Just wondering how many people spend alot of time switching. Do you do it a few minutes a day, or spend a hour or more? Do you take the cars from one point to the other on the layout?
Just curious.
Me…I am getting there (switching wise). I have a few sidings at my cement plant, and hope to add more sidings through out the layout. I would probably spend 30 minutes or so. Depending on the mood I guess.
Well, for now, I only run at the club. But Switching and running get about equal shares. It does depend on mood, nd how busy things are.
I’ve mainly just run in circles for most of the time I’ve had a layout, but that was b/c of bad electrical wiring and no ground throws. That should change w/ my new layout though, good yard to switch and plenty of industries. I tend to like just letting the train roll though.
My local runs every other day and can take anywhere from 30 min to 45 min to switch out cars, and if the Executive Fleet has to be moved (im kind of a business car nut, i have over 9 of them sitting on the railroad) that adds more time.
My layout isn’t really designed for a lot of switching, mainly because there aren’t many ‘industries’ in the territory I’m modeling. What switching I do is normally trading off my steam power from “Valley” to “Mountain”, and setting out cattle cars ‘in season’. I do have a fairly large yard in Deer Creek where I occasionally break up and make out trains, but as far as ‘industrial’ switching, there’s not a lot.
I do run several ‘turns’ per week between Deer Creek and Sierra City, using one of my 2-8-0’s and a short cut of cars, but for the most part, the trains that come through Deer Creek pause only long enough to change out to heavier power. Hopefully this summer I can add a large holding yard on the opposite side of the garage, which will allow me to do a little more making up of trains. We’ll see–I’ve got so many other projects planned that I have no idea when I’ll get around to that, though.
Tom [:D]
When I run Operations on my home layout, we run for about two hours, and most of that time is spent switching on our point-to-point railroad.
I have two freight yards, a staging yard, a passenger terminal, and two local freights. Both freight yards also have in-yard set-outs.
In all, I have around 30 freight sidings that get serviced. I only run about 8 mainline trains plus the two local freights.
Switching is where it’s at for me. Just running a train is like watching the grass grow. There’s no challenge to it.
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
I do all my running on my layout by restaging (big job) between ops sessions. I will run a train on occasion to test something - new loco or track work. Other than that, not much running at all.
Because of my work schedule in the past, operating sessions are hard to schedule and not as frequent as I would like. That is changing now that I “retired” again. Anyway, the railroad is set up to operate in a cycle mode when no sessions are scheduled, so I run for an hour or so virtually every day. I run a sequence of road trains, plus switching duties, and keep track on the laptop of where trains are when I quit. Some days I may do more switching at yards, then the next time, road trains do most of the running. I have done it this way for many years, and I still enjoy it very much.
I do prefer an even mix of switching and road work.
Bob
Bob,I am happiest switching cars and I usually sign up for either the freight or passenger terminal at one HO club and at the N Scale club time wise about 6-7 hours Friday night and 4-5 hours Sunday-usually starta gathering after church…If those jobs are taken I will sign up for a local or dispatcher…I really hate just running trains…On my past ISLs I can spend hours switching cars by working several “days”.
Thanks for all of the response. I am getting excited about my layout is coming together. I wanted to see how many people do more switching than laps, I guess you can say.
I love watching the NS back in NC doing alittle switching. I always wanted to add it to my layout. I even enjoy watching some people do it on youtube. I will be there soon, I hope.
I have a large layout that was designed for operations. It has a 13 track classification yard and lots, a couple interchange points, and lots of industries, so the plan is to do a lot of switching. I even intend some passenger car switching. Right now I am working hard at getting the layout scenicked. I’ve read about a lot of modelers who do full fledged operations with large portions of the layout lacking scenery, but that just doesn’t have much appeal for me. I want to have reasonably completed scenes to operate my trains on but hopefully, that day is not too far away and I can begin doing lots of switching. Of course, I’ll always have the option of just running the trains over the mainline when that suits my mood as well.
So far I managed a couple of times to get some practice in this—I’ve got 2 old books on rail ops around here that got me off the butt to do this. So far I’ve got 4 yards that I can get some switching done—being a single track main that splits at a wye and goes to two terminal points makes for some opportunities ---- the industries I have involve agriculture so I also have the seasonal thing happening, ie; lots of stuff spring,fall; not so much winter—then we get heavy passenger traffic in summer, winter because of tourist activities----
I try to operate my switching layout daily. One mainline freight train drops off and pick up cars at sidings around the layout where three local switch engine jobs start work from. I might get 30 minutes or several hours to play trains, it is a continuous operation, so I just pick up where I left off the day before.
I recently spent quite a bit of time and effort developing and producing a card card & waybill system for my layout, which turned out for me to be quite a fun project. A couple of times I’ve gotten everything set up, made up my train and pulled out of the yard, but as soon as I reach that first siding and have to start thinking about how to break down the train to shuffle the necessary cars around, it starts feeling like work and I start just railfanning the layout.
Good question… as I am still building the layout of course; a quick analysis shows about 30-40% of the time I am swtiching. A lot more than I thought since I only have four switches. I suspect this will change as I get nearer to completion.
Peter
Robby,
All the time I spend operating my layout is spent switching. My entire trackplan is based upon a switching (shunting) puzzle…you guessed it a modified Timesaver. Because I don’t have the room to allow my trains to make circuitous routes - I have to shuttle cars from one place to another. As you can imagine, this would get boring very fast without some added difficulty. I can spend as little as 30 minutes on a problem - or as much as a couple of hours. If you throw in the complication of mainline traffic that must be accounted for; the situation further strains my limited gray cells.
Should you be interested in switching puzzles I suggest you Google “shunting puzzles” for an excellent website. Shunting puzzles are all the rage in many parts of Europe - where large run-through layouts are not feasible.
Happy New Year!
Ray
On my present layout, the smallest I’ve built so far, with “around the walls trackage rights” in the small laundry room (8X6), I have build one of the best (of my) layouts. It is point to point, of course, with one small 21 car capacity yard, two passing sidings, and sidings for nine industries and a two track team track. One of the industries has two sidings and another has three. In all, there are thirteen possible locations for as many as a total of 25 cars to be spotted. The usual number is about 14-15 however. It takes me 2 hours to switch the layout and I have built various secarios so that no two “runs” are identical. Some industries are switched each time, while others are switched as seldom as once every ten runs. I use a 4 to 1 fast clock and car-card routing. I have had this layout operating for five years now and operate it at least twice a week. The yard is “fiddled” after each run by the 0-5-0 switcher (!) so that a typical freight car only runs once a month or less. I model the early 1960’s and my locos all are DCC, sound-equipped. The sound is nice but the best thing about DCC is the incredible control it provides over engine speed. With a small layout, keeping the track clean is not a major issue with DCC. So, my total operating time is spent switching cars, hopefully realistically. As the old MR used to say on its cover, “Model Railroading is Fun!”
Happy new year!
John C.
Robby,
I have a continuous run around the room, which I use for interchange, but by far I enjoy switching the most. With connecticut towns you’ve got to like switching. I’ve got a small yard/maint. facility with a team track and freight house, some city switching and a small industrial park. I don’t have large layout (around the walls 10 & 16) but I can easily eat up a couple of hours switching.
Den.
Switching cars in a yard gets boring in a hurry for me. [zzz] (Ducks flying tomatoes and car weights) The delight of ops for a lone wolf like myself is to run a turn from one end of the layout to the other and back, switching towns and sidings as needed. At the end of the run the train returns to the staging yard where all the cars are swapped and arranged by hand. [:P]
Running the turn in this fashion gives the feeling of running an actual short line over the entire length of the road.
John: It sounds like we operate in a very similar manner. I have a number of shelves, on the walls, near my layout that act as “staging yards”…can’t beat the old 0-5-0 switcher can you? You mention using a 4:1 fast clock (something I have been contemplating)…does the 4:1 work well for you?
Ray