Coal Operations: River Barges

 Because I lack nearly any self control,  over time I purchased large fleets of hoppers painted and lettered for the Western Maryland and the Clinchfield Railroads*. The theory behind this on AIR1 was that there were connections between these two lines and the Atlantic Inland. Over time I came to the realization that the Clinchfield would not, nor could not build this connection,  and when planning AIR2 the space for the Western Maryland evaporated*(a). This left something in the neighborhood of 200 coal hoppers with nothing to do and no where to go.

On the prototype the Clinchfield was landlocked and always handed off their coal trains to other roads. There is a lot of video of Clinchfield coal hoppers being carried to tide water by N&W steam engines. I am going to continue this interchange on AIR2. The N&W will carry Clinchfield traffic up to the AIR who will forward it on.

The AIR has always been a proud member of the “Alphabet Route”** and is the direct connection for Alphabet Route trains to St. Louis. On AIR1 The Western Maryland always maintained a large presence. As time wore on, and I learned more about actual railroad operations in 1952 I came to dislike all the WM power running over the AIR. In 1952, and more prototypically, trains would change crews, power, and cabooses at these end to end connections. So as designs for AIR2, as well as traffic plans,  evolved the connection with the Western Maryland made very plausible sense, but I wanted more separation of the two lines.

The problem remains; I still own large numbers of WM and CRR coal hoppers. It has never been beneath me to repaint models. Years ago I acquired a HUGE fleet of N&W hopper models and repainted and lettered all of them for the Atlantic Inland. As it turned out the Walther’s models were not close to N&W prototype and I was glad to have done it. I do not want to repaint these cars, AND I wanted a plausible reason to see these cars. 

It would be very prototypically plausible, to see full hopper trains of foreign road hoppers bridge the AIR on their way somewhere else. In the geographic world of the Atlantic Inland, trains of WM or CRR coal would very realistically be making their way to Great Lake ports; Lake Coal.

But I can never leave well enough alone, these cars “had to do something” on the layout besides just rolling. I have always been interested in trans-loading coal from hopper cars to river transport, and recent trips through West Virginia showed a lot of points where this was accomplished.

My on layout concept had to primarily be easy to model, and fit in to odd space. The idea of “putting the River in the aisle” was an old and familiar one. The actual facilities used to load coal into barges in reality are often not that large, and could be reasonably condensed into a narrow area in the front of the benchwork.

The support yards, holding the coal loads waiting to load into barges, as well as the MTYS waiting to go back, could be long and narrow.  The idea was coming together and making sense, at least to me!

Coal from various points, which would include large transfers from the Western Maryland and Clinchfield, would make their way to the trans-loading point. This will be easily accomplished with Waybills. The job that switch’s the trans-loader will be informed at the start of each session what loads he is to spot for loading today. This will allow him to classify cars, as opposed to just simply spotting every coal load cars on the loading track.

For example if we are loading “Steam Coal for Cincinnati Public Power” those cars need to be culled out of the storage yard, through the classification process, and spotted for loading. Strings of MTYS will need to be sorted and transferred to Littlerock Yard***for eventual movement to appropriate destinations.

The tran-loading job will need to be staged each session, but what job on a model railroad doesn’t…

And the storage yard will be filled with strings of Atlantic Inland coal hoppers as well as Oxide Western Maryland hoppers and black Clinchfield hoppers, in great numbers.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on trans-loading commodities as an industry for model railroads.

—————————————————————————————————————-

* Buying huge fleets of cars BEFORE making a traffic plan is a HUGE yet common mistake. I have tied huge amounts of my hobby capitol up in collecting cars, thousands of cars. I STRONGLY urge modelers who are building mid-sized or Large layouts to fill out car fleets either AFTER the majority of the layout is built, IE., buy for need, or to buy cars VERY JUDICIOUSLY. I sincerely wish I had not fallen victim to the addiction of collecting cars.

(*a)This Western Maryland connection has since been rectified.

** The Alphabet Route supposedly got this nickname because of car clerks typing the routing on Waybills:

From west to east, NKP-WKE-PWV-AIR-WM-RDG-CNJ-NYNH&H-L&HR

The concept of the Alphabet Route was for a consortium of smaller railroads combining to compete head to head with the two giants, PRR & NYC as well as ERIE, on the New York City to Chicago and eventually St. Louis route. These smaller roads were successfully able to move traffic over this line at a speed that was competitive with PRR & NYC.

***Littlerock Yard: Littlerock, WV and the yard of the same name are the fictional centerpiece of the original AIR1 layout and I plan that they will continue in this roll on AIR 2. They give name to the Sub-division over which most of the traffic on the AIR2 layout will travel: The Littlerock Sub-Division.