So, I know it's dangerous to ask broad questions but I'm going to try and break it down a bit. I am trying to figure out how operate a small shelf layout (2 by 5ft) relatively realistically. Note, I'm not a diehard operator, i'm not looking for super prototypical operating scenarious. Anyway, some background. This shelf layout depicts a small paper mill with a 3 track yard adjacent the main line set in 1965. It has a dedicated switcher that handles the frequent car movments the mill requires. Moving along, I have come up with a few basic steps for enjoyable operating. 1. Eastbound local arrives and drops a cut of cars. Local then grabs loaded boxcars, empty tankers, and empty hoppers from the yard. Local now departs.
2. Switcher sorts cars and junk. Yeah, this is where I am struggling to figure out car movements. Help!
3. Local returns, now heading West. Picks up any cars that are ready for transport. Local departs.
4. Switcher makes its final moves for the evening and the "crew" heads home.
Any help in adding some more operational fun to this layout would be greatly appreciated. Just a side note, the real crew from the 1960's had a lot, and I mean a LOT of free time on their hands. They sat in the caboose coupled to the rear of their engine and drank (not coffee) for most of the day. After trying to figure out operations on this layout I can understand why they had so much free time!
JJF
Prototypically modeling the Great Northern in Minnesota with just a hint of freelancing.
Yesterday is History.
Tomorrow is a Mystery.
But today is a Gift, that is why it is called the Present.
I think you might benefit from car cards and waybils.
I think what you are lacking is knowing what is in each piece of rolling stock and who it is coming from. With the cards you can keep track of what's what and where it is going.
It will also give some variety to your switching.
I know you didn't want anything fancy. But...
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
First: each type of incoming car must have dedicated place to go e.g. a tank car goes to a standpipe to be hooked up and pumped dry. The same for other cars.
The three track yard, if it was mine would have an arrivals track, an eastbound departure track, and a westbound departure track. If there are no customers or suppliers in one direction, then nothing goes that way. Or if the local swicher is an out to a dead end, and back.
So the eastbound local arrives, drops off the arrivals, picks up the departures and leaves. The local switcher does its thing.
The westbound local arrives, repeat.
I would either use card/carcards or else switch lists.
Cars need at least twelve hours at the dock to be emptied, or loaded, before they are moved again.
My waybills include the shipper and the commodity in the car. Eg SpaceMouse logs chipper plant as shipper, log chips in hopper. More than one supplier per commodity.
Likewise more than one customer per type of paper. Note, a mill will make very few kinds of paper, as each type needs different equipment.
In Manildra in NSW Australia, a similar situation existed with Manildra Mills where there were two sidings but 3 switcher locos available. Hence not much switching occurred but the crews did other tasks around the place, not drinking.
Have you tried the same operations in fast time, say 6 or 8 to 1 speed so that the action of setting out cars etc takes a bit longer and the 8 hour day takes an hour. By the time you have arranged cars for that local etc an hour could get a little busier than you anticipate if you are a lone wolf operator. Write a few fictitious waybills for destination etc to expand the "world" you work with.
Food for thought
Cheers from Australia
Trevor
https://sites.google.com/view/stagnesrailway for your perusal
One basic design principle that I keep in mind is that if major shuffling is expected, you need to have enough track length both on the storage tracks and the mainline. Otherwise, it will be difficult (or a very lengthy) to back out from one storage track on the mainline, to then transfer cars to another storage area. When I designed my layout, I printed the plan and literally simulated train operations with my finger to see how I would operate it, including where uncoupling would occur. There were a few eye-openers as a result of that.
As for adding fun, well, I would add a turntable with a few storage tracks for engines at the other end of the pike. Not very realistic, but I would get totally bored with just one engine... Especially diesel!
Simon
Thank you all so much. I will defiantly look in to the car cards waybills. I'll take all of the suggestions under advisement. I like all of the scenarios you presented, now to problem is choosing one of them.
There is a lot of interesting discussion here.
Could a track plan be shared?
-Kevin
Living the dream.
JDawg2. Switcher sorts cars and junk. Yeah, this is where I am struggling to figure out car movements. Help!
Switching is mainly about sorting by destination. So to figure out the car movements, you want to have a system to assign destinations to your cars.
Then if you have a "cut" of cars, that looks sort of like this:
AABBCBDBAAB
where the letters are the destinations of the cars, then the yard switcher can sort the cars so all the "A"s go together, all the "B"s, and so on. Then the local/through train comes and picks up the (sorted) cars that are going to its destination.
If it's an industry/local switcher, it could also be doing the direct delivery and pick up of cars at the industry's loading tracks and then sorting them in the yard for pickup by the East and West locals.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
A good look at how to sort cars in a busy yard is this:
https://www.layoutvision.com/no-cherry-picking
JDawg I will defiantly look in to the car cards waybills. I'll take all of the suggestions under advisement. I like all of the scenarios you presented, now to problem is choosing one of them.
Here's how we switched the paper mills in Pine Bluff. The cars would come into the yard. There was caustic soda, scrap paper, and empty boxcars. The outside track at the yard was a "clean out track". Empty boxcars would be spotted on it and then a contractor would drive along them and clean out the interiors.
Every time the plants were switched the plant would order in what empty boxcars it wanted. Scrap paper was automatically switched out to spot since it was a low volume.The caustic soda could be ordered in but there was track space at the plant so all the tanks were taken to the plant.
The switcher would gather up the empties, the caustic soda and the scrap and go to the plant. It would switch the tracks and pull any outbound cars (loaded or empty and bring it back to the yard, where it would be sorted by direction (most loaded paper went north, most chemical cars went south).
In this case the mills were a couple miles from the yard. But on your layout, it sounds like the mill is right next to the yard. Depending on how the track is arranged, it might be possible to divide the plant into areas and switch one area before the other.
One other thing is that one of the plants recieved wood, in the form of chips, by a unit train of jumbo chip hoppers that went direct to the plant to be unloaded. The other plant recieved logs by truck.
You can vary the type of empty boxcar based on the product being made. The general car used were 50 ft IPD boxcars, but they also used 50 and 60 ft plug door higher cube boxcar for specialty paper. One plant made mostly kraft paper (brown paper) used to make product bags (e.g. dog food bags) and grocery bags. The other plant made higher grade papers, printer paper and the paper used to make milk cartons (which was exported to Germany).
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com