Not sure this is where to post this and if i can get across my question here due to my own ignorance on the subject... but here goes!
I am just beginning a shelf railroad, very much along the lines of a Lance Mindheim type switching layout ( i enjoyed his books) and one of the things they are light on is operations. I guess my question is are there operation systems or books that you can buy that tell you how to do this etc.? Kind of like rule book etc. like war-gamers use? Does that make sense? I will have plenty of industry on the layout to switch etc. and i will use a cassette type yard like Lance does in his books but I don't want it to be real complicated and basically easy to use and fun to operate. I have read some on switch lists etc. but i don't know enough about operations to really get all that.
Hope this makes sense and thanks for humoring me :)
Corey
Railroading In Council Bluffs
http://www.rrincb.com/
Visit my caricature carving website:
http://iowacarver.tripod.com/
Tony Koester´s book "Realistic Model Railroad Operation" should be what your are looking for.
Geep Fan I am just beginning a shelf railroad, very much along the lines of a Lance Mindheim type switching layout ( i enjoyed his books) and one of the things they are light on is operations. I guess my question is are there operation systems or books that you can buy that tell you how to do this etc.? Kind of like rule book etc. like war-gamers use? Does that make sense? I will have plenty of industry on the layout to switch etc. and i will use a cassette type yard like Lance does in his books but I don't want it to be real complicated and basically easy to use and fun to operate. I have read some on switch lists etc. but i don't know enough about operations to really get all that. Corey
Hello Corey,
I'm glad you enjoyed the books. I continue to toy with the idea of doing a book on industrial switching operations but have held off as I'm not sure how much of a market there is for it. It's still something I'm considering. A few suggestions:
-Join the operations SIG (only $5) for the electronic magazine. http://www.opsig.org/reso/
Also, join their Yahoo chat group
-Make a habit of watching prototype switching videos on You Tube and copy what they do.
-The 'Proto Layouts' Yahoo group has a lot of professional railroader/modelers on it and is a good source of info.
-The South Florida Railfans Yahoo group has a lot of good info.
-Find a location on public property where you can watch an actual switch job perform it's work. This is a lot of fun and very informative.
All in all your best bet is to track down veteran operators and friendly pro railroaders and ask how they do it.
Lance
www.lancemindheim.com
Thanks Ulrich, I appreciate the response. I will check out Tony's book at the Library.
Lance, thanks for the response. I really did enjoy the layout design, build and the switch plans books. Got a lot of info from them and i have to tell you .... struggling with the scenery only zones on my plans. I fight the impulse to plug every space with something :)
I will check out the groups that you noted. I don't know about the market either but I think that folks interested in what you do ( primarily switch layouts) and that have bought your previous books would be interested in an operations book.
thanks,
Here are some worthy reads for you http://www.gatewaynmra.org/operate.htm
I was particularly fond of designing model railroad operations as it gave a little more background and overall explanations.
Byron Henderson has some worthy reads too that you should be able to get little more info from
http://layoutvision.com/id18.html
His ops for one and ops for a 4 x 8 should get you started in the right direction. There is also this
http://layoutvision.com/id1.html
The key is to start small, have fun, have diversity and add to the scheme as you go or want.
ratled
Sorry for some reason the links are not clickable no matter how much I try to change them.... strange
[I made those links clickable for you. –Moderator]
Modeling the Klamath River area in HO on a proto-lanced sub of the SP “The State of Jefferson Line”
Corey there is no wrong way to operate a model railroad. You can have as many rules you want. my operations are simple. i run one Train a day which is a local freight. This train ,like all freight locals, switches industries. My system for figuring out how many cars the industreis get are dertimened by scenerio cards. Each card has the name of the industrie, how many cars it gets, and what types. I make 10-15 cards for each industries. some are the same, some are rarer then others and some say "o nothing today". When I operate i pick a random card for each industrie and it tells me what each industry gets. This system is also described in Kalmbach's book " HO model railroad you can Build" .
from Gabe
"Mess with the best, die like the rest" -U.S. Marine Corp
MINRail (Minessota Rail Transportaion Corp.) - "If they got rid of the weeds what would hold the rails down?"
And yes I am 17.
Frank Ellison's "Delta Lines" was literally light years ahead of model railroading operations. The complimentary PDF-download, The Art of Model Railroading, from 1944, provides 36 pages of insight to more effectively plan & interpret today's operations.
When you see the Delta Lines trackplan -- You will be amazed at how operations = smooth running. Also see Frank Ellison's, Realistic Freight Operations, at the Information Station.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
I agree with Sir Madog. There is also a Kalmbach downloadable article on operations. Considerably cheaper, but all reprinted stuff; I would check that out. But as for your question, there is no rulebook. The only rule is to get the stuff there on time. What some people do is to have two types of trains; one type, the "manifest" or "through train", shuttles stuff from yard to yard, or in your case, interchange cassette to yard. The other type, the "local" or "peddler freight" bases itself out of one or two yards, and travels back and forth dropping off and picking up cars. A local goes from point to point in one trip, but usually stays between those two points for the remainder of it's lifetime. In your case, Cassette to yard and back. A "turn", the more likely option for your layout, goes out and back, ending at the same place it started.
Happy Modeling!
~G4
19 Years old, modeling the Cowlitz, Chehalis, and Cascade Railroad of Western Washington in 1927 in 6X6 feet.
Geep Fan I am just beginning a shelf railroad, very much along the lines of a Lance Mindheim type switching layout ( i enjoyed his books) and one of the things they are light on is operations. I guess my question is are there operation systems or books that you can buy that tell you how to do this etc.? Kind of like rule book etc. like war-gamers use? Does that make sense? I will have plenty of industry on the layout to switch etc. and i will use a cassette type yard like Lance does in his books but I don't want it to be real complicated and basically easy to use and fun to operate. I have read some on switch lists etc. but i don't know enough about operations to really get all that. Hope this makes sense and thanks for humoring me :)
Hi Corey --
Yes, it makes sense.
So, basically, you are into modeling a subset of operations? You will not be having trains meet in sidings, need to classify cars that come into a yard into blocks for their next move, use 4-cycle waybills to route cars back and forth across your layout etc.
What you will be modeling is a single local train switching a cluster of industry tracks?
Off hand, I can see two main questions you might have:
1) How do you generate traffic requests - i.e. how you decide which inbound cars to put in your yard or on your interchange/set out track, to be delivered to spots at the industries, and how you decide what cars already at the industries you should pull to take back with you when your train leaves.
2) How do you move your train while switching the industries?
Anything else on your mind?
Smile, Stein
Wow, what great information guys. Thanks for taking the time and all the responses.
ratled...thanks for the links, i will definitely check them out! .
Gabe, thank you ... you describe very much what i would like... so you make up the cards etc. for each industry. I like that!
tgindy, thanks for the links and info, will be checking them out!
Thank you John for the additional info.
Stein, thanks for your response.. 1 & 2 is exactly what was going thru my head.. how do I, how do you... al kinds of questions. I have a lot of info to check out, but i like how Gabe makes up scenario cards but if i am going to do that, i need to read more on how a local freight operates. And yes to answer your question yes, I am modelling the Iowa Interstate Railroad in Council Bluffs, Iowa and for the most part will be a local train switching industry.
Some of the industry are ones they actually serve and some are no longer served in real life and some are served by another rail road... and i may work that in but for now... let's call it a single local train working up to 10 different industries. For example... I know that both the BNSF and the UP bring cars in that go to IAIS customers etc. such as Red Giant Oil is a big manf and distributor of oils and greases used in locomotives. I know both the BNSF and UP get their product and Red Giant is a customer of the IAIS. Lots of tank cars. Also there is a little transload platform that gets one or two propane cars and loads them to trucks.. a little office building and a dock. There is a candle manufacturer that is no longer there but used to get tank cars... not sure what they got.. if it was wax I doubt it .. most likely chemicals or perfume stuff or additives to the wax. Also.. the newspaper in town had a wareshouse they kept newsprint. They used to get cars of newsprint in CP box cars. I assume since the paper is Canadian owned that they ship newsprint from there.
Anyway... that gives an idea of what i know about some of the industry i will be modelling. I guess that i need to figure out what all each industry can receive... and the type of car and the max number of cars at any one time and what each sends out if any.
Thanks again for all your responses!
Well, for traffic generation which will not overload your industry tracks, here is a simple, yet workable, idea from Dave Husman (last post in thread at this stage - on using an Excel spreadsheet): http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/196272.aspx
Basically, each of your industries have a number of car spots - say three places to spot cars for Krispy Kreme Bakery in Beantown - spots 1 and 2 are at the dock, and is used to load stuff into or unload stuff from boxcars, while spot 3 is used to unload by tank cars.
So you have three rows for Krispy Kreme in you spreadsheet:
Spot 1 (boxcar) Spot 2 (boxcar) Spot 3 (tank car)
For each row you have e.g 6 columns after the description:
Spot Car ID Notes Pull Car ID Notes
Use a random function in the spreadsheet to put a space (meaning "no change") or an "x" (meaning "yes") in the "spot" column for all industries or spots. Print out the spreadsheet.
Look at the lines. Locate cars that match the desired type - if you have an X in spot 1 or 2, you need a boxcar, if in spot 3 you need a tank car. Place inbound yard for later delivery to industry. Add the reporting mark and number of car picked to your switch list.
If you get too many inbound cars relative to yard capacity, just decide for yourself what cars you won't spot, and delete that car from the switch list.
Now look at the industry - if there is something in the spot where you have an inbound, it will have to be moved - pulled or respotted elsewhere, make a note in the pull columns of the spreadsheed for the spot where the car will have to be pulled from.
You can also pick a few cars at random that will be pulled and brought back to the yard, so your industries doesn't look overloaded.
You now have a switchlist. It won't give you all the functionality of a card card/waybill combo - it will e.g. not tell you where the pulled car should goes next after you bring it back to the yard. But since your layout is a switching layout, that won't matter, will it?
That is a neat idea. Got to study that a bit. Thanks for the information Stein! I guess this means you would have to have a computer at the layout .. and cell calculations... that sounds an awful lot like math to me.... shudder.........
I have been using the Easy Model Railroad Inventory program as a basis for operations (and inventory) for a switching layout. It should help with switch list generation. I'm a retired I/T professional, so a computer program seemed like a must have for me. It may be a bit too structured for some folks, but I think it's worth a look. Here's the link:
http://easy-model-railroad-inventory.rclsoftware.com/index.htm
Jim - Preserving the history of the NKP Cloverleaf first subdivision.
You certainly don't need a computer, math, or any of that complexity to start operating. In fact, I'd recommend against it if you are just starting and your layout is fairly compact.
[It's worth noting that at least a few of the computer operating "systems" appear to have been developed by folks with no actual operating experience. So the fact that it's on a computer doesn't mean it's correct or even useful.]
Recognize that the flow of cars is very basic: from "somewhere else" in North America to the modeled industries on your layout, and then from your modeled industries to "somewhere else".
For the operations on your layout, you're only worried about the local piece of that trip.
A diagram of your layout would help folks help you with specifics.
But in short, start an operating session with some cars placed at the industries as if they were delivered earlier. Also, you'll start either with some cars in a train bound for your industries or with cars in a yard (if you have one) bound for your industries.
Use a piece of paper and a pencil to make a simple list of cars to pick up and cars to deliver. Sounds like you already know how many go to each industry, on average. But start with fewer to get the hang of it.
Run that session a couple of times. Change some cars around. Try it with a few more cars or fewer cars.
This will get you a start at the mechanics of operation without worrying about all the documentation. At that point, you'll be ready to add challenge and complexity -- or not. Which is also OK. If you do want to add some challenge, use resources such as the Operations SIG and the Koester book recommended earlier.
(The first 13 pages of the Koester book comprise a good introduction)
Here's an old thread that had some interesting operating ideas
There's a guide to operating a small layout on my website, but it's more focused on an oval-style. You might also find this page on my small N scale switching layout interesting.
To begin a session on this layout, a train with a few cars begins on the track labeled "WP Lead". These are cars from "somewhere else". [There are also interchange cars from another railroad on the "Interchange" track. These are also from "somewhere" else", but you don't need that complexity to begin.]
A few cars are already in place at the industries, we imagine that they have been loaded or unloaded earlier. Then it's just a matter of picking up some cars and setting out some other cars. A simple hand-written list can make that more purposeful, which I think adds to the fun.
As you'll see on the page on my switching layout, I happened to make a printed switchlist, but it could just as easily be handwritten. Usually one would use the car numbers, but I chose the cars for the layout so that they can be switched just by road name and color to make it easier in the low-light area where I usually operate (the garage).
But really, and I can't stress this enough, this is much easier for most people to learn by doing. So just do it!
Byron
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
Your welcome Sir.
Gabe
Byron, thanks very much for the info. I like this a lot. Very simple and a good way to start, i like a combination of this and Gabes card system and a bunch of other ideas here. Good to get this going now and thinking about it because a switching layout is just a bunch of models in my opinion if it doesn't have some operation.
Thanks all very much for your ideas.
Gabe, could you give me a link to that book you described HO Model Railroad You Can Build? I googled it and not sure which it is. Thanks,
Also... if I may pick your brains a little more.. how do you handle Intermodal traffic in these spreadsheets or car cards etc.? Do you count the slots in the intermodal yard, number of containers.. how do you track that movement?
Geep Fan Also... if I may pick your brains a little more.. how do you handle Intermodal traffic in these spreadsheets or car cards etc.? Do you count the slots in the intermodal yard, number of containers.. how do you track that movement?
I think you are making it too complicated.
You are a railroad - you are moving railroad cars, not containers. Your train haul a car from point A to point B.
Whether someone unloads two containers (or three containers or four containers) from that car, and send the containers to different businesses by truck is not something you will be modeling - it is "out of scope" for your simulation.
For all practical purposes, you do not have to concern yourself about the content of the cars you move. Your job is to take this car and deliver it to that spot (or that track, if the recipient doesn't really care about the exact spot each car ends up in - as in a intermodal terminal).
Which is why you don't really need to do a lot of research on what the business receives or ships - how many cars of this and how many cars of that, and at what intervals. That kind of stuff is pure flavor - icing on the cake.
The basic idea of a switching job is to take these cars from the yard to the industries, pull outbound cars from the industries, spot inbound cars according to received instructions, put back any cars you had to move to get at things, and then haul the outbound cars back to the yard.
Thanks Stein, That makes sense...i just wasn't sure on the intermodal if that got handled differently or not but i understand the flow of the cars etc. I want to understand more how they operate in real life such as....
You know that you have x amount of cars to deliver to a string of industries in a given district, area etc. these will have cars to remove as well as deliver. As you said, you may have to move cars to get other delivered etc. but when all said and done at an industry and say you have 2 cars that you removed do you tack these on to the back of the cars yet to be delivered and you shuffle these around as well while you work the remainder of the industries, delivering cars, moving cars and removing cars to go back to the yard and at the end of the job you take your string of cars you removed? Am i making sense?
Thanks,
Geep Fan say you have 2 cars that you removed do you tack these on to the back of the cars yet to be delivered and you shuffle these around as well while you work the remainder of the industries
say you have 2 cars that you removed do you tack these on to the back of the cars yet to be delivered and you shuffle these around as well while you work the remainder of the industries
Or you put them at the front, or somewhere in between.
Up to you how many cars you leave on the main track before you move the engine (or engine plus a number of cars) past the turnout to back into the industry track to pull cars.
By all means - I am not saying "don't add flavor". I am just saying that you don't have to.
Adding flavor can be really fun.
Look e.g. at Steve Sandifer's clinics here:Stock car operations: http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Clinics/Stk/Index.htmReefer operations: http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Clinics/SFRD/Index.htmPacking house operations: http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Clinics/Packing/Index.htm
Or Linda Sand writing about using spot diagrams and train briefs on Linda and Dave Sand's Cedar River Terminal layout (http://www.sandsys.org/modelrr/modelbuilt/crt/).
Or the discussion on working the Produce District on Linda and Dave Sand's Plymouyh Industrial layout (http://www.sandsys.org/modelrr/modelbuilt/pi/)
Flavor is not bad. And it can add to operations if cars first have to be taken to a clean out track before being spotted for loading, and then have to be taken to a scale track to measure their weightt before being hauled away.
But you don't have to dive into extra complexity unless you want to.
First here is the link http://www.kalmbachstore.com/12121.html the book is by jim kelly.
Second question. Uhhhhh... thats a good one. my layout is small and I never modeled intermouldal yards but now that i think about it this is how i would do it. The Inter moudle yard would be one card that says how many contaners it would get per intermodle train you run. then spot the cars at certain place such as sealand containers go here, hapalong there and so on. maybe some cards for which intermoudle container to pickup also. Hope that helped?
Thanks Stein, I got it basically i can make it as difficult or easy as i want. I have bookmarked these links. I appreciate all of your input you have given me.
Gabe, thanks for the link. I remembered this was a series of articles from the early 1990's asI was going to build that railroad years ago but did something else instead. But i did get the back issue (Nov 1992) that featured that article and that part of the build. Cheaper than buying the whole book :)
I like that on the intermodal yard. i haven't decided if i will include an intermodal yard yet as that will be the last phase of the layout. We will see.
gabeusmc Second question. Uhhhhh... thats a good one. my layout is small and I never modeled intermouldal yards but now that i think about it this is how i would do it. The Inter moudle yard would be one card that says how many contaners it would get per intermodle train you run. then spot the cars at certain place such as sealand containers go here, hapalong there and so on. maybe some cards for which intermoudle container to pickup also. Hope that helped?
Sounds overly convoluted. Just pull the string of outbound cars from whichever track is holding the cars ready to depart, and shove a string of inbound cars into whatever track is free to hold inbound cars.
If the terminal wants to stack containers in different piles for different customers (instead of loading them directly onto trucks), they can sort out where they put the containers.
The whole point of intermodal is efficiency - any container can go on any car as long as that car will be heading for the right terminal. Not much point in spending time moving the flats one by one, and spotting each flat carefully.
Same goes for several types of bulk cars - say grain cars. The mill would be unlikely to care much about the order the grain cars would be showed into the unloading track. They would be pulling or pushing the cars through or past an unloading point anyways. Their only concern would be that you do not put too many cars into the track, so they can't move them to be unloaded.
Which is why industries which takes a number of cars and have several distincty loading/unloading spots (sure spots) often is a better idea than a intermodal terminal or large grain mill for a small switching layout - it makes it sensible to treat industry A as three separate industries on the same track, instead of just one track, and makes for more interesting switching.
Your welcome Corey. This book is at my public libray and there is not a month that goes by that i don't check it out.
Stein. I know container yards probly don't put cars in certain places but on a model railroad its more fun to place cars like this. Also some real railroads would do that so the custemer doesn't have more trouble then they need. And Railroads love to keep Customers happy.
gabeusmc Stein. I know container yards probly don't put cars in certain places but on a model railroad its more fun to place cars like this. Also some real railroads would do that so the custemer doesn't have more trouble then they need. And Railroads love to keep Customers happy.
If you want to see a small container terminal in real life, go to e.g. http://www.bing.com/maps and look up this address: 2710 Dixie Flyer Road, Evansville, IN
Switch to bird's eye view, zoom in, scroll down (south) along Dixie Flyer Road. The container terminal is unmistakable - two tracks on the east side of the yard, branching off from the south end of the yard, wide space between the tracks, concrete apron, some trailers parked next to the tracks, containers stacked on the opposite side of Dixie Flyer Road.
I'll try a direct link, and see if it works: http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=q9tdp67pzgzj&lvl=18.73496548282441&dir=357.6500563144669&sty=b&where1=2710%20Dixie%20Flyer%20Rd%2C%20Evansville%2C%20IN%2047712-4668&form=LMLTCC
At the north end of the tracks sits two yellow vehicles on wheels - that will be driven down along the RR track to unload containers from the cars, and then drive them to wherever they want to stack them, before they take outbound containers and put them on cars which will be pulled by a train later.
Since the unloading equipment is movable, the RR cars does not have to be spotted one by one at specific spots.
The customer doesn't get a RR car spotted for them. They get a container loaded onto their truck or ship, by the container terminal's equipment.
That of course does not mean that you cannot spot the cars one by one on your layout, if that is what you want to do. Rule one applies at all times - you decide what to do on your layout :-)
Edit: come to think of it, the original poster in this thread wanted to model elements of the Iowa Interstate & UP in Council Bluffs, IA. The intermodal facility there is pretty similar to the one in Evansville: http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=qw51v770d8g6&lvl=18.448291967946247&dir=353.7236073279535&sty=b&where1=2722%20South%20Ave%2C%20Council%20Bluffs%2C%20IA%2051503-7897&form=LMLTCC
Yes, and that is their new facility with concrete instead of asphalt, dirt and rock :).... Fairly small as intermodal yards go and that is why I asked because i am considering modelling this small yard. It is on the other end of their yard.
So geepFan, how the layout going, specifically the operations?
Hey Gabe. It,s going good! i have not done any operating yet. I got the last MR issue on that layoutbuild that covered the operations. I actually am waiting for financing or a grant for expanding my rolling stock as currently the roster consists of 1 box car and 1 covered hopper and the hopper is a unbuilt kit :) I am hoping that Santa comes through for me! So ops are slim at this point.
As far as the layout goes, I have all track that is laid wired with feeders on almost every piece of track. i have the back drop up and painted sky blue in phase 1 section and started builing foam terrain. Focusing on getting phase 1 almost finished before moving on. You can see my progress at the link below.