Idea: Virtual Car Interchange "forum"

[Anonymous]

I have an idea but I don't know what to do with it.

What if someone were to set up a web site where we could:

* describe our layouts (road names, era, interchanges, etc)
* list (some/all) rolling stock that we would like to interchange with other railroads
* "pick up and drop off" interchanged cars from other people who listed cars of their roads
* trace where our cars have (virtually) traveled across other people's roads

Is there anything like this? Would anyone want this?

[Anonymous]

Seems like a real neat idea. I have read articles where modelers near each other would interchange cars with each other. Allen McClellands does this with the v&o and and an interchange with the Alleghany Midlinds.

It would almost be like a virtual operating session online. An idea would be to pick cars that are prepainted and numbered and have the members have them on their layouts. So when someone has an interchange with another road they would have the same cars on each layout. A Yahoo group would be a good dplace to set something like this up.
Andrew Miller

[Anonymous]

That sounds neat.

[Anonymous]

I've actually done something like this with two freinds (one is from CA, the other OH).

[orsonroy]

Several of us who are modeling the Peoria area have come up with a similar idea. Several people are designing and building model railroads based on the premise that the CP&StL (the forerunner of the C&IM) was bought by the Van Sweringen brothers, not by Insull (Com Ed). The CP&StL would then become a bridge line from Peoria to Kansas City, instead of a coal hauler and failed shortlines, and would benefit from lots of traffic fed to it from the rest of the Van empire (especially the NKP and Erie).

The idea is still in the rough planning stages, considering none of the four involved layouts are done (mine is the farthest along), but basic schedules for the CP&StL and the NKP (my road, and the connection to the rest of the Van empire) have been compiled, and basic interchange plans have been worked on.

Essentially, the four railroads depict the most important parts of the railroad between KC, St Louis and Peoria. Hotshot freights and passenger trains originate in Kansas City and head to St Louis. In StL, the trains are reblocked, and head through Illinois to Springfield, and on to Peoria. In Peoria (where my layout picks up), trains are handed over to the P&PU, which reblocks (lots of that in the steam era) and hands them off to the NKP. My layouot will then pull the trains about 1/3 of the way to Frankfort, Indiana (my layout ends at Bloomington, IL). There's been talk about getting a bunch of Nickel Plate modelers involved in this plan, so we can route cars all the way to Buffalo! Passenger trains would swap thru coaches and Pullmans at Peoria.

Once the layouts start operating, the plan is to use computer-generated switchlists which can be emailed from one layout to the next. Once we know what's supposed to be in our staging yards, we can either find a matching car in our fleet, or find the closest substitute. Layouts are individually operated in whatever way the owner likes best. There's also been talk about "real time interchange", wherin layout dispatchers phone each other up for train orders and interchange information, during same-day op sessions (we each live in a different state, so there's really no way we can be at one op session while we're "supposed" to be playing with our own!

[Anonymous]

Orsonroy,

Does your program create switchlists randomly, or can you tell it that you grain elevator (as an example) creates three carloads of grain for a certain destination per session?

[orsonroy]

The way we've got the basic premise, we act as our own online sales reps, generating however many cars as we need or think are plausable. If I need 14 MTY NKP box cars for the grain rush, I'll either add them to the East staging yard, or make a call to the Frankfort yardmaster (if we find one!) and wait for him to "send" me cars. Therefore, the switchlists will mostly be based on both what cars get transfered from layout to layout, as well as our own "captive interchange" roads. I'll end up being "told" which cars I'll be getting from second 62 out of KC, but I'll make up what I get from the TP&W every day (mostly potatos, of all things). For now, the switchlists will be hand typed for every op session. If we decide to get fancy, we'll start automating.

I'm in a sort of unique position, since my layout to the east is mostly prototype, while to the west is mostly freelance. I won't actually be modeling the CP&StL's engines or facilities, but some of their freight cars and a Pullman or two will make it down my mainline. I'm looking into Peoria traffic patterns in the 1940s and 1950s now, to see how much other traffic will be generated, where it was from, and how much will be going in each direction (the NKP already had four scheduled freights and one scheduled passenger run each way from Peoria, and the CP&StL concept will add at least two Eastbounds and one Westbound to that basic traffic pattern. Adding all the historical traffic the NKP handled through Peoria (117,000 cars in 1952!), and I'll be able to "invent" a lot of my own interchange traffic.

[Noah Hofrichter]

I kind of like the idea of saying somethign like "okay, a lumber company on my layout needs to ship a loaded centerbeam car to Iowa" The first person with a layout set in Iowa who responds would then take a loaded centerbeam flat car off there supply of cars, and drop it an industry that recives lumder on there layout. The person would report the set out on line. In a few days he would post "unloaded centerbeam car to go to place to be loaded" Some body would say they'd use it, take a car of there own, drop it at a place to load it, and then then the process would start all over. "I've got a loaded centerbeam....." We wouldn't have to worry about numbers, and that way we wouldn't have to coordinate cars on a large scale basis. Just a though with my two cents in it.

Any way it would work out I'd still look into participating, as I really like the idea.

Noah

[Noah Hofrichter]

Another though. We could also say " a industry o my layout needs a loaded centerbeam flat car, send to" your yard like on mine it would be "Madison WI" some body with a lumber producing company would say "i've got one onroute toMadison Wisconsin, will arrive..." and then a date. After it was unloaded, you would say " car headed back to____ from (in my case) Maidson WI, will arrive....." and so on.

Noah

[Anonymous]

Noah,

I like that. The more industries I have, the more interchange I could get from other roads. Sounds a lot like real railroading.

[Noah Hofrichter]

You know, we could even sart a topic here for something like I'm suggesting, we wouldn't neccesaraly have to go to yahoo.

[Anonymous]

This would be a better spot. Yahoo is a too crowded with train forums.