Join the discussion: Operations with Donald Nute

[DNute]

Hi, Ian.

Thanks for the comments. I recalled reading about an car forwarding system similar to the one we use, but I didn't recall the source or I would have referred to your article. I've also read about a colored tack system used for HO. The only thing I added that is really different from what I have read about elsewhere is the use of the siding labels. I think I also recall your use of bamboo uncouplers and turnout switchers, but I had forgotten about them. I may give them a try.

Don

[Hennsallvanian]

Dear Don 

 I enjoyed your article in the April edition. Your Freight routing system is similar to the one I described in my article in Garden railways in April 2011. Mine is also paperless and has worked well for about 10 years.

Like you I use kadees and have also taken off the drop pins. As my track is mainly at ground level we follow the trains using Aristocraft train engineers and use bamboo poles about 3 ft long for uncoupling . Each pole has a shaped end rather like a screwdriver end but tapered. We find this gets in the knuckle easier than a plain screw driver shape. At the other end of the pole is a notch which neatly fits over our Peco turnouts to change the points. 

 Lego loads are very popular with my young crews , both loads of bricks in open vehicles and Lego people in the boxcars. Also when you tell some of the children that the train needs a load of, say autos or treasure  they make them in lego. I've got a working coal mine where you can load 'coal' into wagons. When we have our younger visitors this becomes aLego mine.

I recently got a Playmobil battery train. This is unbelievable . For less than $100 it has a four wheel Yellow German Style switcher  a circle of track and a wagon. The radio control works at over 100 feet. It s so child friendly  and can take a lot of punishment. I have built a PRR Boxcab Diesel which literally drops over it . So with my regular crew we run it as a Pennsy Boxcab , but when the children come its a bright yellow diesel. I fitted it with kadees and it can pull six boxcars.

As a librarian i always try and get books out . As well as Thomas the Tank engine, I read the very evocative railroad stories of Bill Peet. Smokey and best of all The caboose who got loose

Keep up the good work

Ian Stringer

  

[Rex in Pinetop]

Hi Ray,

I took a "tour" of your railroad on-line.  Your helix is something else and the work you've put into your turn-table is amazing.  I also have a helix - single track and only 2 1/2 turns so much smaller than yours.  My turn-table cheats a little as I used a bridge mounted on a lazy-susan.  I don't have a cast pit either so I'm having some engineering to do to get the tracks to line up.  How do you lock up your table to the various rails?

Pictures of my attempts are found in the " Scratch building" section of this forum.

Rex

[DNute]

Hello, David. Some of our younger operators sometimes put gravel, figures, etc., in cars. We built some lumber and coal loads for our flats and gons. That satisfies most of them. But I still find objects in new locations on the layout, and some of the boxcars rattle when I am putting them away. Yes, we converted all of our equipment to Kadee couplers except for the loop-and-pin couplers on the mining line. We use the screwdriver method to uncouple. We cut the bottom pins off our Kadee couplers; so we don't try magnetic uncoupling. We also found these pins turn into vaulting poles if any debris gets on the track. Much more dramatic than a simple derailment! There are some faded and wrinkled paper signs on some of our buildings that we plan to replace this spring. I hand paint some signs on the sides of buildings. They look good but they are a lot of work. A 3D printer would be a great idea for some signs. But I want some signs to be flat. I am trying to come up with a sign design that lets me slip printed signs in and out of some sort of holder easily. I'd do my best to water-proof the signs, but I am looking for a way to make it easy to print and replace worn out signs easily. I look forward to looking at your page on 3D printing. Don

[Engineer_Ray]

I have run a few operating sessions on my Mystic Mountain RR. I've also made some changes and am now making a few more to improve the operations aspect of the RR. I recently used JMRI to create an operations session and tested it with a friend. Seems to work OK, but learning all the controls and options is daunting.

I'm using battery power, Radio Control and hook&loop couplers.

You can see the RR at http://www.mysticmountainarts.com/MMRR

Ray

[StarDust39]

Hello Don,

Thanks very much for the excellent article concerning operations with children on your outstanding LT&S Railroad. Operations and children are two of my favorite topics as you can tell from this 2009 web page about my grandson discovering basic operations on his own while operating at our very modest Frankfort Terminal Railroad. We don't have organized operating sessions but grandchildren, their friends, neighbor children and grandchildren do end up in impromptu sessions. An interesting side note is that, left to their own devices, the young guys like hauling "stuff" (wheels, leaves, rocks, bugs and such) while the little gals are more likely to put people in the open cars for a ride.

One well overdue upgrade on the FTRR rolling stock has been the replacement of the 'difficult for little hands to uncouple' hook and loop couplers with Kadees. This conversion is finally underway. It appears that you have converted to knuckle couplers, are they all Kadee? Do you attempt to have your operators magnetically uncouple at all or do they use the "insert screwdriver and twist" method? That appears to be what Luke is doing in photo 9 on page 49 of the GR article.

Finally, I am very impressed with the variety and craftsmanship displayed in your structures. It does look like you face the challenge many of us do - long lasting signs. Do I see a wrinkled sign on the red brick building in photo 4 at Dale? I had tried a number of methods to preserve paper signs printed on the computer, but UV, rain and freeze/ thaw always won, usually very quickly.

Check this web page for my 3D printing answer. And there just happens to be an article in the same GR about how. Finally, a curved 3D sign for the water tower at Dale would be an interesting challenge.

Thanks again for spreading the word about garden railroading with the young folks,
David 

[tomgb]

Don: We've known the boys since they were born and see them twice each year at our respective homes from 1-2 weeks each visit. We notice lots of little differences to distinguish them. The biggest one in your photos might be the glasses. They both use glasses but Cade wears contacts. You'll notice Sam has his glasses on in both photos and Cade just has shades resting on his hair in the photo they are sitting side-by-side. The boys really enjoy visiting your layout. It's pretty different from mine so they get a broader experience having two places to run trains.  And we live practically next door to Roaring Camp in Felton so they get a dose of narrow-gauge live-steam with each visit to California.

Tom

[DNute]

I'm sorry, Tom. The boys have been coming to our layout for several years now and I still can't keep them straight! It's entirely my fault that the names are reversed. I'm sure they will let me hear about it when we get together this month and I give them a copy of the magazine. By the way: how can you tell them apart in a photo? Don

[Rene Schweitzer]

Tom, thanks for the note. I've forwarded it on to Marc Horovitz. Despite the mixup, I'm glad they both participate in operating with you. 

[tomgb]

This is a very nice article and I applaud the authors' sharing of their railroad but as a proud grandfather I have to offer a slight correction. In photo #3 Cade and Sam's names should be reversed. That's Sam in the shorts and Cade in the jeans.  It is also Sam, not Cade in photo #5.

The boys are identical twins which might explain the confusion. They are both great operators of my indoor G-Scale layout(s) when they visit me in Santa Cruz, California.

Tom Beckett

[Rene Schweitzer]

The link has been fixed.

[DNute]

You are right that there is an error in the link, Mike, but you don't need www. I left out the colon. The correct link is http://laketownandshire.net. I'm not sure what the problem was with the link to the slide show. But I took that one down anyway now that I have gone live with my online articles on operations. These are an expansion of the material in our article coming out in the April 2014 edition of Garden Railways. Just go to the website and click on Operations at the top. Don

[mgilger]

Don,

You might want to put the "www." after your http// as the link fails until you do that. I noticed in your power point slide it's also that way.

Thank for the information.

Mark

[Rene Schweitzer]

Welcome to the Garden Railways thread on operations. My name is Donald Nute and I will help get the discussion started.
 
Many of the articles in Garden Railways include short sections describing how the author operates trains on his layout, but the bulk of each article is usually devoted to explaining how the railroad was planned and constructed, including the equipment, structures, and landscape. In the April 2014 issue, an article by my wife Jane and I was devoted almost totally to the details of organizing operating sessions involving multiple trains and several operators. I have expanded the material in the Garden Railways article in series of online articles on our website, http://laketownandshire.net. Just click on Operations.
 
In case you didn't see our article in Garden Railways, let me introduce myself. I am retired from the University of Georgia where was Head of the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Center. My wife retired from a long career teaching middle school math and science, and working as a consultant for a state educational resource center. 2000 was the first season for our garden railroad, the Lake Town & Shire. The railroad is located in Tolkien's Middle Earth and was originally Jane's idea. We expanded the layout in 2004, and we began to hold combination open houses/operating sessions free to the public in 2005. We now hold one session each month from March through November and we work with operators as young as six years. 2014 will be the tenth season we have opened our railroad to the public in this way.
 
As you will see from our article in Garden Railways and my articles online, we have made lots of mistakes and we are constantly discovering ways to improve our open houses/operating sessions. I will be reading this forum regularly. I'll give whatever advice I can and I look forward to learning from others. So let's get started! Maybe you already have some questions that you want to ask or have an experience related to operations in the garden that you want to tell. Or perhaps you might want to take a look at our Garden Railways or online articles and then react to them. I look forward to a lively conversation with other garden railroaders with an interest in operations.
 
Don