Any suggestions on the best way to provide fairly realistic operation to a railroad?
Wow, that’s kind of like asking what’s the best car in the world or who’s the most beautiful movie star. A lot depends on what size layout you have, what type of operations you like (point to point, switching, industrial, etc.), and the theme of your layout. Kalmbach has published a lot of excellent guides on realistic rail operations as well as having some downloadable CD’s here you can buy. I suggest you think about some of the things I asked and get a hold of some of these books.
It also depends on what you mean by operations. Operations can mean what methods you use to authorize trains to move on the main track or it can mean how you route the individual cars on the layout.
Kalmbach offers several books on various operations. There is the railroad industrial and operations SIG group on Yahoo groups. It is my experience that railroad operations are rarely discussed on any of the lists other than the OpSig Yahoo group.
The major N American methods of controlling main track authority are timetable, train orders, double track, CTC (centralized traffic control), track warrants or DTC (direct traffic control). Each of these methods have their own benefits and challenges. many modelers use a “mother may I” verbal method to tell trains where and when to go. A lot of the methods are condensed or simplified for model RR use.
For car forwarding, routing the cars, the goal is to simulate the patterns cars would move over the portion of the railroad you model. Typically there are 3 methods of doing this, some sort of marker on the cars, a “car card and waybill” or a list system. Each has its benefits. Some methods are supported with computer software, some are totally manual systems.
Each choice is era dependent and there are multiple variations of how detailed you want to get. Some people use a car card system and don’t even worry about car numbers. Some people have all the prototype waybill information down to the weights. Your choice.
Dave H.
Why not start by showing us a plan of your layout?
Quick, Henry, the hammer! Got to get the lid on this can of worms!!!
Without being the least bit facetious, I can say:
- Pick a prototype that puts EVERY POSSIBLE train movement on a timetable that has the force of Holy Writ. (“Extra train? What extra train? We’ll just run the wrecker as freight 531re, and move those boxcars tomorrow.”)
- Design a layout that makes exact fidelity to that timetable (over the span of a few stations, not including major terminals) feasable.
- Acquire a roster that permits delivering an appropriate train to the visible track (on schedule) a straightforward proposition.
- Simulate the actual, observed (preferably with one’s personal eyeballs) operation of that prototype on the trackage being modeled.
Ever since Doug Smith first wrote about car card/waybill operation back in 1960, there have been a plethora of car routing systems designed and described (including coded thumbtacks stuck in holes in car roofs.) I am NOT going to describe mine, which includes such niceties as an individual schedule card for each specific train as part of the card deck for that train.
What I would strongly suggest to the beginner is - KEEP IT SIMPLE! Bells, whistles, frills and complications can be added as the skill level increases and the need manifests itself.
The obvious question; Does anybody actually do what I described above? Guilty as charged!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - operating the prototype’s timetable 24/30)
Operations Special Interest Group … useful quarterly magazine, low dues
My own modest Introduction to Ops pages
A thread from this site discussing the above link
Another item from my site describing fun operations for the solo operator
Tony Koester’s Kalmbach book Realistic Model Railroad Operation is a good beginning reference, well worth the price, IMHO
General advice would be to start small with the basics, then add complexity and challenge over time. That reduces the MTTF (“Mean Time to Fun”)
Byron
I have a point to point RR and it is 8’ x 12’ with about 50" of mainline and a large yard at one point and a smaller yard with a large industrial area and coal mine at the other point. Does this help?
How do your trains run and what is their purpose. Is there staging or room to create staging to deliver and receive trains from the rest of the world?
And which operation are you interested, how to coordinate and direct the movements of trains over the main track or how to direct or coordinate the movement of cars between destinations.
Dave H.
How are you going to get three trains across a single track main over a mountain with just one helper availible?
Those kinds of questions makes Dispatchers. Is it a first class train? Or a second section? How about a MAIN train? Gives a Dispatcher a headache. Heck how about all at once? =)
Sounds a bit over yarded. Thinking out lout here. So cars in the larger yard are pretended to have arrived from somewhere. They are destined for the industries or some point further down the line from the second yard. At the large yard they get classified into trains going to the industries and trains going to the small yard. At the small yard cars are re-classified into pretend departing trains.
I hope that is a misstype and the mainline is more than 50 inches long. In this scenario, I don’t see any purpose at all for the second small yard. Is there anyway you could pretend the small yard is more industries?
I suppose that the large yard could be used for pre-made trains that arrive to the small yard. The small yard makes up trains to go to the industries. Cars from the industries are brought to the small yard, classified into trains and sent back to the large yard.
For this operation I would think that a simple card operating system would work.
Did you have a chance to read any of the links I posted? An hour or two spent with that material might give you some basic ideas. From that you could come up with specific questions. I think you’ll find folks are better able to help you if your question is more defined.
Another thing that would help others help you is a simple sketch of your layout.
Byron
Staging is an interesting deal. I have no real staging track. At each end of the line I do have the track leading to points beyond so in theory I can receive traffic from the rest of the world. There is an interchange track as well.
I guess both. I want to be able to direct freight from industry to industry as well as train movements from yard to yard. Does that make since?
50’ . Sorry!
Take each one separately.
For moving the cars there are basically three types of systems. Those that put some sort of marker on a car, those that uses a “car card” and those that use lists. The basic intent of all three is to assign a destination to each car. Car cards are probably the most popular method. Each car on your railroad has a car card. MicroMark sells packets of car cards or you can make them from heavy paper (67-110 lb stock) Take a piece about 2" wide and 5 " long and then fold the bottom 1 1/2 inches over and secure it on the sides to form a pocket. Many people use a word processor or spreadsheet program to print car initials and numbers and the car type on the top of the car card instead of hand writing it.
For each shipment you have a “waybill”. A small card about 1 1/2 in wide and 3 in tall. There are four places you can write destinations on the waybill, two sides and a top and bottom half. A waybill is placed in the pocket of a car card and that gives the car a destination. By writing different destinations on the 4 positions and by turning the waybill over and upside down you can put up to 4 successive destinations or “moves” on a waybill. Think of your destinations like you address an envelope. Don’t make each step in the journey a destination or move, make the final step the destination.
The nice thing about car cards and Wabills (CC&WB) is that there are many many ways to organize the moves and almost any level of detail is possible, from very basic to very detailed. Plus the good news is that if you make the cards yourself, it can be done very economically.
The next thing you have to do is decide what trains you want to run. There
Hi Byron –
Have read the stuff above (well - only a few posts in the Yahoogroups forums), but still feel like I need a little advice on how to adapt this to my layout.
You write “First step, decide (roughly) how many cars on average you wish to appear at each industry each session”.
I am still a little confused about this step. I figure that a session for phase 1 of the layout (see figurer below) is pretty much going to be one train in, one train out, since I won’t have any real staging for phase 1.
An arriving switching train will have to be staged on the mainline at the front of the layout just having arrived from the yard before the start of the session, and the session will end with the switcher ready to bring out the cars to be brought back to the yard.
An arriving or departing train can max have 9 cars if I am going to be able to switch cars in or out of the industries:
Picking the region you are in wherever you are and tracking down the raw materials needed by each industry.
Some cars will go back and forth constantly to the same place for more loads.
Other cars might come in from the opposite coast of the USA or even out of Canada for the needed raw material. When empty, they go back to the yard for re-direction to a shipper that is loading BACK to that car’s home rails or nearly so.
Coal Mine.
Power plant.
Step one. Coal car is empty. That waybill should show it consigned to the coal mine.
Step two. Upon arrival at the coal mine, it takes one ops session to “Load”
Step three. The new ops session will show that coal load going to the power plant.
Step four it should arrive at the power plant and be unloaded. Ready for the next ops session back at step one.
The problem is researching an area of the USA to find a suitable shipper/reciever and or invent your own.
I use micromark’s card system with the 3 slot boxes marked Spot (Set out), Hold and Pick up. That way the coal car will arrive on one ops session and be set out on the power plant siding. That waybill is moved to the HOLD slot so that tomorrow’s crew will leave that car alone while it is being unloaded. At the end of THAT session the waybill is moved to the pickup slot telling the NEXT OPS session crew that the coal car is empty and ready for pickup.
Confused yet?
In the meantime there are additional coal cars floating about the system with thier own cycles feeding the hungry powerplant.
I wouldn’t. With as small a layout as you have 4 move waybills would be overly complicated and aren’t necessary.
I would create a car card for each car.
I would create a waybill for each SPOT.
The first operating session I would pick a waybill for each of the 9 cars in your train. Then I would spot them.
Before the next session I would remove the waybills from any of the cars that have been “loaded” or “unloaded”. I put those waybills with the other non-used waybills. From that collection I would draw 9 new waybills for my train. Every car without a waybill is an outbound, spot the cars with waybills.
Repeat each session. You will never over spot an industry and you will vary which industries get spotted every session.
Dave H.
Actually, in a “closed system” like your small layout, I think Dave H. has it right … 4-cycle waybills are probably more than you need. His suggestion of single-use waybills is great for a layout like yours.
On my own small switching layout I’ve used similar simple 1-move waybills, which worked fine. Later, I made a series of three interleaved switchlists just for something different, but the simple waybills as Dave described worked just as well (or better, since there was more variety).
Start small, keep it simple, add challenge as you get some experience.
Byron