About Siding Yard
A train arrives one wagon at a time along the through-line, numbered and shuffled, and it has to leave on the departure road in order: one, two, three. You have three dead-end sidings to hold what you cannot use yet, and a dead end is strictly last in, first out — the wagon you push in first is the one you get back last, so a wagon parked in front of one you still need stays there until you move it again. Everything you need to plan with is on the screen before you touch anything: the whole arriving order, the whole yard, and the number the departure road is waiting for. Picking a wagon up lights every road that will take it. From yard seven onward the obvious rule is not enough — every one of those yards was thrown away by the generator unless it could prove that best-fit parking fails on it — and every yard you are handed was cleared by the solver before it was handed to you.
How to play
- Wagons arrive in a fixed, shuffled order. The departure road wants them in number order, starting with 1.
- Pick the wagon at the front of the arrival road, or the wagon at the mouth of a siding. Every road that will take it lights up.
- Send it out if it is the number due, or park it in a siding with room. A wagon at a siding mouth can also be moved to another siding.
- With nothing picked up, tap the departure road to send every wagon that is ready, one after another.
- The yard is cleared when the whole train has left in order. There is no timer and no way to lose.
Tips
- Read the whole queue first. The full arrival order is on screen before your first move. Look several wagons ahead before parking, because the wagon at the front is often not the one that decides the yard.
- Keep sidings descending. Park a wagon only on a bigger number, so each siding counts down towards its mouth. Then every siding can empty in order and no wagon needs a second trip.
- Best fit stops working at yard 7. Parking on the smallest bigger number clears the early yards. From yard 7, the generator throws away any yard that rule can clear, so sometimes you must hold a siding back for a later wagon.
- Hazard stripes mean buried. A wagon with a smaller number parked on top of it wears stripes. It is a fact, not a verdict: dig it out by shunting the wagons above it to another siding with room.
Read the full Siding Yard guide (4 min read)
From the developer
Siding Yard is a shunting puzzle I built on 10 September. Numbered wagons arrive on a through line in a fixed order and have to leave on the departure road in numerical sequence, using three dead-end sidings where the last wagon in is the first out. It is plain JavaScript on one canvas.
There are four moves, and a solver checks every yard before it ships, so no yard reaches you that cannot be cleared. Par is the exact best possible move count rather than an estimate, because the best line always meets the floor of one move per wagon plus one for each forced park, and I proved that against an exhaustive search. Difficulty is set by how a player would approach the board rather than by the board alone: from yard 7 the generator throws away any yard that simply parking each wagon in the best-fitting siding would clear, which makes it a planning puzzle rather than a sorting chore.
On a narrow phone the yard is drawn as three bands sharing one throat rather than a shrinking horizontal yard: the queue wraps, the sidings never do. The interface art is from Hyper Casual UI Pack by Smashy Tech, and the locomotive is rendered from Low Poly Atmospheric Locations Pack by Palmov Island.
Son Hoang, who made Siding Yard
Update history
- Added music: Throne of the Fjords from alkakrab's Free Viking Folk Music Pack.
- Removed the 'Watch a video' buttons, which could never pay out here; hiring a shunter and opening a fourth siding still cost the same coins.
- New buttons, panels and locomotive art, and results now award up to three stars.
- Real loading bar, and every screen fits phones, tablets and desktops without scrolling.
- Text now scales with the screen; on a laptop the smallest labels had been 8 pixels.
- First version: shunt numbered wagons through three dead-end sidings so they leave in order, with an exact par for every yard.
Questions
Does Siding Yard save my progress?
Yes, in your browser's local storage. It keeps your current yard, coin balance, fewest moves per yard and sound setting, plus the yard in progress with its move history, so a reload brings back the same sidings and move count.
What if I get stuck?
The assist panel opens when nothing can move and says whether the yard can still be cleared. Undo and restart are free. A shunter making the next three correct moves costs 25 coins; a fourth siding, once per yard, costs 40.
Can I play it on a phone?
Yes. Tap a wagon, then tap the road it goes to; the layout stacks the roads down a narrow screen. On a keyboard, Q picks the front wagon, 1–4 pick sidings, Space sends and Z undoes.
Is every yard solvable?
Yes. Each yard is checked by a solver before you get it and rejected if it has no clean line, so a fresh yard can always be cleared at par without burying a wagon.
