Plarail Round-Trip EF66 automatic shunting yard (video)

Hey, that's my video! I bought a second round-trip EF66 recently as well as some old 1960s Y turnouts that automatically send a train off to the left and I have always wanted to use the "automatic" R-15 crossover switch to make a shunting yard. I used all TomyTrains reversers, which is indeed why they are dark blue, but interestingly while the original plarail switched reverser was actually a full length light blue track like a stop rail the original Plarail static reversers (which are also a full length straight rail in TomyTrains) were in dark blue plastic.

Here is the description from that video, which explains some of the thought process that went into the layout:

I really like the idea of automatic shunting using the reciprocating "Round-Trip" Plarail engines with reversing gearboxes from the 70s and 80s (and early 90s) to automatically shunt in a yard using reversers and switches with automatic pathing. I used both an old style of "Y" rail that always sends trains to the left as well as the double track automatic crossover switch, which crosses trains over to the opposite line when entered from one direction but leaves them heading straight in the other, making it perfect for a train you can make reverse.

The Round-Trip Plarail engines do not have the activation tab molded into the bottom and thus will not work correctly with the two common Plarail auto switches, although I am looking into how to possibly use them together. I also have a pair of remote-control switches from the early 90s that would be interesting to use with Round-Trip Plarail.

The EF66 doing the shunting is of the individual release single bar variety. Round-Trip Plarails feature a bar in the rear (and also in the front, in some sets) that could pick up the hook couplings of cars to couple automatically while backing down on them, but I have never really gotten that to work. The example running in the video is of the older encased friction drive style and has had its rubber components replaced. It still does not like reversing - the front of the engine faces forward until the first time around the red turnaround rail and you can tell when it is struggling. I will have to take it apart and may potentially install a brand new motor, although I do generally like to keep my more interesting Plarails original (although the dried friction drive components had to be replaced before it would run properly at all).

This took many, many tries to get working properly - Plarail cars do not really like to be pushed and both of the "automatic" switches I used rely on "tricks" of the molding to operate which the lighter, unpowered carriages do not always interact with the same way the weighty power cars do. Getting a Plarail car to collide with another without the couplers or bodies fouling and causing a derailment, especially when getting pushed across tricky track molding, was tough and the train also reacts differently with cars when hitting them from the slightly pointed front and the straight coupling bar sticking out in the back. When you see the siding that the mail cars get shunted to shift that was me adding more track to the end of the line because I had never actually gotten it to work that far before and realised the siding needed to be longer to hold all three and still let the locomotive hit the reverser. I used both the TomyTrains static full length reversers as well as the switchable half straight ones. TomyTrains is built around a similar reversing concept, although the loading gauge was larger than Plarail and it used magnetic couplers (there were also magnetic couplers sold as Plarail accessories, and I have played with those and my other Round-Trip EF66 before).

I will probably build more setups like this in the future - I managed to make the yard do a bunch of the things I wanted to but it is obvious the first part of the yard has more going on. Part of the difficulty of an automated yard is making something "different" happen the second time a particular section of track is navigated - I like the section after the first two blue train carriages are shunted and the engine reverses and pushes the black brake van back across the single/double track point rail it to reset it to the other position for the engine to hit the crossover and shunt the mail car after finishing the blue train and the auto carrier. The other problem is finding places to put cars where the engine will actually be able to deposit them into a siding. Once a car is picked up the train has to eventually hit a reverser to leave the car in a siding before collecting cars from a different train. Cars are also always pushed away the first time a train travels down that track in either direction, meaning that you can not have a car that needs to end up at the top of the yard on a track if the engine first approaches that track from the top of the yard as it will push it out of place towards the bottom of the yard - unless you built your way around that in some way.

I would like to work on more interesting yards in the future.

These are the Y rails used in the video - these were used on the old two-line transfer stations and are not quite the width of normal double rail, although there is an old piece that adapts between the two widths. The distance between two equivalent points on the two spurs is around 90mm which make them perfect for using with the odd old R-04 large curve rail you may have run into before.



You could just as easily use the more modern style used by the modern automatic departure transfer station. I have some of that style as well, but I didn't have them on hand when I built that layout.

The R-15 automatic crossover is a lot easier to find and also very fun in a yard like this. I first built a smaller proof-of-concept that just used the R-15 before working on the bigger one.



I will definitely build more automated yards like this in the future - as mentioned in the description I now have a pair of working 90s remote control points that I would like to try out. Getting both of my Round-Trip EF66s running in a yard at the same time would also be very cool, but would probably take some timing.



I worked on the layout of this yard for maybe two hours - I already had a pretty solid idea of how I wanted to use the Y rails and automatic crossovers, but getting them into a configuration that actually made for interesting yard work that the engine could actually carry out was hard. The second part of the layout is not nearly as interesting as the first because the engine takes so long to traverse the length of the yard and the R-10 u-turn over and over in its way to reset the double/single track point so it switches out of the loop on its way back. It took almost as long to get the engine to actually run the entire loop correctly, and I had to keep swapping the direction of cars and the engine until nothing derailed or went down the wrong track.