Philosophy Friday -- Loads-In, Empties Out

[twhite]

Now John, I run my trains around and go "WHOO-WHOO-" a lot, LOL!

Actually, in my case, loads in empties out works pretty well for me, because a great deal of the traffic on my Yuba River Sub is eastbound late-season fruit blocks.  Refrigerator cars.  The train arrives in Deer Creek from the Sacramento Valley, generally pulled by a 4-8-2.  The 4-8-2 is cut off, and one of my big articulateds is hooked on, usually either a 2-8-8-4 or a 4-6-6-4, and takes off to climb the Sierra.   After surmounting the summit at Yuba Pass, the train kinda/sorta 'disappears' for a while.  Then lo, and behold, it re-appears after a sufficient time, on the westbound track (the railroad is non-parallel double track), and this time it's 'empties' headed back to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys for re-loading after having visited cities in the midwest and east. 

Of course, prototypically, returning empty refrigerator cars would be run in 'blocks' mixed in with other westbound freight, but not always.  SP was famous for running through westbound solid trains of empty reefers due to the tremenduous amount of need for them during the California perishables season.  So it's not THAT un-prototypical to see one of my 4-6-6-4 or 2-8-8-4 locos wheeling them back into Deer Creek, where a 'valley' 4-8-2 is patiently waiting to return them to the packers in the valley. 

However, with my regular freights, I always make sure that I have an empty gondola or two and several of my boxcars have open doors, so I can explain (to myself, mainly) the fact that I'm running 'empties' mixed in with loads both ways, east AND west.  And since my MR is set during the WWII, Korean Conflict Era, the amount of traffic both east and west will vary, considerably. 

But the refrigerator car trains, which make up the bulk of my freight running, is pretty easy to do.  I mean, it's REFRIGERATOR cars--how can you tell except for the occasional open ice hatches, LOL?

Tom

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

markpierce

My first three layouts built in the 1960s were all inspired by a 1953 Armstrong design which had hidden staging.  But it took decades before the concept became generally accepted.

My first layout, designed and built for me by my father in 1966, had hidden staging. Each of the two seperate routes (also connected by a double crossover) had a passing siding hidden in the "back" by a mountain.  One train could run in, and another come out. The layout filled two 5x9 platforms arranged in an "L". Tru Scale track, plaster mountains, a Mantua Pacific and Mike, Penn Line GG1, Varney F3's and Varney and Athearn rolling stock.

I don't know what his inspiration was the layout served me well in my early days in the hobby. I learned to hand lay track, build kits, wire the blocks and light the houses. I was 9 when he built it, by age 11 it was ALL MINE, been modeling ever since!

Even at 11 I had planned operating sessions with my 4 "trains" on my two routes using the staging to simulate "the rest of the world".

Sheldon

[jmbjmb]

I've done the coal empties-loads thing but with only the mine visible.  The other end was hidden staging so distance didn't matter.   For the paired industries concept, up until the 50s/60s, in the south, cotton had multiple paired industries, all plausible within a few miles or even the same town.  Cotton gin would ship cotton to a mill or warehouse and seed to an oil mill.  Some oil mills also had gins so they would be shipping cotton and receiving seed.  They would turn the seed into oil and fertilizer which would also get shipped out.  cotton from the gin or the warehouse would go to a mill (actually lot's of mills depending on the buyer, so one warehouse could ship both on and off line).  The mill could then make thread/yarn which would be shipped to another mill for weaving into cloth (or an integrated mill could go from cotton to cloth all in one plant).  Not to mention finishing and dyeing.  Often a large mill company would have specialized plants so the railroad becomes part of one long assembly line from raw material to finished product.  In the heyday of southern cotton mills, cotton could go from field to clothes within a few miles.

[wm3798]

...a really good list of paired industries.

On my layout, I've got a big paper mill, which receives pulpwood and wood chips from on-line sources, as well as coal for the power plant.  Yes, this is short-haul, but so it was on the real Western Maryland.  There was a major pulpwood load out at Hancock, Maryland, and sources for chips down on the Thomas sub, and these cars moved between 80 and 100 miles to get to the mill at Luke, Maryland.  Another short haul pairing was a silica sand load out at Shaw, West Virginia, which provided carloads for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant in Cumberland, less than 50 miles away.  There are many excellent layouts depicting narrow gauge timber lines, with a logging camp at one end, and a sawmill at the other.  Around Detroit, there are stamping mills that short haul to assembly plants.  It's not all that uncommon.  Often it's not the distance traveled that dictates rail service, but rather the volume of material moved.

...actually implement paired industries-- or else industries that *could* be paired if they wanted to, but instead choose to direct the traffic off the layout.

As noted above, I utilize quite a few paired industries.  Soon I'll be adding a few more, such as newsprint paper shipped from the paper mill at Luke to the newspaper plant in Cumberland.  Less prototypical, but a nice little traffic generator for the layout.  In addition to the paired industries, I also have a number of sidings that rely on connections to get their goods to market.  A typical four cycle waybill on my railroad will have the car move to on-line spots for one or two of the cycles, and in and out of staging for 2 or 3.  It keeps things mixed up, and I rarely have the same train running twice.

And finally, what is your opinion of paired-industries in-general? Do you think it enhances a layout's operation?

In my opinion, I like paired industries.  I use view blocks, helixes, and other trickery to add to the perceived distance between destinations.  I also use operating rules, such as all local traffic must be sorted in the main yard before moving to its next destination to add to the play value.  (in other words, if the two industries in question are only a couple of actual feet apart on the layout, I pull the car from point A, send it around to the yard to be classified into the next train, then send it back out to point B.  This is more 3 dimensional than pulling the car from A, and shunting it directly into point B.  Obviously, there are exceptions, such as shunting cars between buildings within the paper mill complex.)

I also like running cars off line to simulate a multitude of destinations.  Again, this makes running the layout far more interesting than sitting there watching trains chase their tails.  To be sure, there are times when I enjoy doing that, too, but I find most of my enjoyment is in mixing things up a little operations wise.

Lee

[Sailormatlac]

 Interesting question.

We built a layout representing a port (Quebec City Harbour to be more specific). We always assumed train came from the other world and it's why the yard was actually a staging yard. Trains came from outside on cassette, they were rebuilt in the yard and assigned to switchers in the port.

 

We are rebuilding the layout and we decided to keep that idea. Now a tunnel though a furnace room became the other world, separating the yard from the port. On the other side of the yard is the industrial district which offer more switching opportunities. We tried to pair industries, but it was quite unrealistic and not that much interesting after many operation session. We finally abandonned that idea and reduced dramatically the number of industries (in fact, we reduced them but made them more prototypical which seems to enhance the experience).

I think small layouts works quite well with paired industries as pointed out by Harold Minky. Seeing is work, I built up a temporary quarry-themed layout last summer and was quite surprised how it added action even on a ridiculous 4'x5' HO layout.

 

Matt

[Motley]

I really like today's topic. Very interesting ideas from everyone.

On my layout, I have both paired industries and staging. My extension room layout will represent a long distance away from the main layout that will have paired industries as well as staging.

The main layout room will have a single track going through a hole in the wall. These two rooms are completely separate.

Main layout industries:                  Ext. room layout industries:

1.) Coal Mine                                2.) Steel Mill
2.) Intermodal Containers               2.) Staging
3.) Ethanol Plant                           3.) Oil/Gas Refinery
4.) Lumber Mill                              4.) Lumber Yard
5.) Passenger Station                    5.) Passenger Station

[steinjr]

Sailormatlac

I think small layouts works quite well with paired industries as pointed out by Harold Minky. Seeing is work, I built up a temporary quarry-themed layout last summer and was quite surprised how it added action even on a ridiculous 4'x5' HO layout.

 

 It kind of depends on what you want to model. Having paired loads-in/empties-out industries back to back on the opposite sides of a viewblock on a small layout certainly works great as a display layout. You can certainly do great modeling of buildings, scenery, cars and locomotives.

 But (without without trying to start a food fight here) operationally a loads-in/empties-out shuttle service back and forth between two industries is pretty much a one trick pony on a small layout.

 Your traffic consists of replacing a short cut of empty identical looking cars with another short cut of identical looking loaded cars, go around to the other side and do exactly the same once again, only in the opposite order. Not much variety or challenge.

 Consider using the same space for two unpaired industries with each industry having three spots for different commodities on one side of the layout, and a siding or spur somewhere on the layout representing the connection to the rest of the world, where another train "has dropped off" 3-4 cars for your industries.

 Now you have a wide variety of things that can done while switching. It might become a challenge to figure out how to do the switching in a good way. You can do waybills or switch lists. You can block the outbound cars by where they go in the world next. It's easy to change your game by adding or removing cars (e.g. leaving a car on a siding that should have been delivered last round, but there was no space) and what not.

 In general, having paired original source and final destination on the same small layout, with cars just being shuttled back and forth between the two industries, can be pretty boring operationally.

  Btw - I am obviously not saying that you cannot model things in whatever way you enjoy. That should go without saying - each of us is king or president or dictator or whatever of our own layout :-)

  And, equally obvious - you certainly can have quite plausible movements of cars from one place on the layout to another place on the layout, without having to postulate that the two places are hundreds of miles apart.

 Take e.g "in plant" switching for a large facility - taking loaded box cars in grain service to be weighed before they are spotted for unloading, and taken unloaded cars to a place where they can be cleaned out before returned empty in the general direction of more loads. Or taking cars from one place in a steel mill to another place.

 Hauling logs from a logging camp to a lumber mill or siding where the loaded log cars will be picked up later by another train.

 Icing reefers before spotting them at the fruit packers.

 Hauling coal from a mine to a washing plant or marshaling yard instead of hauling it from mine directly to little local coal dealer. Or hauling things between an interchange or set out track and a factory.

 Here is e.g. a 4x8 H0 scale layout plan designed (by Byron Henderson) that instead of using the space for shuttle traffic between mine and processing plant use a similar amount of space for modeling the junction between mainline and shortline on one side of the layout, and a larger plant on the opposite side of the layout:

 http://www.layoutvision.com/id48.html

 Lots and lots of options.Things can be done in many, many different ways.

 Smile,
 Stein

 

[Forty Niner]

And all of this "discussion" is exactly why the sole purpose of my layout is to have a place to run my trains. For my money the entire layout could be nothing but "scenery" as that is what most of mainline railroading is anyhow. The structures I have are there just because I liked the way they look and they fit the "spot". They're only purpose is to blend in to the "scenery" as the trains are the star of the show and the only things that actualy "move" on a model railroad anyhow.

Take away the trains themselves and I might as well be working on my old clocks or my '57 Safari............too many answers from to few questions.

Mark

[hminky]

Yeah, the quarry/rock crusher is a "one-trick" pony concept on a small layout. I thought the topic was LIEO. Narrow gauge is automatically a "one-trick" pony.

Here is what I would do for standard gauge on the same layout. The through the backdrop becomes the interchange transfer track from two different directions. All traffic ends up there and recycles back to the layout from north/south or east/west.

Having run that traffic pattern on the same track plan it works quite well just like a real shortline. The cars run from one end of the schematic and are interchanged to different railroads at each end.

Harold

 

[Doughless]

My one-train-at-a-time small modern shortline uses the quarry/crusher concept as an industry on the railroad, except the quarry and crusher are represented by staging and the destination is the stone company's stone, concrete block, and concrete batch distribution yard, which is about 20 miles away from the quarry.  Usually, one train each afternoon supplies the yard.

 The concept is that the quarry/crusher is located in a hilly part of the county (almost Appalachia looking), with the distribution center located in the flat part (the topography of the county I model is actually that dramatic).  The county allowed the quarry to be opened as long as the rail line was used to transport the various grades of stone the 20 miles to the distribution center, whereby the flatlands provide easier access to the products by truck.  County officials didn't think that steep hills, narrow curvy roads, and a constant stream of heavy rock trucks mixed well with school buses, etc.  This situation seems plausible enough for me.

Since the hoppers are captive to the shortline, older, beat up, inexpensive hoppers are used.

That's the closest thing I have to the topic(s) at hand.

[tomikawaTT]

I just recalled something I put into a thread a couple of years ago - not LIEO, but paired back-to-back interchange tracks on opposite sides of a peninsula view block.  The peddler drops a cut for the Norfolk and Eastern at Alpha and pulls the parallel track of the two-track interchange, then proceeds on its merry way.  When it arrives at Wonderful West Podunk, it finds a cut on the Podunk and Northern interchange waiting for pickup.

A fine-tuned eyeball might notice the same Toys 'R' Us Geoffery box car that was dropped at Alpha has just reappeared at West Podunk.  But, it now has a new waybill in its car card, so for all practical purposes it's a different car.

The beauty of the idea is that it's not just hoppers, or gons - It's every kind of car that might legitimately roll on the railroad.  Of course, a little moderation is in order.  My suspension of disbelief would snap in a hurry if the reappearing cut included a loaded Schnaebel car...

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - EILO at the major colliery)

[IRONROOSTER]

  A LIEO operation does not have to involve lots of cars or be exclusive to the industries.  For example, you could have a small coal mine on one side and a factory on the other.  The factory receives coal, but also raw materials, boxes, etc. and ships it's products out as well.  It could receive a car or two of coal at a time and the small mine could generate same.

Enjoy

Paul

[pastorbob]

my Santa Fe in 1989 gives me the ultimate in loads and empties operation.  The date is set during grain  harvest season in Oklahoma.  One major spot on my three deck layout is Enid Oklahoma where I grew up and my dad, a Santa Fe engineer, ran a switch engine from 1946 until his retirement in 1970 something.

Enid had massive grain storage facilities, led by Pillsbury, Union Equity (later Farmland), General Mills and many others.  on my layout, the grain trains come into Enid, many terminate and the grain cars are delivered to various elevators, others passed through on their way to other facilities in other towns.  Without any gimmcks, the cars soon became empties going back to the grain harvesting areas.

At the same time, the massive elevators would move out old grain that they sold to make room for new harvest.  That mean empty grain cars spotted at the elevators, loaded, and then moved to Texas Gulf in unit trains or to other locations.  Also the Enid district, running from Guthrie OK to Kiowa KS served several elevators, so there were trains running every which way, loaded and empty, only the waybill in the car card tells which.  I also included the SLSF (BN) in the mix with grain trains in and out, the the CRIP (UP) doing the same.  Lots of car movements, not problems as to visually which were empty and which were loads.  Then of course there is through traffic as the Enid dist. connected the north south Texas line, and the ATSF transcon.

The layout as a total of 30 grain elevators on the three decks, most are concrete terminal style (Walthers owes me a rebate) but a few country style still exist.  The railroad also includes the old Champlin refinery at Enid, so tank cars move in and out, loaded and empty, without visual change. How many do I have?  My wife thinks "an awful lot", in reality, several hundred.

Obviously I am most interested in operation, which still takes a lot of structures to support.  The layout was started in 1984 on the "bones" of a former freelance layout, the Mojave Western.  I chose 1989 as that was the year the railroad movements in my modeled area began changing.  It takes 5 staging yards to support all the operation, and there are NO LOOPS, the layout is all point to point.

Bob

[MisterBeasley]

tomikawaTT

A fine-tuned eyeball might notice the same Toys 'R' Us Geoffery box car that was dropped at Alpha has just reappeared at West Podunk. 

 

In this case, the car is headed for the RIP track to have its horn-hooks replaced.  Oh, and that "truck" on the right side is a Kadee coupler gauge.

[Beach Bill]

I have admired the loads in / empties out paired industry concept for years as it provides a reason to run trains and can take far less layout real estate than staging tracks.  I was never able to institute the idea until this most recent layout.  This had to be a shelf layout around three walls of a 11' x 13' spare bedroom.  I bent the backdrop around to the front of the layout and placed powerhouse on one side and a coal mine on the other.   Both the powerhouse and the coal mine have two tracks, so I can push loads of coal into the powerhouse and pull loads of coal out of the mine all day long if I wish.  The coal mine was scratchbuilt, and the powerhouse is a kitbash:

I knew going in that the "mainline" was going to be extremely short.  It was just a fact given the space restrictions.  The tunnel seperating the coal mining town from the more industrial town with the power house is only about 3" long.

I have been very pleased with this arrangement.  I always have a reason to run a train.  Often I don't have a large block of time but I really want to run a train.  There are still multiple movements involved:  the locomotive comes from the roundhouse, positions a caboose, pulls the empties from the powerhouse, runs around the train and connects, travels to the coal mining town, drops the caboose and spots the empties under the tipple, stops by the water tank, pulls the loads out of the mine and positions it on the siding, position the caboose to the end, run around and re-couple, travel to the main town, drop the caboose, shove the coal loads into the powerhouse, run around the caboose and put it back on the caboose track, and then run the locomotive down the roundhouse lead for service and a stall.   Even on what amounts to a small switching layout, this ends up being about 20 minutes of time, which is just enough time for the sense of having "run a train" without tying up a big chunk of time.

I'm glad I've arranged paired industries and LIEO on my little shelf layout.  It has worked well for me.

Bill

[C&O Fan]

markpierce

In general, pairing of industries is ridiculous except on extremely large layouts.  Railroading for the last 80 years or so is generally long distance especially while the distances (real and reasonably imagined) on model railroads is definitely short-haul.  Load a trainload of coal cars on one side of the layout and then unload them at the power plant on the other side of a turnback curve as typically done in loads-in/empties-out (LIEO) scenarios is, I'll say it, ludicrous.

So as far as LIEO is concerned, it is difficult to accommodate a reasonable distance between the paired industries.  Also, the modeling of the two ends is difficult to pull off.  Since when are industries and track tails butted up against a hill?

Snip

I use LIEO on my small 10x12 around the wall layout

and i am very pleased with the way it operates Although the distance is short the run time is about 10 actual min

as the loco pulls the loaded cars out of the mine it does so very slowly because it weighs each car

at the scale house just out side the loading tipple then proceeds across the river into Thurmond

a distance of only 10 actual feet where it stops for coal and water which takes about 5 min

then proceeds another actual 10 feet into the town of MT Hope where a switcher is imployed to take

3 loaded cars of the back of the train and shoves them into the power plant this is repeated 3 more times

the loco then caboose hops back around the layout to Thurmond

to await another assignment

The mine and power plantare on opposite sides of a mountain

and the whole thing works well

I've had lots of complements after Ops sessions

You can see the way it's set up if you visit my layout

by clicking on the link in my sig line

 

The other paired industries are 2 passenger stations

one in Thurmond and one in Mt Hope

that operate as the proto type did with a 2 car local running 6 trips a day

The actuall distance is a short 12 feet but with a short stop at glenn jean {per Proto type}

just accross the river from Thurmond

and with the mountain inbetween where i let the train sit for 5 min in the tunnel

it serves as a time tunnel and makes for very realistic ops

Perhaps i should do a video

[R. T. POTEET]

As I have said on other occasions I am limited in my available layout space and therefore my layouts tend to be small chase-the-caboose operations. I .am not saying that I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in operation; I am saying that I am not really oriented to  how-many-cars-can-we-shove-into-that-siding-today operation. My layout conception  is a double-track mainline with trains operating/running  in opposite directions. Most of my switching locations are/will be located on spurs off of this main. A switch crew will operate within  the flow of manifest traffic and, while performing their work, will be required to clear the mainline to facilitate meets. These "meets" will be scheduled--some will be opposing and some will be passing.

I outlined some time back my "fantasy" layout, I define a "fantasy" layout as one which goes over and above the grounds of practicality, usually of a size more appropriate for club operation than practical for a lone-wolf modeler such as myself. Anyway, this "fantasy" layout of mine is representive of about a 200 mile segment of the Seaboard and Western Virginia Railway mainline linking its crossing of the Ohio River south of Wheeling, West Virginia running up to the crest of the Appalachians south of Elkins, West Virginia. Both ends of my mainline will be hidden staging loops. I am interested in moving coal, not mining coal therefore I am not interested in the major coal mining vicinity of Elkins except that it provides loads for conveyance in mainline trains. With this in mind there will be a loads-in empties-out/empties-in loads-out cutoff connecting the tunnel under the crest of the Appalachians with a simulated Elkins branch.

Now I don't know about you'ns but I have an extremely difficult time differentiating between a loaded boxcar and loaded reefer and loaded covered hopper and empty boxcar and empty reefer and empty covered hopper. That is what a card routing system is for. Open top cars--gondolas and hoppers--are a horse of a different color however. Pre-fabricated inserts can be built with a magnetic strip on the underside that enables one to use an 0-5-0 switcher to remove them. It may not be prototypical but it gitserdun. I will have a few on-line mines--I have to--I have a half-built Frenda Mine--its been half-built for twenty years now.  I will push empties into these mines and, with the assistance of the time-honored 0-5-0 switcher, will have loads to snake out.

Now I don't know whether I have really stayed on topic with this response but remembering that model railroading is, in essence, the creation of illusion, I have attempted to present here a lets-not-create-a-pain-in-the-posterior loads-in empties-out operating system.

[C&O Fan]

R. T. POTEET

Snip

Now I don't know about you'ns but I have an extremely difficult time differentiating between a loaded boxcar and loaded reefer and loaded covered hopper and empty boxcar and empty reefer and empty covered hopper. That is what a card routing system is for. Open top cars--gondolas and hoppers--are a horse of a different color however. Pre-fabricated inserts can be built with a magnetic strip on the underside that enables one to use an 0-5-0 switcher to remove them. It may not be prototypical but it gitserdun. I will have a few on-line mines--I have to--I have a half-built Frenda Mine--its been half-built for twenty years now.  I will push empties into these mines and, with the assistance of the time-honored 0-5-0 switcher, will have loads to snake out

Snip

The box cars and reefers are easy to tell if loaded or empty RT

The loaded ones will have the door shut

The empties will have the doors open

At least on my layout they do

The Covered hoppers are a little tougher

[jwhitten]

 On my own layout I am planning a number of industries that could be paired but probably won't. Instead I'll direct their traffic off-layout (to the world) and receive traffic from off-layout. At least for the most part. For instance I am planning a meat-packing / distribution and general grocery warehousing and distribution complex. There will also be a nearby ice-house to support the refrigeration needs while in transit.

I am also planning to not model a military depot but to suggest it via its holding-yard and a couple of "annex" sections that will incorporate TOC (trailer-on-flatcar) loading / unloading, a small freight transloading facility, and a power house. The rest of the depot will be modeled off the layout.

In the area around Pittsburgh, I am modeling the Montour Railroad which served a number of coal mines and gravel plants. I am also going to model a Pennsylvania coke oven near Everett. That one will be a paired industry. Some of the coal will be delivered to the coke oven for processing.

For the most part I think paired industries, except in some special situations, tend to shrink the apparent size of the layout. Which is not to say that some traffic can't be routed between the industries, but it feels to me more "realistic" if the bulk of the traffic goes to "somewhere else" off the layout. In general I am not particularly enamored of the "loads-in, loads-out" paired industries that require special trickery to set up-- on either side of a backdrop for instance. Having cars just come out of nowhere kinda blows the illusion for me. On the other hand, maybe you could stick a dummy loco on the other end and it would seem like they're being pulled-out....

 

John