Thoughts, from the August Trains of Thought

So the main topic of Tony’s article is about running trains on an otherwise operating layout, just for enjoyment. I have long wondered why anyoen would build a nice layout, and then never do a thing except maintenance and maybe continual improvement of the scenery except once a month when operating sessions are held. That’s certainly not why I am filling my basement with a layout. My layout will allow formal operation, but I will ALSO be down there just running trains for the fun of it - no regrets later in life like one of the modelers mentione in Tony’s article.

He even quotes Allen McClelland as saying “why would you want to” when talking about running trains between operating sessions. Really? My response is “why not?” I’m not building a layout as a static display that moves once a month. And I don’t think the desire to run trains informally prevents also holding formal operating sessions.

If you only run trains once a month or so - I can see why there is always so much mention of layouts being too large to be maintained. Just running trains on a regular basis goes a long way to keeping the track clean, and also finding other issues to help avoid a breakdown when all your friends are over trying to operate.

Anyway, that’s my thought on the subject.

–Randy

I’ll confess that one reason my railroad has a double-track main line and continuous running capability is so I can just run trains. Originally I thought I’d have two trains running sumultanously or have a 1-man op session myself, working a way freight or turn on one main line and another train working around in the opposite direction. Clearance to cross the opposite main is given when the other train goes by! Or work the branch line, yard or switch the one larger town.

With DCC I find it fun to watch 4 trains circling the main lines. That keeps you on your toes for maintenance - or at least listening for the sound of wheels on the ties.

I enjoy ops sessions and I’m thinking about an operating sequence for my railroad but have not made much progress in planning it. Having started into my second childhood probably 35 years ago seems to influence what I enjoy.

Randy, I never could understand two things in out hobby. One builds a beautiful layout that fills a basement and runs it once a month with his buddies… Two is why even bother building a layout if you tear it down and start over with a new layout without using it?

My last 1’ x 12’ Slate Creek ISL was built and then happily operated daily for 4 years…The only reason it came down is because I spent 14 months in a rest home. The new Slate Creek will be 2’ x 16’ basement monster( at least to me) and health permitting it will be operated or I will add scenery daily until the scenery is finished.

I have not yet seen the issue or of course Koester’s essay, but he has written before that one of the nice aspects about having to restage a layout before an operating session is that you get to just privately run a train for its own sake. Layouts designed so that trains are automatically restaged do not have that feature of course.

If you have a disciplined car forwarding system on a layout then sometimes “just running a train” screws everything up about where cars are and should be. I operated on a layout where our computerized switch lists assumed, not unreasonably, that everything was left exactly where it was at the end of the last operating session. So that owner never moved anything between sessions (and I think he had, with different crews, five or six sessions every month, one of the most heavily operated layouts I have ever heard of. His soda and pretzel budget alone was considerable).

Some layout owners keep a “show train” ready to go so that they have something to run for visitors or family members who want to see a train run yet it won’t make things difficult for the genuine operators.

I would also point out that as I said above, some layouts are operated much more frequently than monthly and the layout owner gets his fill of running trains. Particularly since almost every operating session creates a to do list of coupler heights, broken off details, dirty wheels or track, and other maintenance issues.

Dave Nelson

To me i think a layout that big takes more to run it just like the real thing and you can’t keep everyone their everyday to run it like say BNSF.

I am a member of a round robing group of narrow gauge model railroaders. Each year, we have a charity drive and set up our quite large modular layout in a gymnasium of a local high school. The layout has a mainline run of 10 miles, 8 stations, and a number of local industries.We run according to a timetable (passenger trains) and ttrain orders (freight trains). We use a fast clock, which simulates a 8 hr. day in 2 hours. After those two hours, it starts not to be fun anymore, but hard work!

We are all happy when we can throw in some time of just enjoying running a train without a schedule and no clock chasing us.

I really like running my trains!!!

I also like working on my layout as much as my arthritis will allow. Fortunately my arthritis doesn’t interfere with running my trains. When my arthritis gets so bad I can’t work on my layout I work at my hobby workbench building or maintaining my trains.

When I’m working on scenery I normally have a train running (Slowly) on my twice-around layout listing to the wheels doing their thing on the rails.

A day never goes by without me working on either my layout or at my workbench.

I started out early with a Christmas gift from my father in 1945, a three car 2-6-2 Lionel 027 train. My dad built me a 4’ x 8’ main with an around the basement shelf to a 4’ x 4’ turnaround, not a loop but east and west parallel tracks. The train portion of the basement was about 30’ x 30’, heaven for an 8 year old kid.

After a major move and not enough room for O gauge I built my first HO layout in a room behind our garage. At 14 I began my HO career and it’s still going strong.

I love creating but I also love running my trains.

Mel

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, California

I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

So have operating sessions more than once a month.

One modeler I know has them once a week. And thus, his crews become familiar enough with operations that he doesn’t have to spend all his time troubleshooting the sessions and can actually participate himself.

Although I don’t have a lot of experience with operations, I do enjoy watching it, as it is a part of what the prototype did. They also didn’t stop at every little depot and flag stop in route so “through-trains” (aka running trains) is prototypical, as well.

Why then not have both types of operations on one’s layout? And you can enjoy them simultaneously; concentrating on assembling a string of cars in one’s yard while a through-train operates out on the mainline. The best of both worlds for me. [Y][:P]

Tom

Well, when I am dead tired, sitting with a glass of wine watching 1 to 3 trains plying the layout is better than sitting in front of the idiot box any day.

Like Mel, I will have a train running, usually a 4-4-0 with five cars, chugging around the layout while I work on it. You just have to remember that a train comes by every six minutes.

I am not really interested in ops, the adrenaline flow I got at times working logistics in my real life for 36 years does not transfer to model railroading. Kinda like when a stock trader plays Monopoly, it doesn’t scale down.[(-D] Or should I say up?

We have our layouts for many different reasons, all of them good.[oX)]

As I have said many times, I like operation, and I like good display running.

I would never have a layout that cannot do both. This is why I have never liked point to point layouts.

The new ATLANTIC CENTRAL will stage close to 30 trains. Most freight trains will be 35 to 50 cars long.

It will support continuous operation of five trains in display mode, and while those five trains run on dedicated routes, the yard and two primary industrial areas can function as an independent ISL completely off the main supporting two operators.

While there will be individual car forwarding, operations will also include picking up and setting out whole blocks of cars, and even some run thru bridge traffic as well as passenger operations.

I like running trains for non railroaders, I like running trains just to watch them myself.

I also imbrace the idea of modeling a relatively short section of a railroad and “watching” the trains come and go, even from the operating side of things.

I model one city, one yard, one engine facility, one major passenger station, and the rail activities that happen there, rather than trying to model a beginning and destination.

The rest of the world is “off stage”, one of the reasons for so much staging.

And yes, douple track is the order of the day for lots of action, during display running or operating sessions.

Sheldon

On last layout I ussually kept a train running while working on scenery.

isn’t the irony that the owner usually doesn’t run trains during an op session?

maybe it’s more enjoyable to have a few beers with friends than drinking alone

Most of the time I prefer to be the yardmaster or dispatcher, at my house or elsewhere.

I guess that is another reason my layout is designed so five trains can run continiously without bumping into anything.

Someone above suggesting having more frequent operating sessions. That’s great if you have the time and crews, but I still want to run my layout alone or for non railroaders without the “limitations” of an opps session.

I don’t know that I like people enough to host an operating session every week, once a month is plenty.

Sheldon

[(-D][(-D][(-D]

Randy,
Running trains without operation sessions is boring. It is so incredibly dull. There’s no challenge, there’s no reason, there’s nothing to do but stare at the moving train. It’s no different from sitting on your front porch to watch the cars go by…only it’s the same car, over and over and over again. What’s the fun in that? You might as well play Monopoly solo.

I can’t continuously run in circles. I just can’t. At my club, we have a large layout (currently 50’ x 65’ or so). It takes at least 15 minutes to completely run around our layout mainline at 60mph and as soon as I do one loop around, I’m ready for something else to do…anything else. Give me a challenge, a switch list, a meet, a timetable, an engine change, a pick up or a drop off – anything to break up the absolute monotony of watching paint dry…sorry, I mean watching the same train travel over the same track at the same speed through the same scene again and again. If I go to my club to run trains with the guys, I do one loop, maybe two, and then I come back in the yard and change trains.

But then, this is why I’m the Operations Chairman of my club.

Dave,
At my club, I’ve had problems with certain members who just have to mess things up between operation sessions. Some guys are nice and bring their own trains, run them, then take them home. But a few others have this need to run around the layout with the cars used in the operation, then proceed to make pick ups and set outs all over the layout. In one infamous case, a member had left one of his trains that had around 40 boxcars on the layout that he ran during an Open House. When he came in the next week to take it home, he couldn’t find his train. He found the engines but the cars had all vanished. After a frantic search, he found one of his cars at a factory siding.&n

Who says you just have to run trains around in circles? Running solo does not mean you can’t stop and make pickups/setouts, or switch the yard, or some other task.

Although I hope the day never comes where I can’t just watch the train roll by periodically as a background thing while I work on something else. Actively running a train around a simple loop? Yeah, that gets boring pretty fast.

As fore the club - after a few hours of running trains around, how can anyone even remember precisely where all the stuff was? My goal is an operating scheme that doesn’t care or else can easily be reset.

–Randy

Paul, At one club where we operated twice a week I would go in the day before or maybe early and switch the yard just so the yardmaster would have to actually sort cars to make up his trains.

In short there was no prestaging trains from the last operating session.

Prestaging trains in the working yards was against the opertion rules. The two staging yards was to hold unit trains,stacks and pigs since those trains ran between Detriot and St. Louis. The St. Louisian and The Detriotian. The There was a long double return track between Detriot Electric and Robin Mine. This track could hold three empty and loaded trains of 25 cars each. This was for loads in/empty out operation.

Industries could not be switched between operation sessions.

Randy,
Just running around dropping off, picking up, switching the yard, etc. without a plan is like playing Monopoly without dice. There’s no challenge to it. When you start off your train with a string of cars, do you just start setting out cars and picking up others just because you want to? There’s no planning, no thinking, just “I’ll put the blue boxcar here, and the red one over there…no, that’s too hard, I’ll put the red one at this other siding that’s easier to get to.” You might as well just place your Monopoly game piece on Boardwalk to start a game. [;)] I have to use paperwork of any kind, made up in advance, based on realistic traffic patterns so that I have to think about what I’m going to do. If I don’t have to think and puzzle out how to switch something, it’s boring.

At my club, each car used in operations has a car card with a waybill telling the user where the car goes. These car cards/waybill combos are kept in an easy-to-access car card pocket mounted on the side of the layout. All they have to do is pick up the cards, read them, and put the car where the waybill tells them to put it. Each area has a clipboard with a well-labled map attached to it, and most (if not all) industries have signs on them. Still, some of these guys won’t do it. They’ll spend hours picking up cars and transporting them around the layout, then spotting them willy-nilly all over the layout. However, they won’t spend 10 seconds putting them back. It’s a little annoying because then I’m the one that has to reset the layout. BTW, our club easily has over 100 cars at industry sidings. We have eight local freights, and each one is 10 to 20 cars long.

As either a host or a guest, I much prefer the benevolent dictatorship of a private group or a round robin over the democracy of a club…

Sheldon