and because it had two crossings over the Maumee River was the alternate route in case of derailments or problems with any of the other railroad bridges that crossed the Maumee River.

With the abandonment of the Upper River bridge, the western part of the oval has been torn up and is no longer functional.

A good diagram of the railroad can be found in NKP Story.

Rick J

Here's another one:

http://goo.gl/maps/OJVOP

NEMCO in Ayer MA 01432 has an oval about 500' wide by 1300' long for offloading unit grain trains. There is a separate two-track unloading area for vegetable oil tank cars on the northwest side. A quarter mile or so southwest is a separate car unloading facility.

The Google maps overhead shows the facility switcher pushing a cut of covered hoppers through the mill. These days, they frequently get ~100 car unit grain trains, and part of the road power pulls or pushes half the train through at a time.

Believe there's a grain loading facilty near Rochelle IL that uses a loop to load unit grain trains for grain to be exported.

Would this former rail site count? Not oval but loop...

http://www.trainsarefun.com/lirr/farmin ... -23-10.jpg