South End of Wausau Yard

Over the weekend I finally worked out how I wanted the south (timetable east) end of Wausau Yard to be laid out. The real yard has nine through tracks and I decided to emphasize this by having the bypass track (far right) and two 4-yard sections. Here's the eastern four tracks' final alignment:

For the last two days I just haven't been happy with all the ways I planned to have the western four tracks come off the first switch. I tried a lot of different arrangements and none of them seemed right. Then this afternoon it all clicked. Since the westernmost track will be the one trains headed through the yard towards the viewer will use, I decided to keep it straight and curve the others inward. Here's the result:

The space between the two 4-yard groupings will allow me to have some yard buildings, scenes, and general junk. On the real yard, this material is on the west side of the yard tracks, but I'm using a little modeler's license.

The westernmost track will have the programming track and an engine track/lumber loadout coming off it. If I have the space, I might make these three separate spurs, splitting the engine track and the lumber loadout. The programming track will have to be isolated because it can only be used to program my DCC engines.

Finally, here's a closup of theyard throat:

I tested all the tracks with a boxcar with my 0-5-0 switcher for power and the boxcar seemed to move through the switches with no problems.

That's it for this update. Next I have to make sure that I can make the north end of the yard line up with what I've done so far-- until I accomplish this, everything is tentative. It's a bit more complicated because there needs to be a crossover and a branch (the old C&NW main to Marshfield) diverging on that end. That should keep my brain busy this week in its spare moments.