Yeah, i probably could send some boxcars and tankers to the rail dock. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, thank you Dan.
It was a JOKE! [:D]
You are?
discourse:
1. Verbal expression in speech or writing.
2. Verbal exchange; conversation.
3. A formal, lengthy discussion of a subject, either written or spoken.
I’m not surprised at all. It is what we do here.
They will spot and unload the train on arrival. The train would coming in on Saturday, be spotted on Saturday and be unloaded on Saturday. It would be pulled on Sunday and run back. Leaving reefers sit for 2 days without doing anything wouldn’t be very cost effective. There is a reason they call refridgerator business “perishable”. If just one car has a failure in the reefer unit while sitting there unattended over the weekend it will wipe out the profits on the whole train. I you are going to the expense of running a unit perishable train, there is no point it letting it sit for days without doing anything.
If you are modeling the 1950’s then yes digging out ‘spot’ cars would be appropriate. If its a modern operation you just spot the whole thing, you unload the whole thing, you pull the whole thing.
Actually what the railroad would most likely propose that the train loads and depart origin on Friday, run from Florida to destination on the east coast on Saturday and Sunday, spot Monday morning, unload, be pulled empty Monday night, Tuesday morning. It runs back to Florida Tuesday and Wednesday, cleans, inspects, refuels Thursday, spots for loading Thursday night - Friday morning and the cycle begins again.
Websters New Words for a New Century:
Sar-chasm: (sär"k²z"…m) noun; the gulf between the writer of ironic wit and the reader who doesn’t get it. [swg]
Driline: Alot of us older guys “got it” [;)]
Packers#1, don’t worry, no one was offended, as Foghorn Leghorn would say. “Its a joke son, your head is moving but ya aint laughing” [(-D]
Step #7.5 make sure the whole thing will fit in space alloted
No, you;re not nuts, and the idea is pretty realistic. Hope you get what you’re after, and good luck with the build![tup]
Well I’m 46 and I wish I were living in my parents basement. Ah the things I had the money for back then. Anyway back to reality.[sigh]
They bring up a good point Sawyer on the “movable” aspect of even your current layout. You just may have to prop it up against the wall for a couple or 30 years like me. Of course by then you may have a totally different idea. The fun never ends in this hobby. Keep on brainstormin’ this stuff. You have good ideas. Big dreams and ideas many times lead to big accomplishments. Or bankruptcy.[:D]
I still don’t get your reluctance to move the 4x8 into the larger room, and then tie the juice joint into that.
This gives you the ability to merge the operations of two small layouts into one larger one. You save on only needing one set of power supplies, electronics, etc. You won’t end up doing a lot of “handling” of cars and engines to run and test them in two different places. Perhaps most important, taking 2 rooms in your parents’ house for trains isn’t likely to go over very well. I know it wouldn’t have when I was growing up.
What would I do with this? Well, I think you’d be better off modelling 2 smaller industries, because the switching opportunies are just more interesting. The Juice Trains are relatively modern, so I’d imagine they are mechanically cooled, but if you were in an earlier era, you could “ice” the cars at a second facility before sending them out with “finished” product. Instead of 1 long module/section, think about a shorter, wider one, with a divider down the middle and a different industry on each side.
You bring up some interesting points, Mister B, and I agree with you.
A 4x8 would be easy to move, just remove anything not attached, turn it sideways, and bring it in. You say it can be taken out of the house? It can therefore be brought into the extra room; just follow the same procedures you’d use if you had to move.
I’ll also vouch for one operation rather than two. You need half the locomotives and freightcars (unless you plan on bringing them from place to place every time you want to run trains), only one power supply, and one larger layout is operationally a lot more interesting than two smaller layouts. Even if you decide the model the juice plant (which I still think is less ideal than a couple smaller industries) then you’d be able to get in a decent mainline run too, not just switching.
Plus, you don’t have to lug all your tools, scenery
P1:
You’re no more nuts than I was at your age, but if you build an eight foot long warehouse, it will dwarf practically any home layout and most club pikes…so maybe it’s not entirely the good kind of crazy this time. 
Keep a few things in mind. Longer spurs mean more cars, and cars cost a lot. There is a point, as people mentioned, as you make an industry larger and with more room for cars, when you stop adding fun complexity and start adding drudgery.
What I would do is compress the plant. Design it to use 6 or 8 cars. That way, you can assign a switcher to the plant, and it will look reasonably good, and you can shuffle the cars or move them around, as you said, without it becoming a boring job. Maybe four or five cars would be enough.
A plant with that capacity will be around 3 feet long in HO, still very large by model railroad standards, but able to fit a reasonably sized home layout.
Remember, it’s just as fun to move 1 car around as a block of 20, and it costs 20 times less in equipment.
OK, so I need to go back and read the article to see how often the train operated.
Mister B-this would only be a one or two year thing anyways, going to the bonus room.
Well, I can tell you that putting this in the bonus room is completely shot, my mom just got done getitng ticked off b/c apparently, I’m to messy when I work on a model railroad (utter freaking nonsense, I say!)
So right now, I need to step back and figure out how to do this.
Also, this kinda would be probably 30 miles from my branch and have nothing to do with it, period. And yes, I am debating whether or not to tear up my 4x8 again.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much, with as small a layout as you will be able to support on a 4x8 you will have to make enough compromises that getting the operation exact won’t really be feasible, you will have to compress things. My comments were mostly about the need to have sense of urgency about the turnaround and that the switching at a modern facility is minimal in the vast majority of cases.
Two quick juice train stories. Back in college my best friend had a friend who was a SEPTA engineer. He was running a commuter train N of Phillie at about 75 mph when he saw a GG1 nose passing him on the other track. That wasn’t that unusuall. One G went by and then another started to pull past. Since the other train was doing over 90 mph the friend thought since it had 2 G’s on it, it must be a late Amtrak Florida train. The 2nd G went by and to the friend’s suprise, Tropicana juice reefers started going by, it wasn’t an Amtrak train it was the Tropicana juice train!. The Juice train’s engineer was later removed from service for speeding.
Also my university, Drexel, sat right next to the ex PRR high line through Phillie, so we would see the juice train when it went through town. Our dream was a collision between the juice train and a trainload of vodka.