I’m pretty new to the hobby (lifestyle to some) and have an easy question for some. On the real rails, in the 30’s to 40’s, how would you describe the interaction between mainline ops and, say two shortline ops. Would it be like this
-Mainline- straightline from left to right, a siding located at both ends (interchanges)
shortline- comes off sidings and does the route through various towns/industries. exchange cars are left and picked up on the siding, but ops are not permitted on the mainline.
I’m looking at building a double deck layout in a 12 x 22 area and have an ideal place for a 30"r helix. The rest of the layout is still being planned out. I know I’m sticking to east central RR’s, (crap…no bigboys or cab forwards) so coal is a given (H-8s…cool) but I don’t want it to be the total focal point. I’m hoping that with the aid of a couple shortlines I can somewhat seperate different operations of the layout. If all goes well I may decide to expand to 22x22 in size, but I want to get the smaller up and going first.
I think there is a problem of terminology here. Instead of shortlines, you might want to use branchlines. I don’t think you’ll find many shortlines in the 1930s and 1940s. You will find lots of branchlines. These were secondary lines that handled local chores on what were considered secondary lines that did not have the same amount of traffic as the mainlines. They thus had older (and probably smaller) equipment and ran less often often than did the main line operations.
Short lines were small railroads, serving smaller places, that for some reason didn’t get bought up by a class I railroad over time. For instance the Boston & Maine was formed around the turn of the last century by buying up numerous short lines. As such, a short line would have a main line running from here to there, and spurs off the main line to serve on line industry. Plenty of short lines interchanged with a class I road somewhere. But as a short line, it would run passenger and mail service, and “thru” freights down the mainline, and operate peddler freights that moved from spur to spur dropping off and picking up cars.
The peddler needs the use the main line to get from spur to spur and as a switching lead. It is supposed to keep out of the way of more important trains, expecially not to hold up passenger trains, 'cause passengers bitch at delays. Freight doesn’t complain so much. I don’t know the exact arrangements used to prevent collisions between peddler freights and thru traffic. There must have been some. Casey Jones died at the throttle of the Wabash Cannonball when it rear ended a peddler freight train that failed to clear the main line in time.
How ever, the class I roads operated the same way. They had express, long distance freight and peddler freights. The only real difference between short lines and class I railroads is size, length of track, amount of rolling stock and such.
Modeling an interchange point with a short line is always a good thing. First of all, it gives an excuse to have more and different equipment with more and different paint schemes on the road. And moving cars thru the interchange point gives interesting switching action.
David said:Short lines were small railroads, serving smaller places, that for some reason didn’t get bought up by a class I railroad over time.
And today’s many modern short lines doesn’t count?[%-)][swg]
Actually the Boston & Maine was never a true short line but a class 2 railroad.
shortline- comes off sidings and does the route through various towns/industries. exchange cars are left and picked up on the siding, but ops are not permitted on the mainline.
That sounds more like a branch line operation then a short line which has it own tracks and main line.
Of course there are different types of branch lines such as a industrial branch that serves a city’s industrial area or in some cases a industrial park.Then you will have a coal mine branch that could serve one or more coal mines.Then of course you have the regular branch line that runs from a small city/town to serve industries in other small cities/towns.This is the more “common” type that saw a mix train daily or perhaps a 1 or 2 car passenger train.f course the daily passenger train could have been a gas/electric “doodlebug” or a RDC car. See?[:D]
Also a branch line crew could use the main line but,within their operation boundary such has sitting cars off on say the Westbound pickup track or to serve local industries located within a small city/town limits…
As others have pointed out shortlines are independent railroads, branchlines are secondary routes of a railroad.
You don’t necessarily have to model a branch or shortline to get industry. It is very typical for a mainline to have much or more industry that a shortline or branch line. After all a main line is a main line because it serves a high traffic density route, higher traffic density tends to mean higher population density, more people generally means more industry. A branch or short line serves a less dense area typically which can mean less industry.
The locals can operate a couple different ways.
They can originate at a major yard on the main line (division point yard or an intermediate smaller terminal) and run down the main line switching the branches as required.
They can originate at a major yard and run down the main line to the branch junction, then up the branch and return to the major yard.
They can remain on the branch line the entire trip and exchange cars at the junction with the main line.
A short line (especially in the 1930’s) would operate like #3.
If you are modeling 1930’s then you would be using steam. At the junction you would need a way to turn the engines or the trains operating in one direction will be opretaing backwards. This really isn’t a problem, since real railroads ran engines backwards (although modelers seem loathe to do it). If you do want to have your engines facing forwards that means you will need a wye or a turntable at the junction and the terminus of the branch. So that’s a LARGE amount of real estate you will have to give up to turning facilities. If you model a branch you don’t need a large engine facilities, a small coaling and sand tower and several water tower will suffice. No large roundhose on the branch either. On a branch the engines go back to the repair facilities at the major terminal for re
In the late steam era, trains would have rights granted by class and direction - say, northbound trains would have rights over southbound trains, and the employee timetable would specify which class a scheduled train belonged to. The dispatcher would issue train orders to add unscheduled trains (extras) or to change the timetable rights of scheduled trains to keep the railroad moving. Thus the term, “Timetable - train order operation,” usually abbreviated TTTO.
To learn more than you ever really wanted to know about the process, find a copy of Peter Josserand’s Rights of Trains. Be prepared for a heavy read!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - TTTO, 24/30)
Since the context of the question (and answer) was 30’s-40’s operation, the modern shortlines don’t count in this context. Post 1980’s the number of shortlines exploded as class one railroads were able to spin off branchlines to other owners creating shortlines. But that wasn’t typical of the 1930’s, 40’s.
That’s all determined by the crew’s agreements. If the crew that works the branch is off the same seniority district as the crews on the main line, they branch crews could work anywhere on the main. Also don’t confuse city limits with switching limits with yard limits. Three different things which don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other.
If anything, there probably were more shortlines at that time than now. It’s true that after the big mergers of the sixties and seventies there were a lot of lines that were “spin offs” from the big merged railroad, but there were many, many shortlines around before the merger era. I grew up next to one, the Minneapolis Northfi
That’s all determined by the crew’s agreements. If the crew that works the branch is off the same seniority district as the crews on the main line, they branch crews could work anywhere on the main. Also don’t confuse city limits with switching limits with yard limits. Three different things which don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other.
Dave H.
While that is partly true crew seniority has nothing to do with it…Its the Union work agreement that counted…I am well aware of “yard limits” and “city limits” having worked 91/2 years as a brakeman.A lot of crew territories was assign city sections of a given division.A large city could have several industrial switch crews working various locations but well within the urban areas.
City limits is usually used for smaller cities where all industries could be switch by 2 different crews working different tricks(shifts).
Again it depended on the railroad and Union work agreements.
The NS local base out of Marion switches Marion and the second crew handles the work between Marion and Bucyrus…The CSX local out of Marion hands all city switching and as far east as Martel.
The CSX/NS interchange is handled by the local crews to include picking up and setting off cars.
Thanks, it helped. I am looking at more rural areas/ small towns over major industrial cities. I wanted to run PRR on a mainline/track and interchanging with a couple branchlines. The branchlines would be seperated by some distance and I’m thinking a couple small mines and small town area or two on one line and some logging operations on another. The logging line would be some nasty track, so I can really necessitate the use of a shay. I’m thinking this type arrangement would keep the branchlines consist fairly small, so if the trackage is 20-30’ I won’t have the train in two towns at once. On the mainline/track, PRR would be hauling sheeple and exchanging on the sidings. Other than I read that PRR liked to “do it all”, is this a semi-realistic operation? I am looking at 160-180 linear feet to do this in.