"Turning Star" Convoluted Wye

So, does this take up less room than a standard wye?  I've never seen one like this before.

Fantastic, totally unique. What a great source of info this hobby has to offer!

I've seen two photos and I'm still scratching my head over it. It seems a more conventional wye would be an easier construct.

It's European. My take is that it was more economical than building and maintaining a turntable. I've modeled wyes and they seem to take up about the same amount of space, but that's for North American equipment. These look like they were designed for those short European locomotives at the end of the line. 

The small one above occupies a space about 6'x6' without tails; with the tails added it would be about 8'x10'. An O-72 conventional wye requires about the same area.

Very interesting Matt.  I never heard of a turning star before. Thanks

I just tried making one with Atlas O72 switches, and it's not coming out very well, so I quit messing with it since it wasn't taking any less room than a standard wye with the same switches.  But it is a very interesting thing.  Maybe someday I'll include one in a layout.

I can see the value if one or more of those 3 star legs can take you to additional destinations... but for merley turning the train around, I'm scratching my head asking wye?  Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.

Ron

I'm thinking the same thing.... You really can't turn anything around, or can you?

Sorry Matt, but the posters above are correct. You are missing one more spoke on the star....

I'd hate to try to wire one in two rail.  I can't either see there is any saved space,

except where the one leg runs between buildings into the yard.  Should greatly increase your opportunity for derailments and dead spots over crossings.

Matt's drawings are of the star itself.  If you look at his FreMo picture, you will see that the two star ends with the #4 or #6 switches continue on to the mainline.  So, if an eastbound steam engine backs into the star from the east, it takes the left leg turnout to the wye switch stub.  It then backs from the wye stub into the other switches stub.  That last switch is thrown and the engine is now heading back to the mainline westbound.  Turnaround successful.

Chuck

That's it exactly. I omitted the leads onto the main to conserve space. Basically the design appears to avoid the cost of building/maintaining a turntable but I don't see why they didn't just go with a wye (there may be other reasons). For North American steam (which is almost twice the size of a lot of European steam, the tails off the turnouts would be so long that you could build an entire engine facility in that space.

I posted it because of the unusual track arrangement, which might be fun (and expensive) to build, a challenge to wire, and would take up a lot of space, but it would definitely stimulate conversation. I can hear the "there's no prototype for this" comments and visualize the dropping jaws when the photos are presented.

The way I see it, this requires 2 more switches and 3 crossovers compared to a standard "Y" configuration and doesn't save any room. It also takes 4 moves vice 1 to complete the turnaround. I can't think of a reason to use such an expensive setup other than it seems designed to fit a very specific location around existing buildings, etc.