Years ago, I recall seeing an article in Model Railroader about switching competitions. This involved a yard situation with spur tracks, lots of switches, a bottle neck, one engine and several various freight cars. The object was to move specific cars from one spur track to another, baciscally rearanging all the freight cars, through the bottle neck, for the best time. Does anybody else remember this? Does this type of competition still go on? Are there game programs that have this feature, like a form of solitare? OK, so If nobody recalls this, I’m claiming copyright on the concept, effective today.
I believe there are a couple of variations on this. One is straight time, another is fewest number of moves. I don’t know if an of the simuation software has this “problem” built in.
A more interesting/challenging version is to perform cutouts on industrial sidings without interfering with a through line. I remember seeing the local EL crew sometimes hauling cars a mile or so to move from one pocket to another to not foul the through line while cutting cars in and out for delivery.
Hold the mailing to the U.S. Patent Office! This sounds a lot like the “Time Saver” that was developed by John Armstrong (?) way back when. I can’t remember if I actually saw or remember just reading about the competitions but I think they had them at the NMRA meets. There have been track plans developed that have the “time saver” as part of the yard …