Most of you guys here have seen my layout and know what i have been up to with it. Well I played around with the layout a little and here is what I found.
More industries would be nice but there simply is not enough room.
I am going to have a rule on my railroad that makes every engine use the wye at one point or another. The rule is all engines going up grade out of the town must be short hood forward. This means that at one point or another you will have to run the engine through the wye and turn it. the engineer can choose to make this happen at the beginning or end of his run.
There will be 4 daily trains and one through train every couple of days. The dailys are 3 or 4 cars dropping off and picking up, one in the AM and one again in the PM. Then there is an AM commuter train and a PM commuter train.
Here is my idea
7:30 AM Morning commuter train arrives at the depot.
7:45 AM Morning commuter train departs and leaves for the yard. (loop around the layout once then turn the engine at the wye and run back up to the yard)
8:00 AM Morning Freight leaves the yard (the passenger train should be turning around at this point getting ready to head back up to the yard)
Switch the town as needed, if there is a delivery from the lumber mill to the barrel factory then the lumber must be taken to the yard first for sorting and to be delivered on the PM run.
12:00 PM (every other day), a through freight leaves the yard. (2 loops around the layout at slow speed. This train has priority so the local switch crew must take the siding as needed. After 2 laps the engine must be turned and return to the yard. This simulates the outbound traffic leaving the town and then new inbound being brought in for sorting.
3:00 PM Afternoon freight leaves the yard. switches the town again as needed.
3:30 PM Afternoon Commuter train leaves the yard to arrive at the depot at no later than 3:50. This t
Schedule looks pretty good, realistic for sure. You’ll probably tweak it as you go, find things during ops you didn’t expect. Just stay flexible and tackle the issues as they happen.
Do you have a team track? About the easiest industry spot to model and can take just about any type of car.
Your plan sounds OK to me, and should be tweaked as you get a few sessions under your belt.
Do you have a place that you could use as an interchange track? A siding somewhere where an industry won’t fit, preferably at the fartherest point from your main yard. You would then actually have cars spotted on it that an interchange run could be made to. Taking a string of cars from the yard and swapping them out with the cars on the interchange track and returning to the yard.
I have based my operating schedule on one days work. Each session lasts about five hours. During that time we run about 44 trains. This includes the yard jobs that classify cars. I have four operators including myself.
The last two posters have it right, and that’s my experience as well. Since you have to start somewhere, either make something up (what it looks like you have done) or grab a real-life timetable.
But the golden rule in my book is “never let the timetable interfere with a good operating session”. In other words, tweak the schedule to keep it fun for your operators. It should be challenging, but achievable.
Looks like a realistic, easy to understand operations plan where a visiting modeler would feel like he/she is working a railroad that serves an economic purpose instead of just running trains in a circle.
The linky below is to my build thread. I changed some of the trackage around a little when I started building so it is not exactly like the track plan shows. The changes are photographed and you can see that they are for the good of the layout. I am starting some of the scenery right now and I will start a second log for that when I get a little more into it all.