John Allen's TIme Saver Switching Routine

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Does anyone know how to setup the cars on the Time Saver Switching game that John Allen developed and how do the cars end up once completing the sequences succesfully? Thanks Scott

2

I’m thinking about building one of these myself.

Here’s a link with some great info:

http://www.wymann.info/ShuntingPuzzles/

more specifically - the direct link to the timesaver explanation:

http://www.wymann.info/ShuntingPuzzles/sw-timesaver.html

(keep following the links, he has several pages within the site on the timesaver, and he gets down to the nitty-gritty of the setup, etc.)

Here’s a link with a slightly better picture of the length of the track sections.

http://www.nscale.net/Article128.html

if you google Time Saver and John Allen, it’s pretty amazing what a phenomenon this thing was/is!

3

I think it involved 5 sets of cars to switch the sets have a number of cars in ascending quanity thus:

1 car
2 car
3 car
4 car
5 car

These are the cars (15 total) that needs to be switched. I may not be correct but that is the way I understand the timesaver.

4

CARRFan: Thanks for the info - went to the locations and got what I need. Amazing little exercise - I made up a Time Saver and have extended the spurs for practical applications however for the “game” I locate mid-rail buffers temporarily restricting the rail lengths to the correct car limits. Scott