Walthers Carfloat Model Owner Experiences and Operational Questions

[MisterBeasley]

This is a picture I took at the Treasure Coast Model Railroad Club in Fort Pierce, Florida.  My in-laws live nearby, and when we visit, my father-in-law and I sometimes take a drive up and check out their layout.

You can get a bit better view by clicking on the picture.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure the terminal is the Walthers model, and the barges are either the Walthers ones or something similar.  Barges aren't terribly complicated vessels, and my guess is that you could scratch-build something pretty decent from wood and styrene, and you could then embed your own tracks to match up with whatever wye turnout you chose.

In a prototype operation, a locomotive would never cross, or even get on to, the float bridge.  The bridges simply aren't designed to take that kind of load, and the engine might find itself sleeping with the fishes that night.  So, your suggestion of an "idler" flat or two between the engine and the cars on the barge is the prototypical solution.

[rfbranch]

Hi all-

I’m in the process of revising my layout design, and have decided that I would like to include a carfloat interchange on my layout to save space on staging as well as increase my operational interest.  I’ve searched around, and the only commercially available model I can find is the now-discontinued Walters Carfloat and Barge Series (933-3068 and 933-3152).  I’ve read through the description on the Walthers site as well as some related posts here, and had a few questions I thought some owners and those more familiar with prototypical operations might be able to answer:

1. Carfloat Apron – I see from the model photo that there is a wye leading up to the plastic tracks embedded in the model.  If anyone is using it this way, can you let me know what why you used to make it fit?  I’m trying to figure out if I need to do a major redesign to make this fit.
2. Carfloat – Another member made allusion in a post that they only assembled “two of the three sections of the barge”.  Does this mean there are modulated sections and I can reduce the length from the 39” listed on the Walthers site?  This might help with space issues I mentioned above if I can shorten the barge itself.
3. Plastic Track – Both the Apron and the Barge itself have embedded plastic track.  Since I can’t power the track, would make sense (as well as be reasonably prototypically accurate) to lash a couple of flat cars to the front of my locomotive as a lead to cross the unpowered track to couple to the string of cars on the barge?  I’m going to be using a couple of 44Tonners as motive power, and I doubt they would be any heavier than a lot of the cars they would be pulling so this may not be the most prototypical operation but I don’t have another idea of how to work around this otherwise.

Thanks in advance for your opinions and experience.  If this works, I’m going to make this the primary interchange for my pike and have the barge a removable portion of it so I can go load it directly from my storage shelves!

 

~rb