Large Scale Central

Indoor Ops on the Candlewood Valley Scenic Railway - Many Pics

Operations
#1

What better to do on a snowy Saturday then run trains in the basement!

The day began as C.V.S.Ry. M-10 warmed up in West Willow Hill where it was tied down after yesterday’s Southbound run…

While the engine warmed, the crew used their new technology (Fire tablet) to take a look at the switch list…

Looks like we need to dig out a boxcar from McGillicuddy Supply. This will require a few moves as there is a car in the middle of the string that is staying. Here we have pulled the string and will drop 3303 on the main while we tuck 153 back in the siding…

After cutting off 3303, 153 is dropped on the siding. It will roll by gravity to it’s spot inside the building…

Then we grab 3303 drag it with us as we back through Box Tunnel headed for South Willow Hill…

Arriving at South Willow Hill (Winter home of Wall Station and Platform and the Pine Summit telegraph shack)…

Shoving into the siding for Chandler Quality Water where we have two cars to pull…

Here a hopper has already been pulled and spotted on the passing siding while the crew picks up the tank. Cars need to be pulled one at a time as there isn’t a lot of room West of the switch and we have 3 box cars on the train…

With work at Chandler finished and the tank coupled to the hopper, we need to get the balance of our returning cars on the passing siding and get car 8281 in behind car 152 to work the facing point at Willow Hill. To do this, we need to run through the switch for the Willow Hill subdivision. Using the RailPro simulator on our workshop PC, we flip the switch…

Next we will put the boxcars pulled at McGilicuddy’s on this end of the passing siding and run around the entire train…

After running around the train, the entire string was shoved toward the switch to get 8281 in the clear on the main where it can be tied on to from the other end…

Now 8281 can be spotted at Door #3 of McCown Freight Forwarding. While you weren’t looking, we pulled a flat from Door #3 and a tank from Russell Poultry at the far right side of the shot…

Finally, we head back into the passing siding to grab our train and head to Tyrone…

Once at Tyrone, due to lack of track to work on, we need to break the train into two car chunks before shoving into the arrival track at Tyrone where the 050 Crane will place them on the shelving to await their next trip…

After dropping 4 cars, the crew realized they left the tank pulled from Russel’s on the main back in South Willow Hill. No problem, the engine needs to be turned anyway, so after a quick run around the balloon track, we shoved back to BOX where we found our missing car and brought it back to Tyrone…

The wayward tank is shoved into the Tyrone Arrival track…

Where it and the remaining cars will be grabbed by the 050 Crane…

And placed on the fiddle yard shelving according to the switch list…

Finally, M-10 moves over to it’s assigned parking spot in the Kistler Engine Facility…

After which the crew retired to the lounge for a well deserved cold one!

Including stopping to take pictures, this very simple list took well over an hour to work. It’s always fun trying to figure out these moves within the limitations of the indoor division.

5 Likes
#2

What fun!
I keep looking at my junk filled basement and wonder what a nice place it would be to build a 7/8 scale layout.

#3

Thanks John. It took me years to get to this point, and as you can see, still a lot of scenery / background work to do that may never happen. When I started there was no place to even get your body at S. Willow Hill there was so much junk!

#4

Our unfinished basement has been a “storage” (I call it junk, wifey calls it treasures) for 50 years!
Who knows what is down there! :laughing:

#5

I hear that. I was in the attic yesterday looking for things to sell. I have a huge pile of boxes that belong to my youngest who has been moved out since 2011 and another pile from my older son who has been out since 2005 or so. Then there are the hundreds of empty boxes for my train hobby. Broken furniture, furniture we will never use, tent camping gear not used in over 20 years and so forth. Anyone want old technology (pre HD) Camcorder, projector and screen? I thought not.

I think a 10 yard dumpster will be sitting in my front yard before summer.

#6

When I took a break from being a full time trucker, I worked at a transload facility for corn sweetener, every day the BNSF crew had to pull our string of 13 cars pick out the empty’s , pull and pick out the required (oldest date of arrival)new loaded cars and put them in the proper spot . We kept them sorted by the product so as to now load wrong product into the trucks. I’m sure they loved switching our place

#7

Cool. I have that one long industrial track along the back wall with a “crossover” switch. On any given day it will ask to switch out one or more of 8 individual spots. There is just enough room, with a small loco to push the 6 cars on the North side of the switch back far enough to grab the two cars on the South side. Sometimes the south side needs to be switched one car at a time. Of course, when pulling a car from a spot in the middle, the cars needing to be drug out to get to it all need to go back to their original spot. You need to pay attention because those spots are not on the switch list!

I’ll look for my schematics and post them if I can find them!

#8

Here is the indoor schematic for the Willow Hill spur which is all the bench work around the East and South walls of my basement…

The only change since that schematic was drawn is that Golding Square Box went bust and the track is now known as the Golding Engine Facility where two of the railroad’s C-19s are kept.

And this is the main yard schematic. It is turned 90 degrees to the schematic above and duplicates the bottom left part of of the Willow Hill schematic…

This picture may help to tie some of the schematic locations with reality. The labels are a little out of date since the fiddle yard became Tyrone tracks 1 and 2 The track labeled Tyrone Track 1 is now the Arrival/Departure track 0 which leads (via 050 crane) to tracks 1 and 2…

CVSRyLocations
CVSRyLocations2101×1624 206 KB

And, because I can. Here is the Outdoor schematic that connects to the indoor via the Es-cap`e Canyon bridge. The West half being outdoors and the East half being indoors…

In reality the outdoor is basically a big J shape laying on it’s back with the wye branching off that.

#9

Jon;
I don’t see the short length of hidden track, that was supposed to be reserved for my tank car, filled with my ashes…
I thought it was deep in a tunnel at the end of a wye…
Or, does my railroad company have to seek another location.
Not that I’m on any road towards cremation yet; but I thought the trackage was reserved…no sign of it on your outdoor division trackage diagram…
Fred Mills

#10

Well Fred. The Candlewood Valley is on a shoestring budget. The real estate is reserved, but the siding is yet to be installed. On-time delivery and all that! I have been assured by management that there is panel track at the ready and can be cut in within a few hours once we receive notification that the car is on the way!

If you care to watch this Inspection Video:

You will notice that the black round tunnel gives way to a concrete bunker at the wye tail end. This is “Fred’s Tomb” and the reserved space would be to the left of the track in the video.

On the schematic, this location as labeled DEEP.