I can’t really blame the guys from our modular club when they come to my layout for an ops session. I mean… it’s a lot more fun to drive the train than it is to do the conductors job. [:D]
The engineer has to hold the throttle and drive the train. Wow.
The conductor has to keep up with a handful of car cards with their waybills, tell the engineer which car is to be picked up and which is to be dropped off. He has to uncouple cars that are to be spotted and help guide the engineer to, hopefully… gently couple cars onto his train. He figures out tricky moves, along with the engineer, to get a car from a ‘wrong’ spot in the train to a better spot, using run a round moves or just an empty spur.
Very few of the guys jump up and down hollerin’ ME… ME… I WANT THE CONDUCTORS JOB!! when it comes time to assign crews for the trains.
I never have any trouble finding train drivers.
I’ve tried a sign up sheet that lists all the trains with a spot for each job i.e. conductor, engineer. That didn’t work. The engineer jobs were immediately grabbed which left the conductors. Everybody starts to study their shoe laces or the ceiling, or drift out to where the chairs and coffee pot is located.
I’ve tried a small box with little folded pieces of paper containing the name of the job and everyone drew for a spot, not knowing what they would get. That works a little better.
What do you other operators do to get your trains fully crewed (is that a word?
On all the layouts whre I operate regularly, including mine, we draw numbers and crews pick from there. It’s fair and the jobs rotate every month so everybody has an equal shot.
I can’t really blame the guys from our modular club when they come to my layout for an ops session. I mean… it’s a lot more fun to drive the train than it is to do the conductors job.
The engineer has to hold the throttle and drive the train. Wow.
The conductor has to keep up with a handful of car cards with their waybills, tell the engineer which car is to be picked up and which is to be dropped off. He has to uncouple cars that are to be spotted and help guide the engineer to, hopefully… gently couple cars onto his train. He figures out tricky moves, along with the engineer, to get a car from a ‘wrong’ spot in the train to a better spot, using run a round moves or just an empty spur.
Where are you finding these guys? I find the conductor’s job to be way more interesting than being an engineer. when there’s a 2 man crew because you have to use your head to solve problems. All the engineer has to do is what the conductor tells him to as far as movements.
Do you have any problem getting someone to be dispatcher? With the DS position, you don’t even get to see the trains moving. It’s a complete mind game.
Is your layout big enough or sufficiently complex to require 2 man crews? If it’s not strictly necessary, you can have the last laugh by assigning 1 man crews where a single person has to fulfill both positions. It might show them that the conductor’s job is at least interesting as the engineer’s. Of course, it’s always possible they would become irate and go on strike because it’s too much like work.
I have to operate on other people’s layouts since I don’t have one of my own. I’ve never seen it being an issue on those where 2 man crews are used. The one I operate on on a regular basis would be overcrowded with two man crews.
The dispatcher controls what traffic moves anyplace his authority applies (typically the main line outside of yard limits, certain branch lines, etc.). On my layout we use a timetable and train orders, so the dispatcher issues train orders, handles trains “OS-ing” arrival and departure times at various stations and so on. Any train not in the timetable (i.e. an “extra”) requires train order authority to occupy the main outside of yard limits. Train orders can also supersede the timetable if needed, so even scheduled trains can receive orders.
On a layout with CTC signalling, the dispatcher uses the signal system to grant authority.
Generally any member of the crew can dispatch if that’s the job he wants.
Busy yards may need somebody in charge to manage traffic flow through the yard and control how tracks are used. On a model railroad, the YM usually handles paperwork for cars in the yard, and may also run the switch engine. My layout has two large yards in addition to staging, and each has its own yardmaster.
To start off, I have everyone roll the dice, and the higher number picks the job they want, and then the next higher number, etc. until all jobs are filled.
Next time, the top number goes to the bottom, and everyone else moves up the list by one spot.
Rich, in our sessions the dispatcher is usually myself (as host) or one of the others that wants the job. His main job is to keep trains from running into each other or get into a situations they can’t ‘prototypically’ get out of. For instance, starting from my double ended yard, we run a west bound and an east bound train, one leaving to the left and the other to the right. Below is a very old track plan and you can see the yard at the bottom. The layout has been changed since this was made. The benchwork at the top as been redesigned to only 2 feet wide and extended another 8 feet to the right.
Essentially what the dispatcher has to do is give track rights to a particular train to a certain point because my mainline is only a single track and at some point the east and west trains are going to meet headon in their circuit back to the yard. The dispatcher wants that meet at a passing siding where one train or the other has to ‘go in the hole’, that is… sit and wait for the opposing train to go by on the passing siding. He wants to avoid a meet out in the boonies somewhere that one or the other train will have to back up several scale miles to let the other train by. That’s a no no. He has other duties but that, on most railroads is his number one job. He’s the guy that gives the go ahead on all movements. I guess
I can’t really blame the guys from our modular club when they come to my layout for an ops session. I mean… it’s a lot more fun to drive the train than it is to do the conductors job.
The engineer has to hold the throttle and drive the train. Wow.
The conductor has to keep up with a handful of car cards with their waybills, tell the engineer which car is to be picked up and which is to be dropped off. He has to uncouple cars that are to be spotted and help guide the engineer to, hopefully… gently couple cars onto his train. He figures out tricky moves, along with the engineer, to get a car from a ‘wrong’ spot in the train to a better spot, using run a round moves or just an empty spur.
Where are you finding these guys? I find the conductor’s job to be way more interesting than being an engineer. when there’s a 2 man crew because you have to use your head to solve problems. All the engineer has to do is what the conductor tells him to as far as movements.
Do you have any problem getting someone to be dispatcher? With the DS position, you don’t even get to see the trains moving. It’s a complete mind game.
Is your layout big enough or sufficiently complex to require 2 man crews? If it’s not strictly necessary, you can have the last laugh by assigning 1 man crews where a single person has to fulfill both positions. It might show them that the conductor’s job is at least interesting as the engineer’s. Of course, it’s always possible they would become irate and go on strike because it’s too much like work.
I have to operate on other people’s layouts since I don’t have one of my own. I’ve never seen it being an issue on those where 2 man crews are used. The one I operate on on a regular basis
We keep track and rotate for now. But since not everyone shows up for every session that’s not always good. And since drawing jobs(pieces of paper) out of a hat,rolling dice, etc involve chance, some have been stuck 2 times in a row with jobs they don’t want.
We are considering a priority system. That is, those who come and do the work have some level of priority in the selection process. This should help participation. If you miss your ops session job, that’s OK, you’ll have it when you get back. That way, guys don’t just miss the ops session when they’re doing a job they don’t like. Keep in mind that some train driver jobs are more fun than others. Honestly, we don’t have a problem as the guys most times have multiple jobs.
The host can do any job he wants. I, as the host, generally take whatever job is left over, or I do the hardest one. The reason I do that is because it is my RR and I built it, so I know how all the positions are supposed to work better than anyone else. I want my operators to have fun so they will come back.
For operations on my layout, there are only Engineers. If I did have more people come, I may have a Dispatcher or Conductors. However, there is not really enough room for more than five people. I have four operating positions for Engineers including a Yardmaster, and can have a Dispatcher if someone is available.
The Dispatchers job can entail many things, or few things, depending on the size of the layout. Generally, I think of a Dispatcher as a person that sits at a panel with a track diagram on it with train markers, and makes sure the tracks are clear for trains to move to different points on the layout. The panel can be a simple magnetic board, or a computer generated board with loco & train markers, show the positions of the turnouts, what tracks are occupied, and show all signal indications. A Dispatcher can also write or hand out train orders that allow trains to move. A Dispatcher can also be the person that assigns the trains to the engineers. A Dispatcher can also be all of the above. The Dispatcher on my RR would be
We have a ‘Job Board’ and crews sign up for jobs as they arrive(as long as they are ‘qualified’ for the job). Get there early and you can pick your job! We had to set some limits for jobs like the Pt Charles Yard operator. That middle of the road yard gets lots of activity, and we cannot have an inexperienced operator running it. Usually we will put a ‘newbie’ with the experienced operator so he can ‘learn’.
Once your ‘run’ or job is ‘Complete’ you can mark up for another job or take a break.
I pose this question generally, to no one in particular.
What is the least number of guys to make it work?
Can one guy be engineer and conductor?
If you only have two guys, is one the dispatcher and the other an engineer/conductor, or are both guys an engineer/conductor, or is one guy the engineer and the other guy the conductor.
If you have three guys at the Ops session, break it down for me in terms of their duties.
I totally agree and we do something similar with excel. And we have a few unit trains which save even more. Since our eyes aren’t real good, we don’t normally use car #s. We say something like black NS coil car. We don’t have a lot of cars that look alike, except intermodal. So in that case we say something like 53" well car with 2 Pacer containers ea(2 of them) So, we have Origin/Destination, RR, Car Type/Color, Load Info, Car Qty and Misc per line.
Andre, sometimes that’s exactly what we do. One person can easily handle engineer and conductor jobs if need be and some guys even prefer it. On my layout a ‘session’ last about 45 minutes to an hour 15 minutes depending on experience, the train to be worked, cars to be moved out of the way to complete a job etc.
Jarrell
Hmm. Is it sometimes necessary to have 2 man crews because you get enough people and need to find a “job” for all that show up? I can’t speak for other people. The only job I don’t particularly care for is train crew on a through train. It’s not so much a case of not liking it as preferring jobs where the brain is continuously engaged (DS, yardmaster, crew on a local freight).
Where I operate on a regular basis, it’s normally the case that the layout owner will ask if someone wants to do a particular job and there’s normally not a problem getting all jobs filled. OTOH, we get maxed out at around six people. Also, every one of us has held down every job available, so that may be part of why there’s not much of a problem divvying up the work. We all know what’s involved since we’ve done it all.
There may be one other factor involved. Dave, the layout owner, has two sessions a month as a matter of routine, so even if someone takes a less favored job at one session, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll be doing a different job the next time which may only be two weeks away. It may be that frequency that prevents people from avoiding jobs.
I avoided dispatching for quite a while because it seemed somewhat intimidating (not to mention the fact that we use FRS radios for communication and if you screw up, everybody not only knows it, but lets you know they know it). Now I quite enjoy it, even though it keeps me out of the train room. It actually kind of surprised me to find it was enjoyable.
Two threads on operation, I’m not sure what thread to ask this on, but I’ll use this one anyway.
I see that the average op session is about one to two hours. How long would that be in real time? Also if in real time, it takes a tanker 24 hours to get from point A to point B, and the op session over, does the tanker & the loco stay at point B until the next op session? What does the host do when all the operators go home?
To answer the original question, I use one man crews on my layout so its not a problem and i prefer to be conductor so that’s not a problem either. A lot of times I will swap off with the other person, first half of the run I’m the conductor, 2nd half I’m the engineer.
In most cases the host is not the dispatcher, the host is “superintendent” or “trainmaster” and is there to answer questions, make decisions, instruct people and fix things if (and when) they break.
The dispatcher dispatches trains. The dispatcher issues authority ont he main tracka nd manages the movement of trains over the main track by issueing train orders, track warrants, or lining signals. Teh dispatcher also keeps a record of train movements (the train sheet).
Could be. The yardmaster manages the yard. The yardmaster decides which cuts will be switched, when trains will be built, which cars will make or miss trains, directs the movements of trains entering and leaving the yard. The yardmaster position may be combined with the lead switch foreman or could be a separate person. On one layout there are two yardmasters, one does nothing but plan the switching and write switch lists, the other directs traffic in the yard, plus there are 3 single person switch engine crews.
Switch crew : switch cars in yards.
Crew caller : organizes guests into crews and gets crews ready for trains.
Agent : manages the car forwarding system, writes switch lists, rebuills cars, operates the computer if a computer list systems is used (may be called a yard clerk or PICL clerk (pronounced “pickle”))
The 1 to 2 hours IS real time. If the railroad uses a fast clock, the clock may indicate the passage of more time, but it lies. We don’t use a fast clock and our sessions run around 2 1/2 hours.
I can’t answer for other people, but where I operate, when the session is deemed to be over, everything just stops and we pick up where we left off next time. Therefore, if any train is in the middle of its journey, it just stays there until the next session. If the yardmaster is in the middle of making up a train, the action just stops and the equipment sits until the next session.
I don’t know what other layout owners do when the op session is over, but the crew to which I belong has a 1/2 hour post mortem/discussion/pastry eating session (Dave’s wife is an excellent baker). What happens after we leave, I don’t know since i’m not there. There is only one train that I know of that may require action prior to the next session. If it’s in staging, the locomotive needs to run around it. If it’s in Pacific Grove, it’s left as is and the next crew does the runaround (the train is SP’s “Del Monte”).
