fiddle yard

fiddle yard (plural fiddle yards)

1. A section of a model railway layout that is reserved for storing and working on trains, often hidden from view.
   • 1999, Alan Postlethwaite, Odd corners of the Southern: from the days of steam, page 27:

     Such a halt would enhance any model railway, perhaps leading to a fiddle yard on the right.

   • 2009, Iain Rice, Shelf Layouts for Model Railroads, →ISBN, page 20:

     I know of a few modelers who take this concept to the ultimate by providing a dedicated cassette for each individual item of equipment; however, this requires more dedication than I'm inclined to! It also makes for a lot of high-precision work in the fiddle yard.

   • 2014, Richard Bardsley, Designing and Building Fiddle Yards, →ISBN:

     A scenic fiddle yard might seem like a contradiction in terms, since a model railway layout is generally split quite clearly into a scenic portion and a nonscenic fiddle yard. One of the arguments for hiding the fiddle yard is that it does not look as nice as the rest of the layout. The idea behind making a fiddle yard more scenic in appearance is to try to help to blend it with the rest of the layout, possibly even to make the layout seem bigger.