No, it's not compressed, it's the real length...

[leighant]

(Quote)"It must have made a dispatcher's job really interesting, to have to know what the siding capacities were in each town, and then to have to know what the train lengths for every train on every day was!"

Most of the employee timetables I have (required to be carried by every operating employee) list the siding length for each siding.

I have a dispatcher's train sheet for one day. For each train, the sheet lists the motive power, train tonnage, number of loads, number of empties and total cars. So it is not at all unusual for a dispatcher to keep track of all that.

[dknelson]

And of course with railroaders thinking of these sidings in terms of numbers of cars, as cars went from 40 and 50 feet in the 1950s, to 60, 75, and 89 feet in the 1980s, not to mention articulated spine cars and the like, and with 40 and 50 foot cars still being used, thinking in terms of numbers of cars stopped making any sense.
Dave Nelson

[orsonroy]

I've noticed this same phenomenon in researching my prototype road. The NKP's line to Peoria had passing sidings at every town along the line. Some were big ones, say about 100-125 cars. Meets were usually scheduled for these siding locations, and for the midsized sidings of 50-75 car lengths. But a lot of towns had sidings with capacities of only 35 cars, and almost never saw meets (in the 1940s-1960s). I think these sidings were originally installed in the 1870s, when trains were much shorter, and they were never lengthened nor removed.

It must have made a dispatcher's job really interesting, to have to know what the siding capacities were in each town, and then to have to know what the train lengths for every train on every day was!

[Anonymous]

Back in the steam days, when train length was far more limited by locomotive tractive effort constraints, it was not unusual at all to have 25-30 car passing sidings.

[BRJN]

I commend to your attention the book Indiana Railroad: The Magic Interurban. It had a lot of interesting stuff in it, besides the story the author wanted to tell.

One thing that got my attention was an IRR timetable which included a column for 'Car Capacity of Sidings'. Get this book and you will also get prototype information to show that sidings could in fact be 2 - 7,or as much as 12 carlengths, spaced about 1.5 miles apart. With a little averaging, a line that was built for coal hauling might have 15-car sidings every 10 miles (or so).

So the sidings and spurs we have to use in the model (due to limitations of space) are NOT hopelessly short. [:)]