Modelling the 80s and west-of-Chicago area in H0 I have an impreesive choice of cars and roads to work through. I have a frightening pile of models… I’ve just been re-sorting them after my last house move (only just got round to it).
Some of the mistakes I made in getting this far…
Keep changing my mind about what I’m doing - usually based on a new great looking car coming out…“Gotta have one! Gotta have one”! What excuse can I come up with? (Truth is I don’t need an excuse I’m probably going to get one anyway…or two…or…
Forgetting that in any given location with a running track MOST cars simply run by. No one bothers about what’s in them, where they’re going or anything. We just like to watch the trains.- The exact same thing applies at shows/meets… if nothing is going on on a layout we check out the scenery, wait a little and move on to the next… It’s horrible but true - the layout that has a steady string of trains trundling by is the one with a crowd round it.
To me endless switching on a layout at a show is like watching concrete dry (same as paint but grey… you just want it to stop so that you can walk on it). It doesn’t matter how slow or fast the switcher is working… yes it does… at least with a whiz-around you have the eager anticiaption of something crashing off (Like F1 Racing). S L O W switching [V][|)]. Worst of all is S L O W switching with sound [banghead][banghead][banghead] Get [{(-_-)}]! The guy would wait for sound to build up, put the bell on, ease away, sound horn, brake slightly - over and over and over and over… switching the sam 3 roads ! AAAAARGH! When a sked to give it a rest to save everyone else’s sanity… at least turn the bell off…PLEASE!.. asked nicely… He said “But if the bell isn’t rung someone could get runover”! He meant it! I think someone “ran over” him sh
Your hope was realized at least in my case. Thanks for recounting your experiences. Several points answered nagging questions and doubts that pop up as I continue the pursuit of completing my layout.
I’m not a total “newbee”, but you’ve help me out too - by showing that it was OK for me to design the trackplan I liked even though certain layout design “purists” might sniff at it.
My favorite type of RR’ing is main line action, so that is why I included a continuous-run main line with a section visually separated from the industrial areas of the layout. A train appears from out of nowhere and disappears into nowhere. And I had to make some sacrifices in order to fit my minimum 30" radius mainline curves [required for my 89ft auto racks].
Since you seem to have a lot of information to share and are having trouble writing long posts, I suggest you use your word processing program to write the text, then copy and past it into your reply post.
This gives you the opportunity of writing and editting your text without interference and without the risk of losing what you have written (unless your whole computer crashes!). In addition, you won’t feel “rushed” to complete it.
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts. Very informative, lots of information and good ideas. Using a word processor might make the task easier on you and you’ll be encouraged to do more! LOL
Dave-The-Train,
Truthfully, I don’t know what to make about your post. There doesn’t seem to be any conclusions, just ramblings. But here’s my attempt at addressing your points:
I think you’re saying that changing your mind is bad. Why is that? Or are you talking about just buying anything you like and then try to justify it? Are you trying to model a real location with a real railroad? Or are you just winging it? The hobby takes all kinds, and if you want to run 89’ Hi Cubes but you are no where near an auto plant or along the line towards one…that’s your call. But if you are really trying to model the real thing, then you better do your research and find out what did and didn’t run on your RR and keep to it.
Personally, I model the NH, but I do have a small group of “too modern” cars that are, at the moment, place holders until more appropriate cars are purchased. When my layout has enough pre-1969 cars, then these modern cars will hit eBay or be placed in storage.
Here, I think you’re saying that most cars should just run through a layout. Well, that depends on if you are trying to be prototypical or if you just want to see trains roll. If you are trying to be prototypical, then that would depend on your RR and your location. Not all RR’s were that busy with freight traffic. Not all locations had run through freights. Take the Provincetown brand on the New Haven (that’s the line that went all the way to the end of Cape Cod). There was only one freight per day, the P-Town Local…and towards the end of it’s life, there were no passenger trains at all.
You are apparently saying that switching is boring compared to running on the main for a Open House or Show. I would tend to agree. Switching is not a good spectator sport. However, at an Open House, the switcher operator is a great person to ask questions. When I run a yard during my club’s Open Houses,
Make what you will [:D] Rather than saying “You shouldn’t do this or you shouldn’t do that” I’m giving a few examples of things I’ve learnt from broad areas that didn’t work well for me.
Changing your mind is fine… but it can be expensive… and frustrating. I don’t think that any of us can really have a lot of idea of where this hobby will take us when we start.
Except for a switching layout most traffic will roll through - or in and out a terninal
3.No! Endless switching is real exciting! Like watching a yo-yo. (That’s going to annoy the yo-yo sports freaks).
The bell guy was switching across a public road junction grade crossing… which is something that would extremely rarely happen constantly 'cos it would back up the whole neighbourhood.
I agree with that… I was warning Newbies… When I was a newbie I had these issues…
I didn’t know what I was going to like and went and changed my mind…
6 & 7. These arethe ones I want to really work on.
We tend to forget that rail cars are mostly used for bulk traffic… full car loads and multiple loads a lot of the time… because single loads and LCL get to go by truck an enormous % of the time.
We also forget that box cars mostly unload via side doors not end doors… so it is more appropriate to line a string of cars up along a long dock to load them. This is distinct from backing a string of semi trailers against adjacent warehouse doors. And distinct from constantly switching single cars against a short dock as required.
Semis get parked around a yard and placed by a tug moving freely. A string of box cars would need at least one siding/spur and constant shuffling. This happens but a long dock is a lot easier.
Something else that applies is that rail served industries tend to not work on a “just-in-time” inventory system but carry a warehou
There was a yard. Several sidings went directly into recieving buildings. A vareity of cuts of boxcars got shuffled and pushed into these docks with a man on a radio to ensure the switcher wont ram the cars off the ends of the siding into the production floor.
Once empty, the cars were pulled and sent away.
Yes I was in a truck with my own load of parts with like 50 waiting with me to unload. That switcher moved I think about 30 cars while I was there. Being a plant switcher it took some time for lunch. There were moments it will sit as if considering the workload left in the yard and decide what next to pull or push.
Even if you had all boxcars in a really big facility, it is easier to have one or few sidings to do all the work without having to “Run around”
If you were a town and you had sidings facing every which way and needed to eat into the local with it’s 15 cars to cut out sets and grab empties you will be there a while.
My variant on your theme/dilemma was my conscious decision to acquire exactly 1/700th of my prototype’s freight roster as of the first of my modeling month - which, by no coincidence whatsoever was the month in which I made the decision, September 1964. As a result, I have a bi-level auto rack, 1 each (where the prototype ran them in solid trains!) several ultra-high-speed container cars (one with a brake van permanently filling one container space) and reefers (one of which is a reefer-brake van) and other cars which will never have a destination on the modeled part of the Nichigeki-sen or its modeled connections.
My solution? Very simple, actually. Through freights. Mine run from staging, change engines from steam to catenary motor (or vice versa, or maybe not if diesel powered) and run on to staging. Some will drop a cut of cars to be classified and pick up an equivalent cut, but 70% of the cars run from staging to staging and back without ever being uncoupled. Some of them can’t be uncoupled! There are 8-car cuts of plain-vanilla box cars with one MKD coupler on each end and ancient Kadee K couplers everywhere in between. Likewise, those ultrafasts and a few other cars of similar characteristics are made up into a single train which simply runs through (and are also fitted with K couplers except at the two extreme ends.)
There are also a lot of cars that get switched out of through freights only to leave town on local freights that do no switching before vanishing into staging, there to languish until the schedule calls them back into view with new waybills and new destinations. More often than not, that will call for them to be either switched back into a passing through freight or blocked into the next local leaving town from the other end of the yard. Of the several hundred freight cars which pass through Tomikawa on a typical timetable “day,” very few are actually delivered to in-town destinations.
I always have known what I want to model. I’m a 4th generation resident of my town, and I want to model it…always have, always will. That only leaves the era. Modern era trains in my town are Amtrak, MBTA, or CSX…and not much freight at that (not to mention I’d have to electrify it all). The 1970’s? Ick. The 1980’s and 1990’s? Everything is the same: F40PH’s and B23-7’s. Ho-Hum.
Jump back to the 1960’s and earlier (the New Haven days), and it’s a regular cornucopia of different locos, paint schemes, equipment, and service…all running through my town.
For example, the New Haven RR in the steam era had four high revenue freight trains that left Boston heading for New York called “The Four Horsemen”. They left every half hour during the evening rush hour, and were critical for the RR to handle correctly. It was so important that the Chief Train Dispatcher himself would come in and sit in with the regular Dispatchers to make sure there was never a problem with “The Horsemen” in his Division.
Today, on the very same RR line, there are zero through freight trains. Only one local freight per day goes by my house. Why model that?
Again, that depends on the RR you are modeling.
Switching is fun to do, but boring to watch.
4 & 5) (skip)
6 & 7) I dunno about your loading dock theory, at least for modern operations. I live down the street from a large rail-served warehouse (actually, a couple of them), and they have no loading docks at all. They have roll up doors set flush with the building side, just like the truck loading doors on the other side.
That example you gave about the cars being pre-blocked for setting out? I don’t think that’s realistic in any era. Sure, the cars for the town they were switching were maybe blocked ahead of time, but according to real railroaders I’ve talked to, the local
6&7. So, without a dock, how do they load / unload rail cars? Forklifts? Do they use ramps into the cars?
Pre-blocked for setting out… depends on the road and time factors. Sometimes a train is pre-blocked and sometimes it is “rough marshalled”… somtimes a bit of both. Once on the road pre-blocked is quicker and easier to work. Where other traffic has to be avoided (the switching/local turn has to be in the clear before they arrive) pre-blocked is much better. Sometimes a train will be fully pre-blocked before it starts out. As cars are dropped and attached this ordering may be maintained or may become somewhat mixed up. Whether it gets mxed en-route or starts mixed up some trains will stop at places en-route to re-shuffle the cars for the work to be done ahead. Other times trains will be a muddle all the way through and each stop will involve picking out selected cars.
Personally I would prefer the originating yard switcher to do the messing about and leave me free to spot cars and collect and get on my way.
Docks used to be common in the old days. Now, the trend is to put in a door for each boxcar spotted. At Quadgraphics in Hartford, WI , they have 18 doors. The doors are spaced so that you have to break every joint, pull ahead 2-3 feet to line up the car door to the building door.[:(] Or, if you get longer cars, sometimes things don’t line up and you have to skip a door. [:(!] The place is served by a switchback off the main, with a capacity of 10 cars and 2 motors. It is not uncommon to spend 2-4 hours switching out Quad.[V].
I would think that if they would build over the track, and put in a continuous dock, that there would be much greater efficiency, not to mention 1 big door instead of 18 smaller ones.
Sometimes you can tell that the designers of such a place haven’t been in train service for a long time, if ever.
Pave the track over and concrete dock it over and build a new siding next to it you say??
What happens to your work hours at that specific industry if they actually built your suggestion? Would it be reduced to say 1 hour or less?
Put your idea up to Management, yes there will be a cost and shift a track but the payoff will reduce your lost time setting out 18 seperate spots over 4 hours. And… free up your train to serve more industries for more revenue!
Does the railroad charge the shipper for each door served by a railcar?
The place is 1/2-3/4 mile from the main, serviced by switchback. There is a track by the building for spotting, and another track that goes around it, with two crossovers in the middle. At the ends is a tail track, which holds the 12-13. The site is a bit goofy, and they say they couldn’t get the track put into the logical place.
Now, you take 9 cars up with you. Shove up to clear the lead switch, pull ahead to clear the crossover. Cut off the loads on the outside track. Pull over the switch, back up to gather up the mts. Shove back to clear the xovers, so you take 9 out to the main with you, the rest are left behind. Go out to the main, flip-flop loads and mts. Shove back up. Go thru the xover, get the rest of the mts on the outside track. Mae sure to restore the xover to straight. Start spotting the rear 9. When done with those, go to the outside track and spot up the first cut you brought up. Go back to the outside track, grab the empties, out to the main. Takes a long time to read it all, eh??
Now for how it should be:
Put the roof over the existing spot track, and take out the individual doors. Have one of the tail tracks hook up to the lead from the main. Shove up with 18 cars, pull the mts out, set th
Era plays a big part in your operation. You mentioned the 1980’s and a
lot of what you described is true for the 1980’s and beyond, but not true
for earlier eras (one of the reasons I model the early 1900’s). Modern
railroads are designed to drive out inefficiency, most “fun” model
railroads tend to maximize inefficiency (lots of carload switching and
spotting, timetable and train order (TT&TO) operation, helpers, engine
changes, etc. etc.)
The other major differentiation is between a show layout and a home
layout. A show layout is a display layout. It is designed to run trains
mindlessly in a circle. It is designed for the person who will run up to
the layout, walk around it once, oooo, aaaah, then run to the next layout.
I disagree that switching isn’t interesting at a show, you just have to
explain what you are doing. Running trains in a circle will attract
tourists, switching will attract operators and modelers.
For your home railroad you have to choose what you want. If you are into
railfanning then a railroad that is mostly through freight operations
might work for you. A lot of it depends on how you project yourself into
the model railroad. If you are seeing your self NOT on the train, but as
a railfan standing beside the tracks or tower operator, then the through
freight operation will interest you. If you see yourself as the train
crew then you will be more interested in a layout that emphasizes
switching and the inefficient parts of the operation. For a train crew, a
90% through freight, CTC operation can be deadly boring. The through
freight style operation will generally take more room and more equipment
to do effectively.
Switching is the mental game, the chess portion of model railroading (the
others being dispatching by any means, yardmastering or operating on
TT&