At the Bluestone Southern May Ops Session, I got to really see how the “Overlook Switching Puzzle” really works. Its a fun puzzle. I’m not good at the track line drawings, so maybe somebody else can take it on. The train is “Overlook 1” and is a local out of Bluefield. You depart with 14 cars, switch like cars for like cars at the industries and return. Sounds basically straight forward. A caboose is attached because of the local run. That caboose became one of the minor problems. 
The 14 cars are 7 tank cars, 4 box cars, 1 bulkhead flat and 2 Coke Box cars for the bottling plant. There are the same number of cars already in the industry.
In this picture with Bill Payne and Doug Matheson, you can see most of the trackage, looking south.
In this picture with Mark Hahn and myself you can see the other end that is the north end. The two racks closest are the mainline and once you have cleared the main, you need to stay off the main until you are ready to run back to Bluefield and then to enter the main you must contact the Dispatcher for your authority and which one of the double mainline tracks you are suppose to take to get back to the single track entering Bluefield and home.
Hopefully, someone can make the pictures show, so I’ll just continue.
The tracks west of the station and within the yard limits of Overlook are you’re entry and run around tracks. There is a tail track holding 7 cars at each end. The north side of the yard has a wharehouse taking 3 cars on the siding. The siding will hold 5 cars. Next to it, closer to the mainline is the “team track” with 2 cars, it will also hold 5 cars, I think.
On the south end, left to right (east to west) you have that 7 track, tail track, a tank unloading facility hold 4 cars on the one track and 3 on the other. Further west or right from there is the Coke Bottling plant and it hold 2 cars, with tail track for the trailing points move, that holds 2 cars and 2 engine, usually GP38’s or GP40’s.
Confused yet?
Perform your switching moves and return to Bluefield with the caboose on the other end of your train. Like most John Allan style Timesaver puzzles, you have facing and trailing point turnouts, a run around track and space on the tails of your turnouts limited in size to make it that you can only get so many cars and the engines, where you need them.
I did it twice over the weekend. Better the second time over the first, plus we learned to carefully look at our turnouts before we just blindly left the mainline and told Dispatch we were in the clear.
Great puzzle!
