Fiddle yard

Fiddle yards were first built by British modellers so that they could build small layouts and operate them in a realistic manner. The first well-known model railway to use them was 'Maybank', which was exhibited at the 1939 Model Railway Club exhibition in London. Some of these cassettes use conventional pointwork, others slide sideways as a traverser, Denny's original rotated around a central pivot. Denny also used it to rotate by half a turn and to reverse the trains wholesale, without needing to uncouple and move locomotives from one end to the other. Denny was noted for his use of non-railway mechanisms and the original was cranked around by a Meccano geared drive, with remote switching and monitoring by a row of sprung metal contacts. == Designs ==

The fiddle yard is part of a layout, and as such varies with the type layout design, particularly whether it is of the "end-to-end" or "continuous run" type. There may be more than one yard per layout. The design also varies by how much the operator wishes to handle the stock—they can be completely manual, completely automatic, or somewhere in between. Each design has different space requirements which must be factored into consideration at the design stage. Broadly designs can be into categories: • Fan of points giving many roads can be easily constructed, operated automatically using point motors, and are simple to construct, although turnouts can be expensive, especially if motorised. • Traverser (known as "transfer table" in the US • Elevator, where tracks are moved in a vertical direction. The elevator may itself be storage with multiple decks, or it may be single decked and move stock onto a different level, for example to other storage under the main layout. Combinations of the two above are also possible; for example a sector plate may be combined with a turntable for turning locomotives separately from their trains and allowing for them to be run round. Fiddle yards can also contain a balloon loop for turning entire trains, usually in conjunction with a fan or traverser design. == References ==