Large Scale Central

Passenger train operations....

Operations
#21

Passenger operations can benefit from heavy head end traffic. The New Haven would swap out express boxcars or full baggage cars at principal stops where there were large Railway Express facilities or magazine publishers that would ship their magazines in car load lots. The station switcher, not the road power, would make the swap(s).

Many New Haven passenger trains had heavy head end traffic with one train I remember having the head end cars out number the passenger cars by a large amount.

Mike McCormack

Hudson, Massachusetts

#22

Ric;

Much more could be added to the passenger operations, on the IPP&W, if there is an interest in it.

We should have dedicated switching of the equipment between runs. The road locomotive, with or without battery car/steam generator; should be serviced at the engine shop, while the equipment from the train is switched out and the next departing train is made up.

The correct way to do this at Craigleigh on the IPP&W, due to it being a stub end terminal, is to have a passenger station switch crew, and switcher available, and dedicated to passenger train service.

The switcher would pull the equipment back from the mainline loco, allowing it to “Escape”, and go for servicing; then switch out the equipment, making up the next train, possibly with other cars, some of the cars that just arrived, and then, the head end cars from the postoffice, and express tracks.

The locomotive for the train, would then arrive from the service area, and couple to the train, preparing for departure.

Of course this whole idea is dealing with a LARGE terminal, with many dedicated passenger trains. On a short line, the road locomotive would probably be the same loco that did the switching. The one thing that would be part of the operation that seldom is done on a model railroad, is the locomotive, leaving the equipment at the station, and going to the shop between runs.

You can enhance any part of “Operations” with just simple moves, and equipment that requires special loading or other services. Too often we just put cars onto the track; add a locomotive and run. Just putting the loco on the track at the shop, and having to move it to its train, is the part of an operation that is often neglected. Then of course, there is the actual servicing of the locomotives.

People often have lots of locomotives, sometimes more locos than rolling stock…!!

Others, worry that battery power will not last all day…heck, real locos run out of coal and water, or other fuel, and are replaced with another loco, for the next run…so use your extra locos, if the batteries run down. With track power you have to find some other reason to change locos !!

This last paragraph, is NOT meant to cause a TP/Battery debate…so don’t start…please. The paragraph was only included to show that what might be a problem in some minds, could be an asset, in operations.

Fred Mills

#23

Oh Fred,

I could see a whole operations on the IPP&WRR dedicated to passenger operations. Just like you have the standard OPs and narrow gauge OPs, how about a passenger OPs. Not that there wouldn’t be freights running, but with an emphasis on passenger ops with the freights truly being clear of the stations and allowing the passenger trains priority and how about a second section of the train. Man can you imagine one of those guys working a local and trying to get done to get to the beer having to wait for a second section of a passenger train? Whew, they may just leave it on the line and go to the frig.

Didja ever notice, no one has the patients to “sit in the hole”? And yet, it is still part of every day railroading.

#24

Hi,

I hope you don’t mind me throwing my two cents into the mix!

We’ve being trying to include some basic passenger operations into our ops sessions on the Somerville & st. Francis River. Whilst passenger service on our small railroad would probably have been phased out by the late 60s period that we aim to model, we “bend” the turth slightly and say that enough business remains to keep a small service going. This would ultimately be based around head end equipment, with this type of business still justifying the presence of a skeleton service, as well as connection between routes, the SP (Cotton Belt) & the Southern, to exchange cars. We are currently bashing a few USAT 50’ reefers into express REA refeers with high speed passenger service trucks etc, as well as thinking about through mail service in baggage cars. Our idea was to base this around a 6-axel passenger loco such as an E9 serving out the twilight of it’s years, or a passenger equipped F-unit or geep, with a small pike-sized passenger service of around one or two of passenger cars maximum, but at least one head end car if not more. These could be set out and interchanged between local passenger trains, and would allow us to provide some more interest and variety to our ops.

We recently installed a spur for head-end stock at one of our station areas and this will allow passing passenger trains to set-out head end cars of thorugh mail for example. (Please note that this isn’t finished yet, platforms and crossings still needed to be added between the track). These photos show us trying out some test of the new spur, switching some passenger stock with our E9:

Thanks,

Gavin

#25

Gavin, nice work! Another source of traffic would be the private car of the railroad’s executives or the excentric actress from the area.

#26

Thank you, Gavin. This thread is open to everyone. Please feel free to contribute your questions, thoughts, and comments. We are all here to contribute and learn.

Fred

#27

Thanks folks!

It’s all still in it’s infancy, but I have seen evidence on the prototypes we model for having passenger ops, even at our late date of around 1967 / 1968. It seems that in certain situations whilst the passenger rider volume may have reduced, some pike-sized passenger services still had a few cars worth of head end business. I’ve seen a quite a few instances of trains with only one chair car for example, but still a few baggage cars worth of mail plus express reefers etc. This is what we are trying to aim for with on our line.

I don’t think we can justify the presence of an RPO for example for en-route mail sorting as our railroad is not supposed to represent a major trunk route, but I think we can still find supporting evidence to help us justify our passenger operations. For example, baggage cars would carrying pre-sorted and sealed mail for forwarding on to other destinations, and in particular, for interchange between trains, as well as some REA business in the form of 50’ express reefers.

We also hope to explore the posibility of LCL freight, maybe in the form of a peddaler boxcar, which can be spotted at some of the freight houses that are alongside the depots in a few of our towns on the line.

Again, its all early days but I’m really enjoying all the research and reading!

Thanks,

G