A model railway shunting yard standing on a workbench — a mug, a pot of pencils, and a hundred and forty metres of railway that runs itself. There is nothing to play. You watch it.
It is a tech demo for @antics/modelkit: every rail, building, tree, locomotive and wagon is GEOMETRY WRITTEN IN CODE rather than modelled in an editor. One unit is one metre, so the board is built to a real scale and then photographed through a long lens with the focus racked to a shallow band — the trick that makes something metres across read as something the size of a table.
The yard shunts itself off a real rail simulation. Cuts of wagons are made and broken up, turnouts are thrown ahead of them, signals clear for a through service and go back on behind it, and the gates shut before the train arrives rather than after.
A day goes by every ninety-six seconds. The sun sets, the lamps strike one at a time, windows light, a firebox glows on the footplate, head lamps put a beam on the rail ahead, and an aeroplane crosses dragging a pool of light. The next day is overcast — a different photograph of the same model.
Open it with a friend and you both watch the same yard.
How to play The Yard
There is no goal and nothing to lose. It is a thing to look at.
CONTROLS
- Tap the clock (bottom right) to jump between day and night. The hands keep running from wherever they land, so the cycle carries on by itself.
- Press N for the same thing, if you would rather use the keyboard.
- Tap the speaker to turn the sound on.
That is all of them. Nobody drives anything — this is a diorama, not a game. It had a driveable engine for a while, and that turned out to be a second subject arguing with the first one.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
- Wait for dusk. It is the best thing on the board and it takes about ten seconds: the light goes, the lamps come up one at a time, and the aeroplane times its pass to cross while it happens.
- The gates and the signals are telling you about a train you cannot see yet.
- The second day is overcast. A grey day is not a darker day — it is the same light arriving from everywhere at once, so the shadows go and the colour stays.
- Look at the edge of the baseboard, and at the bench it is standing on.
TOGETHER
Open the link on two devices. One hosts the yard and the other follows it, so you are both watching the same trains rather than two copies running apart.
