Curved fiddle yard/staging yard

[Intercity]

Hi guys,

I'm still in the process of planning my layout, the baseboards are 3ft wide and due to some pesky basement steps it has to be configure in a U shape (30ft long, the Us are 11ft long by 7ft and the other end is 11ft by 6ft), I am struggling with where to place a staging yard and am considering having it at the base of one of the Us in a curved fashion, has anyone done this and if so was it practical, I will have full mid 90s WCML consists, railtour rakes, Pendolinos, and unit freight (container, coal engineers etc), so plenty to store.

The other option is a helix to a staging area under the layout, but I am trying to avoid substantial building additions to the frames.

[Yet_Another]

Mine's a bit wavy:



But Laurence's ( @Innovationgame ) are complete loops; see the start of his Train Shed project for the initial plan:

http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=34324.0

[Newportnobby]

Imagine the fun the guys have who build circular (annular) layouts as they have absolutely no straights to work with. I have seen 2 of these layouts. Another exhibition layout with a curved fiddle yard is 'Gardiner Junction', but as mentioned above, Laurence's layout has 2 completely curved fiddle yards.

[Bealman]

What about that little circular layout I tried me Deltic on  at Wigan?

Which was really cool, by the way.... embarrassingly I forget the owners name! (Please contact via pm!)

Anyway, looks like you're having some Australian weather at last! 

[njee20]

You're more limited in pointwork radii for curves, it's harder to re-rail stock on curves and you need more room between fiddleyard roads are the only disadvantages I can think of.

I was wondering about doing similar next time, particularly if you can have the pointwork on the straights and then just have plain track as loops.

[Webbo]

Further to what njee20 has to say, I've found that coupling rolling stock on curved track (by pushing them together) can become quite difficult, whereas such coupling on straight track sections works very well. This is a particular problem with close coupled coaches and with body mounted couplers. May be a consideration.

Webbo

[njee20]

Yes, absolutely, coupling on even comparatively gentle corners is a massive PITA, worsened if you use anything like the Dapol dummy knuckle couplers.