I am building a medium size model railroad in HO scale. The layout wraps around the wall in half my basement. The room is about 11’ by 40’. Roughly 20 feet of one long wall is taken up by a three track (soon to be 5 track) staging yard, currently all three tracks are connected and can handle trains from either direction. See the schematic for more detail on the track arrangement.
I want to operate this railroad. It is set in roughly the current day-power includes models such as SD70MAC and ACe, GEVO, Dash 9 and SD75 six axle units along with rebuilt GP30, GP38-2 and GP40-2 types with a couple of switch engines thrown in. Mainline turnouts are #6, yard and spur turnouts are #4. The passing siding at WCMR Yard can handle the longest trains on the line, 21 coal gons plus 2 six axle units. Other sidings and spurs are significantly shorter. West Central Grain can load 7 or 8 covered hoppers at a time.
The story behind the railroad, which is called the West Central Minnesota Railway, is that the BNSF spun off a branch line that connected two of their main lines. This line was of little use to the Class 1 but a few shippers wanted to maintain service. As time passed the construction of a coal burning power plant made the route valuable to the BNSF and so they operate a coal unit train a day in each direction (one loaded and one empty of course). In addition occasional grain extras use the line on their way to and from the Port of Superior WI. BNSF also runs a manifest train across the line each way almost daily connecting Superior and Dilworth, MN.
The WCMR handles all on-line business. This includes a grain elevator, fertilizer plant, and box car dock where bagged beans are loaded for shipment in one town, and a pet food factory that receives inputs in tank cars, covered hoppers, and once in a while a bo
So the WCMR owns the tracks and built a yard, but the BNSF is the main user and in control of the traffic? All the WCMR does is serve the industries while not getting in the way of the BNSF trains.
Why not just ditch the WCMR part and have it be an BNSF operation with throughs and the local turn train? It seems to me the WCMR isn’t adding much operationally. In the proposed scenario were I WCMR management I would want to control the trains on my railroad.
The enjoyment part of the Park Rapids turn would not be the length of the run, but the complexity of the switching once one got there. If it is really just a single double ended siding and a single stub, a good way freight operator will have the most complex switching moves there completed in a couple minutes. Since you are modern operations I presume there is no caboose. Running the loco around the return train might be the most complex part of the switching operations. If one limited the speed to something really slow like 15 smph it might extend the duration of the run.
The “in-yard” switching of the pet food plant and other close by industries looks to be a much more interesting train.
For the small number of industries I would think that hand written switch lists are very workable. I normally hate the hand written ones because it gets so cumbersome holding all that paperwork and the throttle and the decoupling tool, etc., but that has always been on railroads with more industries for the train to serve.
An aside - Why is the yard so large and complicated? I would think two tracks, one for Park Rapids/branch and one for the local industries is more than sufficient. Perhaps a scenario for off-layout local industries might help utilize it. Have the Park Rapids train proceed on to some other “town” in staging before it returns. That way the extra tracks in t
In my imaginary world the WCMR acquired this trackage when the BNSF found it un-needed. Some years later, due to changes in traffic, the BNSF found they had made a “mistake” and asked the new owner what it would take to get trackage rights or haulage rights over the line. Always hungry for revenue the shortline was happy to accomodate. The way I have imagineered things this way is because the real line was abandoned and it seemed to me a good way to model an alternate reality where the line still exists. Of course there is a degree of fantasy to it but that’s fine with me.
The Park Rapids train would be quite simple, no doubt, and that’s a big reason why there is a proposed branch for them to work as well. The branch doesn’t yet exist so I can’t incorporate it into an operating session yet. The complication of this move that I didn’t explain is that the stub siding serves at least two customers and to deliver or pick up cars the train would have to move spotted cars out of the way and replace them when finished with the far customer on the spur. It wouldn’t be a real complicated operation but could be designed so a fair number of moves would be required to pick up and spot cars correctly. For example if a train comes to town with empties for the elevator, loads for the fertilizer plant, and an empty box car for beans and have a fertilizer car that has not yet been unloaded to move and re-spot, he would have to enter the elevator siding, push the loads out onto the main, leave his train in the siding, run around it, run up the spur to grab everything that is there, any cars that are to go back to the yard have to be shoved east on the main to clear both switches, grab the empty box off the siding (along with any cars in front of it in the train), pull that string back west onto the main, shove the bean car to the end of the spur, and respot the fert car that is still loaded along with loads if there are any. Then he has to spot the empty CH’s at the