Yes, that’s why the US government built the Alaska Railroad. There were no private companies to do the work, since it was unlikely to make a profit. That’s different than a town in the middle of the continental US.
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Interchanging cars benefits all railroads. It’s not like railroad A can charge railroad B an arm and a leg to interchange cars with them. Moving cars back and forth from their railroad and other railroads and private owners benefits both railroads.
So there’s a mainline owned by 2 or 3 class one railroads together, and basically next to the line the shortline has an interchange track or yard . The shortline picks up cars left by the class ones there, takes them off into the wilderness, and comes back with cars to be picked up by one of the class ones?
If so, I do think the idea of the three railroads jointly owning a busy mainline is not super likely, but not impossible. Where I live, BNSF and CPKC have parallel mainlines (basically right next to each other) that they have operated together as a joint line for 100+ years. Trains use one line going west, the other going east. It goes for about 15 miles that way before each splits off to it’s own line.
As one (or more) people mentioned, if two railroads were going to build and operate a line together, they would probably incorporate it as a separate third railroad, like the B-RI (Burlington - Rock Island) in Texas.
I’d think the most likely scenario is class one A owns the line, and railroads B and C have a trackage rights agreement to use A’s line to access the interchange. That’s more common in crowded metropolitan areas than remote locations however, but could still be plausible.
Sounds like the main operation of the layout is moving cars to and from the interchange to the various industries by the shortline, so that’s more important than how they got to the interchange yard. If I were doing this, I would just think of the mainline as ‘the mainline’ and not worry about who owns it, and run engines from whichever one of the class ones I felt like at that time to drop off and pick up interchange cars. It’s not like say UP only delivers UP cars to the interchange, or BN only BN cars. Any car from any railroad could show up at the interchange, regardless who brought it there.
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My plan for the interchange is to justify the Shortlines existance. The Shortline represents the local remote industries and the communities that live and work in that isolated area. (within practical limits). It’s to answer the question, "*Why doesn’t the industries & communities use trucks and *create modern paved highways?" So the answer is, "They are too isolated and since the Shortline has already existed there from a century ago for logging, kept the tracks in fine shape and it’s more cost effective to just continue to use it’s trackage and the interchange to access the outside world. " It’s like the Alaska RR we just discussed, only with a few vital industries, instead of isolated homesteaders. In the TV show one woman has a car, which she leaves at the nearest town (30 or 40 miles distant) and uses her car after she arrives by train, from her back woods, off the grid home.
When she is done shopping or whatever she does, she has a place she parks her car & locks it up until next month. (what a great community) when she takes the train again into town to get supplies. My theoretical RR takes it a few steps further than just isolated homesteaders, and tries to create some justification for the Shortline’s existence. The question about who owns the mainline that interfaces with the Shortline is just to create a justified situation where a few different Class one locomotives can travel through my layout to add some more visual and operational appeal. All this certainly can be more believable than the so called, “Track Plans”
I see offered by authorized Model RR publications where there are 10 different track routes going round and round, a yard, a turntable, industries, up & over tracks, a tunnel, and a town with roads, crossings, and a carnival and more all crammed into a small area.
I’m just trying to make my layout somewhat believable, AT LEAST where an average informed person could say, “Well Yeah, I can see how that scenario could exist”
“wjstix said”
That’s different than a town in the middle of the continental US
BBF says:
There must be some isolated area in the U.S. where my proposed situation could exist, at least in theory
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The scenario you are presenting could not exist in the continental USA. Alaska is your only refuge. The Continental USA is the provence of motor vehicles, not necessarily ‘street legal’ cars but motorized conveyances such as golf carts, 4-wheelers and all the other forms of motorized vehicles.
While your ‘world’ may make sense to YOU. Don’t demand that it make sense to anyone that isn’t YOU.
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What he’s describing is exactly what I did with the winter rat in Easthampton. No one but a fool routinely commutes from Englewood or Manhattan out to the East End just to drive around – you take the train, then walk over to Lily Pond Lane or wherever to get the car. Mine stayed on a trickle charger with a small space heater for very cold weather; it was one on those early-'70s tanks that never really wore out.
(If you were hoity-toity-lawd-amighty you might take the Hampton Jitney from Manhattan, which was run by a limousine company and was, I thought, a very good example of what Amtrak might do with some of its Thruway runs… notably, perhaps, for those Green Bay gametime runs. The principle of taking scheduled mass transit to get to your own car was still fully operative.)
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While your ‘world’ may make sense to YOU. Don’t demand that it make sense to anyone that isn’t YOU.
I’m not “Demanding” anything, although I think a Shortline in such a hypothetical scenario is a better motorized conveyance of goods than a legion of golf carts or off road vehicles struggling
with the treacherous phenomena of mountain terrain.
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You know you know what you want but you reject advice or suggestions that don’t fit your conception and expect others to then agree with you. Classic yes.. but.
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I don’t expect others to do or accept anything. I also have incorporated many suggestions and changes from this board for my layout into my current plans. “Yes Buts” are a good logical mechanism to uncover hidden treasures.
If the roles were reversed, and I offered a suggestion to someone else about their plans, demanding that it was the absolute conclusion, and they didn’t accept it, I would accept their right
to see things from a different angle. Also, this is Model Railroading (specifically HO in this case)
where compressed scenery and train consists do not match the real world so you have to compromise. Very few people can have 100 car trains or travel 20 to 50 to hundreds of scale
HO miles from point A to point B like the Prototypes except maybe somewhat in club layouts. Even the Kadee couplers are not realistic and the wheels most people use are not to scale and many other examples can be shown. So you just try to make it as realistic as possible and you know you will probably come up short with regard to “Reality”, rivet counters excepted.
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As I said, just build your model however you want including a backstory if you desire. But if others who are real railroaders judge that to be unlikely, why argue about it? Or just stick to the MR forum?
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There’s a lot of branch lines and short lines that still exist in this day of improved at government expense roads to places off the beaten path. They exist because the industries they serve find that railroads are better suited for hauling their products. You don’t need to explain away that the main community is in a remote location.
I don’t recall what era you’re representing, but I get the impression it’s more modern. Any place that’s going to be remote will most likely only have two class one carriers. Unless the line originates/terminates high value freight, it’s unlikely that the class ones are going to go in together to interchange directly with your line. Most likely there will be one class one to deal with.
If you want to see a variety of freight equipment, that doesn’t require direct interchange with each and every other company. If you must have multiple class ones, it would probably be better to say others received trackage rights to interchange directly. More likely would be that other class ones received haulage rights to your short line. Or your short line received haulage rights to a major interchange point. Haulage rights is where RR A’s traffic is hauled by RR B within B’s trains or if a train load, crewed by RR B. Trackage or haulage rights could’ve originated as terms from a merger to preserve or open up competition.
In the end, it’s your railroad. If it’s not completely prototypic, who cares? You’re building and running it for your enjoyment, not mine or anyone elses.
Jeff
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Raleigh - Cary, NC. North track owned by NC RR (State) that was SOU RR now NS. South track CSX originally SAL. As far as I know still both dispatched by CSX since SAL had a lot of traffic on it with CTC. SOU was not signaled on either side of that section.
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I’m not arguing about it. I was just asking about ownership of a mainline and exchange tracks to give more validity to what my layout could represent in the compromising world of Model Railroading, HO scale.
It seems that others here want to argue with me about it. I was just asking some questions and trying to get input to justify my scenario somewhat.
What is the “MR Forum”? Is it not also asking for advice on various subjects correlating real trains to the models and layouts? Don’t people here ask about certain details of real railroading and
equipment compared to the prototypes?
I’ve yet to see one Model RR including, scenery, equipment and scenario be 100 % accurate
and realistic. There is always some aspect of a layout and equipment that is compromised, and
any backstory is no exception nor is it a “sacred cow” never to be violated. Like I said Kadee couplers are not accurate and neither are the more prototypical couplers you have to use
a wooden stick and giant-hand operation with. So there is always going to be some compromise.
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MR’s tend to overlook the real reason any railroad has to exist - Class 1, Regional, Short Line or Switch Carrier. MONEY!
Without REVENUE, no carrier, at any level, can continue to operate
You back story, if you really want one, needs to have a real theory of how your RR earns its revenue. The reality is if you don’t have a back story it is no big deal either, but it you are creating one it should make realistic sense.
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They exist because the industries they serve find that railroads are better suited for hauling their products. You don’t need to explain away that the main community is in a remote location.
Thanks…the real wrench in the layouts works, is the absence of trucking versus Railroads
and inability for highways to have been built to remote areas, so the RR is the only alternative
to get products in and out, and even common supplies for the town folk and industries.
Where that dated threshold is I’m not sure, but I chose circa Late 70s to early 80s. I don’t want to go back too far and end up in the Steam versus F-Units era.
Also it’s not the rolling stock that would be varied as it s the Locomotives graphics & colors.
I realize you can have boxcars, hoppers, tankers etc. and other rolling stock from different
companies and Class ones coming in and out of the exchange
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So sticking to your backstory, you have a remote place with industries large enough to require a rail connection since there are no roads. Where do all the workers live? Commute by short line? What kind of industries would be clustered in a remote area with a small town? Connected to mining a ore refining?
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MR’s tend to overlook the real reason any railroad has to exist - Class 1, Regional, Short Line or Switch Carrier. MONEY!
Without REVENUE, no carrier, at any level, can continue to operate
Right, that is exactly what I am trying to get.(within the context of Model RRng needing compromised scenarios.) MRRs can’t explain why magnetic couplers with some whisker that resembles an air hose hanging down to decouple cars but no realistic air hoses connected
are the standard, either. Again, it’s just about compromise, even in a backstory.
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I’m still working on those factors.
There is a town or several small isolated towns in the area where the workers live.
They have minimal automobiles, gasoline brought in to local gas stations by tanker car,
and perhaps very short passenger workers trains shuttling them to and from the jobsite. There is also a more major passenger service with a station near the interchange where they can leave the area and go out into the world. Some workers may take the more major passenger service from outside the area, to work at these industries and maybe lodge in the area during the week and go back home outside the area on weekends.
In So.Calif., some workers used to be shuttled from the L.A. basin up to the high desert every day to work at aerospace factories (about 70 miles). Also I knew an engineer who lived about 80 miles from his jobsite and stayed near his job during the week, and went home on weekends.
In fact, I knew a person in a more executive position, whose family and home was in New York
and he flew to So. Calif. every Sunday night to his office in L.A. and back home on Friday night.
As far as the industries there could be several possibilities, Coal, ongoing logging (from the old)
various Ores, hazardous chemicals or materials, Cement, gravel quarry, general manufacturing
or any other types of factories yet to be considered.
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Palmdale, the center for many years of aerospace, has a population of over 167,000 residents, hardly small town. Also that area is not isolated with no roads.
Other than mining or lumber and related support, it seems very unrealistic for there to be any manufacturing plants to locate in such an area.
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“Palmdale”
In case you haven’t noticed in what I have been saying there is No EXACT 100% Correlation between Real World and the Model RR HO scale layout backstory I am speaking of…
Only compromise
Some type of hazardous mining, manufacturing, or chemical plant would need to be in an isolated area. Lumber and Logging is a given in this scenario, as the Shortline is a descendant of an old Logging RR, well maintained and upkept and still is ripe with logging materials to the current era in which the RR is functioning.
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Understood, but you are striving for believability (not realism) for reasons YOU gave. But a manufacturing plant in an isolated location makes no sense, is not believable.
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