My local short-line is basically a North-South route with a branch to the East. Trains originate at the North end interchange with CSX and serve customers along the line to the South and East terminus. The East branch cuts off at Berkshire Junction, just North of Danbury where 3-4 regular customers get cars.

The daily job called NX-11 is usually 20 or so cars led by a GP-38-2 and a GP-9. On some days they run with a 4 man crew and split the job in two at Berkshire Junction. The GP-38-2 runs as ‘Extra 3600’ and serves the customers in Danbury, while the GP-9 runs East as “Extra 1802” to serve customers in Hawleyville and beyond.

Later in the day the two jobs have a cornfield meet at Berkshire Junction where the trackage and grade allow for easy switching. [If anyone is interested in the track layout at “Shire” I’ll post a digram.] Once the train is all put together, they once again sign as NX-11 and run North.

This line does a fair amount of ‘shoving’ a cut of cars with the engine at the rear over 5+ mile distances. They post a crewman hanging on the lead car who regularly calls how far he can see clear track on the radio. They also do a lot of gravity switching and ‘kicking’ cars to overcome obstacles built into the track work.

I’ve tried kicking cars on my indoor sidings. Found out the hard way that an Aristo bumper won’t stop a boxcar with metal wheels

JR

Jon…

The operation you speak of with a +5 mile move, with cars being pushed by a loco, is common.
Usually, up here in Canada, they insist on putting a van on the end for safety reasons…sorta the last bastion of vans, as “Crew cars”. Having a crewman “Hang on” for that distance is not considered a safe working condition, under the Canadian Transport Saftey Board recomendations.

Fred -

They own one van (caboose to the uninformed). It’s nicely painted and sits in the yard 75 miles away. It’s been used perhaps 3 times that is documented.

The problem with using a van on this particular move would be that there isn’t a convenient way to get the van around the empties for the northbound run. You wouldn’t want to see the van going north in the middle of the train, would you?

This line has a number of practices that have raised some eyebrows on the various boards, but all legal in these parts for a Class 2.

JR

I had some time to kill a few weeks ago, so I decided to diagram out this move assuming there were only two customers and two cars were exchanged at each. To simulate the main line customer a facing point siding is drawn. To simulate the branch a trailing point siding is drawn. There is no run-around track or place to do a gravity run-around. It takes 33 moves for a two engine train to complete this job and return home engines first. I can simulate this exact scenario on my Wye by blocking the connection on one of the legs. The facing point leg of the Wye becomes the local siding and the trailing point leg and tail becomes the branch line. Here is a much condensed version of the switch plan. The full plan runs three pages, but I’m sure you can figure out the in-between moves. The vision impaired can right click on the image and select “Open Link in New Window” for a very large version. [url=jon.barnbeckplace.com/switch-move.jpg]

[/url] Including the time to run a work train out to set the loads and another after the operation to pull the empties for storage, this scenario took a good 90 minutes to run. Great way to spend a late Saturday afternoon JR PS: Fred will appreciate my use of the term “Van”. I like it 'cause it’s a whole bunch less letters than caboose

Ah yes, me son;

It is also easier to type “Vans” as a plural than Cabbeese…

That operation you set up so nicely is a good one.

That operation in Large scale, would require both locos to have seperate RC throttles, which I would like to see in all units in an operation. It makes the fleet more versitile, and much more realistic.
If more people bought fewer locos, but equipped each one with R/C batteries; more versitility could be found in the fleet. This would allow any loco to either run alone or as an mu with others if the train weight required it; making the operation of the model fleet much closer to prototype.

Too many LS model railroaders just buy locos, and end up being little less than collectors.
It would be nice to see them buying locos to suit the needs of their railroad, and it’s operation, instead of every one that comes on the market, no mater that most are way too large for their railroad.

Anyhow; to each his own…it’s only a hobby.

Around here they often use a van with all the windows and doors welded shut, as a “Crew Rider Car” which is only used for “Back up moves”, that are over several miles long.
A crew member stands on the platform, and uses an air whistle as a warning at crossings.

Agreed about the self-contained battery & R/C. I actually ran this op with track power and block control. I did find a few glitches in my block design - When moving loco A into the siding the block boundary is too close for the engine to clear the switch. Required a bit of fancy throttle work.

The only R/C I have is trail-car due to budget constraints. I thought of trying to run the op with at least one of the locos on battery, but the trail car ended up being at the wrong end of the engine for the return trip. Self contained is definitely the way to go for operations.

I can’t argue with the logic of only buying what your railroad needs. You somehow have overcome the emotion part of the buying process. I rarely buy because I need, mostly because I want. In the long run I’ll end up with a few select locos converted to self-contained battery & R/C and the rest will be limited to track power runs and or shelf queen status.

So how do I overcome the overwhelming “need” to buy an Aristo E and a Bachmann K ??? My theme is a railroad museum / tourist & short line. I guess there can be a bunch of locos displayed on museum tracks that never run

JR

You pull the stupid marker lite thingy out of the Aristo bumper, drill a clearance hole, and run a BIG deck screw down…

Slowly, as the Slate Creek morphs, even during its construction, from an automated display to a layout with some operating possibilities, the concept of having one track power throttle for the yard ops, one for the line ops, and an increasing number of locomotives equipped with Battery/RCS (the “S” on purpose there!) will allow the locomotives bought “pre-enlightenment” to still be used, when the road is run as a “hands off” display, but have the capability to be used in operations with their radio controlled bretheren, even if only one operator will have a track throttle outside the yard.

That said, if I had it to do all over again, I’d have gone independant control from the first, and skipped the wires.

What’s interesting is how the operations side of the railroad tends to impact everything else … it makes the sound better (not just a constant rhythm chuff, and a REASON to signal occasionally) it makes the places to stop along the line make more sense, and have more “purpose” … and tends to make the whole railroad more believable on the whole.

I’ve still got to work out the “saw by” where BOTH trains are considerably too long for the siding… or where one is a passenger train, and not particularly friendly to being cut up and switched!

Now if I could just figure out how to shut down my battery engines after putting them into the enginehouse…

Matthew (OV)

Jon,
Is there a seperate crew for each engine or do they walk back and forth as they perform the different functions?

Ric Golding said:
Jon, Is there a seperate crew for each engine or do they walk back and forth as they perform the different functions?

In the real world scenario this is based on, train A-B has a 4 man crew and they split in pairs with the engines to work the industries. Also in the real world there are more than two industries and they are separated by many miles.

In my world there is a 1 man crew who rotates between all 4 jobs. The distance between all points in my world is less than 40 feet. But I was still worn out after working this job

JR

P.S. Watch your snail-mail box for a small package from me.

I’m watching. Nothing happened, yet, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

I enjoyed your diagram. I thought that was a very good scenario. I have trackage in the basement on different power supplies with an 18 inch piece of dead track between the blocks. This way the track powered engines are isolated and can’t leave their block. Rolling stock is transferred across the dead spot by idler cars. Of course, the battery powered track isolated cars can run anywhere. Makes for an enjoyable evening’s fun.l

Ya know thats a very simple and doable switching puzzle that cold garner loads of WTF??? from the uninitiated…Would take a long time to become boring!

These are very doable switching problems, especially if a large group of people want to be involved, say from a club or a museum setting, and if your objective is to consider that you have a bunch rail enthusiasts wanting their turn at running an engine and doing a few switching moves. Imagine shuffling cars for their turn at maintenance in a museum or small club that supports a struggling historical site. An example would be the EBT just announcing that one of the steel box, caulked, water tank cars is going to renovated. One crew pulls other cars out of the way and a second crew drags out the candidate to spot on the repair track by the paint shop. All moves are very slow, watching each axle go over each rail joint or through the points. There is more than the normal number of crew that you would see on a engine. Everyone wants to be involved. “I’ll throw the 3 way turnout”, volunteers one enthusiast. So it may not seem workable in the real rail world of today, or in recent history, but at a place where cameras are watching every engine move on to the turntable and photo hounds are jockeying for the best shot, it would seem real natural. We use to have a steam operations south of here that the president of the corporation got to be the engineer. Why? Because he bought the line and wanted to run the train. Still operates, but no longer with steam.