Operations question for proto-lancers

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Okay, guys…

For those who model a real segment of a prototype railroad, designing an operating scheme (such as train sequence, train numbers, loco assigments, etc.) is fairly straightforward. Do what the prototype did.

For the pure freelancers, it’s probably not as straight-forward. However, you have more leeway to tailor ops to your desires.

My question:

What do you guys, who model a fictional segment of a prototype railroad do?

I can imagine if you model a fictional stretch of a real division, you simply apply that division’s operating scheme (sorta how I developed my current train sequence for my PRR). But if you went all the way protolancing and invented your own entire branch or secondary of a real railroad (say, the Conrail Podunk Secondary), how do you design an operating scheme that makes sense?

Train designations would be somewhat straightforward (for example, PRR, then PC, then CR often used the endpoints of the train as designators, or something even more obvious like “TT1” for TrucTrain). But designing a sequence that makes sense, as well as a plausible balance of through and local freights (or passenger service), sounds like a challenge.

So, what do you guys in this boat do? Just curious!

2

Dave,

I would look at several similar prototype lines and how they were scheduled. Also, the type of traffic generated on-line will have a lot to do with frequency. (a busy coal mine or an auto parts manufacturer will require more service, and probably dedicated trains, than a series of smaller industries that can worked from a local.)

If your fictional branch makes a connection to a foreign road, that opens up still more possibilities. If there’s a yard at that end, then you might have turn that originates at “your yard” runs up the line with interchange traffic, and comes back with whatever cars the foreign road has for you. If there’s just a switch and a connection, you could model a trackage rights situation where the foreign road comes across your branch with it’s own power and crew. (that’s a nice way to “run what I want”)

In my case, I have a fictional interchange with my Laurel Valley Railway, which uses an actual connection on the WM at Rockwood (where trackage rights over the B&O Johnstown Branch reached mines around Somerset, PA.) Since the LRV utilizes the old turnpike tunnel at Laurel Hill to reach a connection with the PC at Latrobe, that sets up a through route for additional fast freight service, as well as the coal and stone traffic generated on-line by the LRV.

Following the Alphabet Route model, I’ve added symbol freights BL-1 (Baltimore-Latrobe westbound) and LB-2 eastbound. Laurel Valley power runs as far east as Hagerstown, then the WM takes the train the rest of the way to Port Covington. This is similar to the prototype, where Reading power would bring west bound Alpha Jets out of Rutherford, across WM trackage to Hagerstown, where the WM would provide power for the rest of the trip.

This also makes life fun for the yard operator, who not only has to arrange for the blocks of cars to be picked up and set out, but also has to line up the power swap and switch out the

3

Really its not that much different than what the “prototype” modelers do. By the time any segment get compressed and contorted into a layout, unless somebody is modeling just one station, or an incredibly small railroad, the operation is significantly different from the real thing and is designed to support the mix of trains the owner wants to operate.

Does the modeled line add a parallel route? Does the modeled line replace a real route? Does the modeled line serve an area the real railroad never served?

The real key is deciding what you want your railroad to do and to give it a “legitimate” purpose. Then pick the mix of trains you want and the quantity of trains you want. Name them in a consistent fashion and during an operating session, nobody will know the difference.

Dave H.

4

I ‘protolanced’ the JNR Nichigeki-sen by taking the real timetable of the JNR Chu-o-Nishi Hon-sen and changing the names of the stations. Track plans are freelanced since I have a garage, not a basketball court, to work in.

The Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo is freelanced all the way - around the timetable of a coal-originating JNR branch located several hundred kilometers away on a different island.

In my world, most trains are simply numbered. Those passenger trains which have names have the same names as the ones that ran in the Upper Kiso Valley in 1964.

Now all I have to do is get enough railway built that I can operate it and not just fake it.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - TTTO, 24/30)

5

The reason I ask is because I have too many druthers and not enough givens when it comes to choosing a segment of the real PRR to model. What I want:

I want it to be set in Pennsylvania, preferably east of Altoona.

I want to dual-era it so sometimes it’s the 1950s and other times it’s around 1980. That means it would have had to survive PC.

I want some degree of passenger service (to that end, it would be nice to have an Amrak run in the 1980 version, but I’ll “foobie” that no matter what).

I want some industry and urban scenery, with plenty of open country too. Pennsylvania has been described as Philadelphia to the East, and Pittsburgh to the West, and not much in between.

I want a good balance of local and through freights, with switching opportunities, in both eras.

Givens:

I can’t really start expanding my layout for several years.

It’s a tall order, I know. The trackage around my family’s ancestral home of Lancaster County gives me all of that (maybe not too urban, though), but was under catenary, which is difficult to do Pennsy/Conrail style in N. The new Kato GG1 comes to the rescue to a point, but none of the other freight electrics of either era (1950s or 1980) are available in N. Neither are PRR-style catenary poles.

So, I’d lean toward a Philly to Harrisburg-style local but no wires (or maybe just a little for show). It would have to be fictional then.

Just thinking aloud again, as I often do.

In that respect, I’m much like Spacemouse![:-^]

6

We’ve been operating on Rick Fortin’s proto-freelanced ATSF layout for nearly ten years now and it’s been a lot of fun and a good challenge. His layout represents a plausible, but never proposed or built, extension to the Santa Fe from the Northern California Bay Area to Portland, OR set in 1973. Rick used topographic maps to lay out the proto-freelanced line along a plausible path, which allowed him to figure out where it would interact with the Southern Pacific (the existing carrier in the region). From all of this, he selected the area from Chico, CA to McCloud, CA as the visible portion of the layout, staging represents the rest.

Trains operating on the layout are extensions of what was operating on the rest of the Santa Fe at the time or connections to trains that were operating at the time. For example, there is a connection to the famous Chicago-to-LA “Super C” expedited freights that we call the Valley Super C. This is the highest priority train on the layout. We have a Shasta Fruit Express that suggests the Santa Fe’s “Green Fruit Express” trains. There are trains running to imagined connections with the Sacramento Northern (Western Pacific) and Burlington Northern as ways to compete with the SP in the area. And Amtrak makes an appearance, running behind leased Santa Fe power (plausible for this era).

Rick also reinforces the connection with the Santa Fe in a number of other ways. The official name of the layout is “ATSF 4th District, Valley Division, Coast Lines”. This represents a logical extension to the two districts that existed in real life. (The layout originally operated under a freelanced name, but the connection to real ATSF districts has helped anchor it in time and place.) Tracks are generally named in accordance with Santa Fe practices. And Rick typically tries to run engines, rolling stock and liveries for which there is some photographic or other

7

You could do the Schuylkill Secondary .

One of the cool things about the East coast is that the transition from “urban” to “rural” can be as quick as going around a bend in the river. Plus the density of the trains and industry are higher.

The Schuylkill Secondary line east of Norristown is electrified, but you could blow that off. Through Conshohocken and Norristown there are gobs of opportunities for industry (paper mills, steel mills, foundries, etc, etc). There also was commuter service to Manyunk on the ex-PRR.

Past Norristown it is fairly rural following the Schuylkill past power plants, foundries and other industry, with major steel mills at Phoenixville and Reading. At Reading there are all sorts of textile mills, etc. And the Dana copmany who made auto parts, primarily frames. I remember in the 1970’s the PC trains with frame flats rolling thru Betzwood (across from Valley Forge). From what I have found there were at least 2 symbol freights in both directions plus local service. Past Reading it gets really rural up into the coal regions.

The Schuylkill Secondary Would give you some hills and tunnels, rivers, industry, interchange and you can make it as complex or simple as you like.

Dave H.

8

I Freelance with a line I call the Chesapeake and Atlantic RR. It is a single track mainline that runs around the perimeter of a room twice, and will run in a continuous manner if I just want to watch trains run. Or, it can be used as a point-to-point RR for operating. Some construction has started and three main modules are running, but all planning is done for the most part. I have entered the RR track plan into a program called Train Player. I have used Train Player to setup the operations scheme and to refine the track plan so it will run smoothly and do what I am looking for. (A drawing is below.)

To setup operations, you have to define what you have, and how you want to use it. I have one main yard that is both the starting and ending point of my division. This yard is also in one city that has a few industries. The city and yard represents both ends of the line for point-to-point ops. Along the line I have a couple of towns with some industries, two simple junctions, and a port. One junction goes to an Army base. ( Hidden staging track.) The other junction is for a Western Maryland branch line. The port has a coal dock and car float operation plus a TOF lot. The WM branch has a large mine and a town with a few industries close to the mine. The WM branch is also on a second level up via a nolix. Again, the city is used as two cities, each on the end of the line, one at the west end (Cumberland), and one at the east end (Suffolk), and the industries in the city are divided between them.

The key thing that you have to remember is that RR’s are a transportation system designed to move people and goods between towns and cities. So your traffic has to be set up to do that, based on the production needs of all the industries on your RR. Once you remember this most basic premise, things will take care of themselves. I run two local trains to the smaller towns, two through trains from Suffolk to Cumberland, four car float runs to the port, one round trip coal train, one Army train, an

9

Dave,

You know, that is a great idea! I hadn’t considered that line at all, only because it doesn’t get a lot of press. But it does seem to meet a lot of my requirements!

For commuter service in the PRR era, one could power a few Bachmann shorty coaches as foobie MP54s. Silverliner cars for the late 70s are more of a challenge. But I could always toss an Amtrak F40 with some Amfleet cars as a stand-in (my son loves Amtrak).

Wow. You’ve given me something to think about. Thanks!

10

At this point, I’m just singing with the choir, but I might as well add my voice. I operate on two layouts, one that was in MRP 2006, has been operating every week for 30 years–and the ops organization is so good that he never does any set-up.

His is definitely proto-lance, taking elements of real LDE’s and combining them with fiction. He has made himself an expert in coal operations and works the rails as if they were the real thing.

And that’s the point. Protolance is not just throwing stuff together, nor is it a rail that could have happened. It is more of a railroad that would have happened had situations been just a little different.

11

Dave–

I have a proto-lanced segment of a transcontinental mainline set during WWII, so at any given time (or whim, in my case) I have a lot of heavy freight bound for either the Pacific or European theaters, plus the occasional troop train extra, plus four (two each way) regularly scheduled passenger trains (of which the troop trains will run as extra sections), PLUS, since the layout is set in early October of any given year, late-season produce reefer trains running east (and empties returning west). In a word: WHEW!! Plus I have to fit in a little local traffic with ‘turns’ (mainly cattle being picked up from high mountain pasturage and returned to the foothills), and the local passenger. Oh yah, the Rio Grande burns coal, and there’s no coal in California, so I have to run a daily westbound coal train from Utah to keep those coaling towers happy.

How do I do it? Well, I hate to tell you (and right now you’re probably saying, “Oh heck, he just RUNS trains!”) but there is a method to my madness–I do it actual hour by hour. When I go out for an ops session, I go out with the intent that “I’m going to be out here for a couple of hours. How many trains will be running through Deer Creek in that actual time frame, and what will they be?” That’s when I make my decision and make up my trains ‘off-set’. If it’s a through freight, then so be it. If it’s a reefer extra stopping in Deer Creek to pick up some cars from the local pear and apple packing plant, then we’re on a siding while the cars are added and the through trains pass. If I need a local ‘turn’ to go and pick up high-pasturage cattle, then I wangle that train in between the through freights. Or maybe I’m just interested in that particular time of day when the Exposition Flyer comes through, followed by the extra-section troop train, and oh yah, better pick up that express reefer

12

I gave this some more thought…

Not long ago Jerry Britton suggested I model the northern half of the Northern Central, from York, PA to Harrisburg. This was a busy 2-track line with both industrial trackage and switching (lots of locals) and through traffic. Part of the line (from York Haven to Harrisburg) was un der wire, but most wasn’t. There’s also some river scenery. At least in the Pennsy era, there was plenty of passenger traffic from Baltimore. There’s even some running through farmland.

I may revist this idea.

13

Isn’t planning something you can’t do anyway fun? There are a million ways to make improvements and none of them cost any more than the other.

Then when you get tired of one layout you can tear it down and build another.

Then when you finally get your basement, you’ll be so tired of your layout, you’ll display your locos under glass, and put in a pool table.

14

Yeah…

This is kind of a pointless exercise, isn’t it?

It’s more of a distraction than anything else. My brain is in serious pain.

I’m 168 pages into my PhD dissertation with no end in sight…

…so what little of my brain not already allocated to writing and research (and not killed off by beer) is busy “seeking refuge in model railroading.”

I did this during Iraq, too. I had some of the most elaborate plans for a layout you’ve ever seen, and they were for a space I didn’t have. But they kept the brain busy!

15

I can’t say with 100% certainly I know what you are going through because right before I started my dissertation, my start-up company took off and I had 20 employees and was making more money than my profs. I didn’t have time for both.

But just Sunday, I released the promotional (or free) portion of a book called the “The Born Loser’s Guide to Abundance.” It’s only 99 pages. But the money portion of the book, another 200-300- pages worth, is barely electrons. To top it off, it was very well received and I have been getting 200-300 emails a day that must be answered–in between meeting with clients.

I haven’t had a second to move on it. And it’s only one of two writing projects I have in the works.

I do have a basement now, but I haven’t even been able to measure it to plan.

But it seems every time I come up for air, a new idea comes through of what I could do when I get some time/space/money. Used to be the money. Then it was the space. Now it’s the time.

16

I’m working on a multi-railroad scheme where whole groups of cars get interchanged and move on to the next railroad, and that can dominoe over several lines.

Working out an operating scheme is a pretty good master plan and the challenge to make it work.

I played this Avalon Hill game called “Dispatcher” and it used all the proto-lancing charateristics.

MF for Merchandise Freight, ME = Merchandise express, numbers for passenger trains. Each railroad had thier own method for name training, but the concepts work similar from line to line.

Just various rules, and unique things that make each line unique.

If your going to really do a model railroad right, you have to be in the jargon, and that makes it fun.