Operations and Maintenance Manual

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Does your layout have an Operations Manual? Does it have a Maintenance Manual.

Here is the Manual of the LION’s layout.

PS: Opening as a download rather than in a browser works better.

ROAR

2

Wow! => As in Roar!

3

Very nicely done.

My operating manual is Peter Josserand’s Rights of Trains, and the September, 1964, employee timetables of the five (count 'em) rail operations piled up on my benchwork. Additional crew instructions are found on the pre-printed clearance cards for each of the 145 scheduled trains, most of which run daily.

Following the example of my former day job employer, my maintenance manuals are fragmented and located where they will do the most good:

  • The permanent maintenance record of each piece of rolling stock is on the back of its car card - which is always in the immediate vicinity, even when the car is taken into the air conditioned space for scheduled or unscheduled maintenance.
  • Documentation which came with locomotives and cars is filed in the rolling stock folder in the layout information drawer of one of my file cabinets.
  • Track diagrams and detailed descriptions of track construction are in the physical plant folder in the same drawer.
  • Electrical schematics, parts lists and such are in a subdivided folder - one subdivision for each zone of my MZL system. The folder also contains copies of the Ed Ravenscroft articles that describe the MZL system and my notes on my variations to that system.
  • The scenery folder is full of sketches, hand-scribbled notes and references to sources for information on techniques. Since only a few rough (VERY rough) landforms presently exist…
  • When I build or kitbash structures, their plans, instruction sheets and kitbash/scrachbuilding notes will go into the folder marked structures. For the moment that folder contains references to structure articles in Tetsudo Mokei Shumi. The kit instruction sheets for kits I already own are in the boxes with those kits.

Having spent the major part of my working life maintaining USAF aircraft, my opinions on documentation are fairly simple. It’s absolutely essential - an

4

Very nice! I undertand what you are doing better.