'Closed World' Operations

[Anonymous]

Reading the "Forum clinic: Designing for satisfying operations" is quite interesting for me, but it is discussing a style of operations quite different from what we've been planning for our under-construction-layout.

We're doing a 'closed world' i.e. there are no staging tracks or interchanges with places that exist 'off the table'. We presume such interchanges do exist (somewhere 'off the table' [:)] ) to allow some foreign cars to run, but the backbone of the operations will be based around shipping raw goods and finished products between various places that are all on the layout. This does include frieghthouses at the ports which can handle any type of in- or out-bound freight, but the cars always stay in the layout 'world'.

We have 3 railroads represented, with a small interchange yards at the junctions at each end of the connecting line. Traffic is determined by when there is a call for a car at a receiving point from one of the shipping points (the reverse of car card systems), and organised by priority moves rather than a timetable.

For instance, the first priority move on the Ered line is moving a full string of loaded coal cars out of the mine (in the steam age, coal is the backbone of everything; engineyards, docks, industries and small coal merchants always need the stuff). And the first run of the day on the Old Forest Ry. is the milkrun. Otherwise, the top priority on all lines is moving a full train out of the interchange yard as soon as its at full length, and empty coal cars go minewards ASAP, and so on. We'll be developing a full priority list, with passenger and express freight thrown in to liven things up.

Does any one else operate something like this?

Regards,
Maureen

[jwr_1986]

Very cool concept but I think for most it is a little too closed world. Still I'm interested in your track plan and who ships what and how much. Getting more of the action onto the layout and out of the staging yard could make for a very interesting layout. Our club is going to have to do things that way since lack of planning left us with only four staging yard tracks and pitiful access to them.

Jesse

[philnrunt]

Maureen- i havn't built it yet, but my next RR will be based on an industrial railroad serving 2 industries. Most of the movements will be between different buildings of the same manufacturer. My only "staging" will be 2 very small (3 track) yards. I will have interchanges represented by trackage leading off the layout. I'll 'handswitch" cars on and off the layout, so there will be that type of staging.
It sounds like you have put quite a bit of thought into your plan, sounds like it will be a bit of a change from what is being done by most these days. Good for you!

[Anonymous]

Maureen,

On my railroad I have designed a hybrid of the “closed world” and interchange with the rest of the world idea. It is a double deck layout with the bottom representing Central valley in CA circa 1950. The top is Sierra based loosely off of the YV, Sierra and Hetch Hetchy railroads. This plan allows me to run SP and Tidewater Southern prototype around the valley on the bottom (cab forwards and mammoth steam) and run shays and old stuff into the hills. I have been inspired by Dave Adam’s Durlin branch and his ideas about operations somewhat. There have been several operations articles by him in MR over the years dating back to a least 2000.

The operational design is point to point. Small branch line railroading with mainline harassment. The SP and Tidewater trains originate in staging and run through the scene back to staging. They interchange cars in the yard on the bottom deck of the layout.

The “closed world” idea on my layout is to build trains in the yard at the bottom of the hill and send them up to the top and back. I have local freight, stock, mine, logging and passenger trains that originate on the layout and terminate on the layout. From the yard at the bottom they run through three scenes in the valley and then to a helix to the mountain district on the top deck. They roll around the top deck and depending on the train, end up at the far end of the line. The locos are turned on a turntable and they make their way back down. Along the way they set out and pick up cars.

The design calls for a three hour session and roughly five operators running trains on timetable and possibly train orders (not sure about the dispatcher). Car cards are the deal a meal variety. I think the Fast clock will be at 4:1.

The layout is about 5% complete at this point so I haven’t had a chance to work out all of the details operationally speaking. I’m sure that I will have a clearer idea of how many trains I can fit tin a session and how they will run after I get the basic track in (my goal for this year). Currently I have the staging done, benchwork for the bottom deck and a double track helix finished. Am laying track in the yard now. I have a lot more information about the plan in a word file I could e-mail you off forum if you are interested.

[egmurphy]

QUOTE: We're doing a 'closed world' i.e. there are no staging tracks or interchanges with places that exist 'off the table'. We presume such interchanges do exist (somewhere 'off the table' ) to allow some foreign cars to run, but the backbone of the operations will be based around shipping raw goods and finished products between various places that are all on the layout.

Just my opinion but I think that this was the most common system of operating for the majority of model railroads for years. Maybe not for the bigger layouts, but probably for the "Average Joe" layout. For all I know it may still be that way for a lot of people. The popularity of the staging yard concept is relatively recent. It does provide a lot of flexibility and opportunity in operations, but I suspect a lot of people either don't have space or have not modified layouts (that may have been originally constructed without staging or physical interchanges) to include them.


Regards

Ed

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jwr_1986

Still I'm interested in your track plan and who ships what and how much.

Hi Jesse,

Well, the trackplan isn't in a very shareable state right now. Its a monster drawn 1:1 in Illustrator that we print out and tape together to lay on the benchwork. This is then very handy for checking building clearances, scenary elevations, track grades, where to place switch machines underneath (surprisingly tricky in tight spots with the huge Atlas c55 machinery), etc. etc.

Once we've laid track, and can actually say "ahh the track plan is done" we'll do up a simpler version for show and tell.

But these are our chief considerations:

* Every trackside industry has to fit into the 'ecosystem' -- it ships to and/or receives from other trackside industries. The more connections each industry can have, the better. Trackside and dockside frieghthouses are good catch-alls. For instance, the the brewery receives grain from the mill, hops from the farm, coal, occaisional bits of machinery, and kegs (from the nearby freighthouse on the River Running shipped in from somewhere 'upriver' -- since we're not modelling any logging operations to provide a raw material, we're also not showing any wood or paper industries -- can't model the entire economy) and ships out to all the freighthouses and of course the commissary for the passenger train depot in Hobbiton.

* Primary raw material source is the coal mine in Mordor, they ship everywhere. A major design factor is based on having at least twice as many coal cars as the track capacity at the mine. Top priority move is getting a load of coal out of the mine, and then herding the empties from the last shipment back home. Once we're actually running trains, we'll see if we should add more gondolas to the ecosystem or not which would allow some of the empties to stay out longer (but if so, waiting empties would tie up siding space that may be needed for other traffic).
* Secondary raw materials are the iron mine in the Iron Hills and the mithril mine in Moria.
* But the second costant rail traffic is the dairy industry, with a daily milk run to provide the chief ingredient for the Rivendell Dairy in the middle of the OFRy. This provides a fair amount of switching, making up the mixed passenger/dairy train , going to the whistle stops, dropping the first reefer at the dairy in mid-run, then going to the other end of the line and back to the dairy doing more whistle stops on the return to drop off the second reefer, then completing the final return leg of the passenger run. Cattle traffic also connects to the packing plant, which then provides meat and hides. And all cattle traffic passing through Hobbiton has to be cut out for a stop at the farm near the station, which has a lucrative contract running the cattle dock to feed them.

The approach is overall one of story-telling. How do all of these places on the railroad relate to each other to build a functioning economy and society?

The discussion in the design forum thread talks about having enough empty space in the staging yards to provide fluidity of actual movement. For our planning, every car has a nominal 'home port' that does not include the interchange yards. Each yard is small -- 1 eastbound and one westbound track, at least long enough to hold a full train, plus a little extra room if we can squeeze it in. Theoretically, if there were no operations in progress, every car would have room to sit at its siding (even the excess coal cars have nominal home ports in engine yards or other receiving facilities). Some sidings are longer than needed to hold the 'home' cars, to help provide some of the empty space needed for fluidity, but its the interchange yards that provide the major room for fluidity of movement. Fun complications will of course arise ocassionally with needing to clear space for arriving cars, and dealing with cars delayed at the RIP track (dice roll for every car passing through the Bree yards).

Cheers,
Mo

[CBQ_Guy]

With the short distances we can model between locations on our layouts, most if not all of the exchange from one layout business to the next would be via truck.

[Bikerdad]

The most realistic type of "closed world" ops would be on an urban w/port layout pre-1920s. No trucks, high volume of traffic, manufacturing and a universal industry (port) as well as light rail all combine to make it work. A larger layout can incorporate those elements that directly support urban centers, such as milk runs, quarries and gravel pits, coal mines, etc.

For instance, such a layout could incorporate a steel mill, bringing coal in from outlying areas of the layout, and iron ore from the port. The daily milk run has to be scheduled to avoid the coal trains that supply both the mill, glass factory and town power plant. A glass factory can be served by a nearby sandpit, and the glass goes both "offmap" and out through the port. A paint factory can be served by the port also, and a furniture factory can get wood from the logging line, paints and varnishes from the paint plant, and ship out via the port. Add a cannery getting coil steel from the mill for cans, an iceplant for icing down the fish and imported fruit from the port heading to the cannery and to serve the dairy/icecream plant (milk runs gotta go somewhere, right?), and a passle of trolleys to move all the folks doing all this work around town, and voila, an internally coherent "closed operations" eco($$) system.

Or you can simply do the "easiest" closed operations, commuter rail and steel mills.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CBQ_Guy

With the short distances we can model between locations on our layouts, most if not all of the exchange from one layout business to the next would be via truck.

The distances are only constrained to be short if you model a continuous linear slice. If, as we're doing, you don't make a continuous line, but hop to different points down the line, there can be as much distance between them as you like.

If the track passes through some type of a scene-divide, there's no reason for the two scenes to be the scale distance apart that they are on the model. As long as they appear visually separated, you can mentally provide as much distance as you like.

We have two places where the track literally goes through a scene divide on the backdrop, and three others where the track enters a tunnel, then does a loop on a helix before emerging again. This means that the distance between the two tunnel portals is pretty close together, but the train dissappears completely into the tunnel without the caboose hanging out side while the engine is emerging from the other. And there is also a passage of time before the train emerges in the next scene. For dramatic effect, the train can be paused in the tunnel to lengthen the time of passage.

Cheers,
Maureen

[MidlandPacific]

With those names, your layout is a candidate for the "Best Railroad Movie Ever" thread!

regards,

Rob

[dinwitty]

A closed system needs all the industries to match on layout, whether its the same RR or not.

My layout plan will involve several RR's with interchanges, my idea...no hidden trackage, eveything visible.

My plan on off-layout action is the Car float/ferry, a way to introduce traffic to the layout prototypically and not be hidden.

[CBQ_Guy]

I guess my question is why would one want a closed system in the first place. Doesn't seem very realistic.

[Anonymous]

Models can only reflect some aspects of reality. Which aspects you choose to model, or enjoy modelling, can and will vary. Some folks focus on the radius of curves, or the number of cars in a train, or the number of rivets on a car as their preferred slice of reality.

For us, we like the reality of depicting where things come from and where they go to. That's pretty realistic. Things just passing through somewhere is also realistic, but not as enjoyable for us.

Layouts where trains come from and dissappear into hidden staging depicts the passing through slice of realism. But that comes with the aesthetic disadvantage (for us) that a lot of the model space is not being used for modelling scenary and showing the trains in relationship to their environment.

If the trains come from/end in a visible interchange yard, the world still just stops right there and you have to wait for the big hands from the sky to take the cars away. Not very realistic either. Since any model can only have limited aspects of realism, by default any model will also come with its own corresponding unrealities.

Our two small interchange yards are not realistic in size for what they represent, but they are quite realistic in function. The connecting railroad actually transfers cars between two other railroads. And those cars come from their point of origin and go to their point of destination. We like that reality.

Cheers,
Mo