Passenger Operations: Part 1

I believe passenger trains should do a lot of switching. I think they should not be “Publicity Shots”, all matched, streamlined, beautiful. My passenger trains look like a dogs breakfast.

On AIR 1 there were eight passenger trains on the schedule:

#1-2; #15-16; #27-28; #35-36

The freight house foreman, in addition to his other duties, did all the terminal switching in Littlerock for these trains. He was also responsible for bringing passenger trains in and out of Lower ( or West) staging (The crews handled all moves into and out of Upper (or East) staging). 

Directly associated with Passenger Ops was the REA and the Post Office. These were switched along with each passenger train.

The East-West passenger trains exchanged cars with the North-South trains, so these connections needed to be made. There was a Pullman set out track at Littlerock.

On AIR 2 the design of my passenger trains have changed. They still have the same, unkept, look, but due to ten years experience with running HUGE passenger trains (Mail & Express trains often grew to over twenty cars) and always having operational problems, the newer trains are all far more “condensed”, like no train over ten cars long!

Due to the new expansion of the Freight House Operation, I thought I’d separate the passenger trains from the freight house job.

Each time a passenger train runs it will bring at least one car for :

1) Connection with another train

2) The REA

3) The Post Office

4) the creamery

This switch job will work all these industries as well as a planned Pullman passenger car service facility, to service diners and sleepers. But with a planned five hour session I’m wondering if there will be enough work for this guy.

Heavy traffic will automatically trigger multiple sections, so this passenger job will have to build that train and get it ready to depart on time.

Another feature of the passenger operations on AIR2 will be a creamery. A “Milk Run”, a secondary passenger train timed to depart at 5 am on the way IN to Littlerock, and at 5 pm on the way out of town will bring an express Reefer of butter from the Western Maryland interchange, then on the way in, this train will pick up loaded milk cans. The consist will have a “Can Car”, a heavyweight baggage car. The chilled milk cans will stay cold enough to get to Littlerock. Once in town they will spot the can car and express Reefer at the creamery. My area of West Virginia did not have dedicated milk trains, and these trains are NOT dedicated milk trains, they simply handle milk cans ALONG with their other work. I would point out however that EVERY community in the United States needed a source of fresh dairy, meat, and produce. Your region might not have had the milk trains common in the Northeast, but they brought milk into towns and cities, I guarantee it. This is something almost every modeler can simulate.

-ANYWAY-

On the way out of town the can car will have MTY cans that must be dropped off at each spot so farmers have something to put the next days(or so) milk in.

How will I simulate these milk cans? On AIR 1 I used Waybills to simulate express packages and mail, I also used passenger tickets to simulate passengers getting on and off. As a passenger train progressed he had to check his paperwork for any Passengers, mail or express to set out, and he needed to check the bill boxes of depots along his route for any pick-ups. I also had a green and white flag-stop flag at  those stations not on its regular schedule.

For milk cans I will simply print up bills that read “LOADED MILK CAN” and one that reads “MTY MILK CAN”, the MTYS will also have the station they need to be dropped at.

Al Daumann and I have traded a lot of e-mails about these bills for passenger trains, and over a period of years we have modified these bills for our respective layouts.

So on the Atlantic Inland Passenger trains do switching, they pick up and drop off passengers, they have mail bags to pick up and deliver, the deliver and pick-up express packages, and they gather the regions dairy products for city dwellers. Passengers trains are very busy.

I’m very interested in learning how YOU simulate various passenger operations. Let me know what you do on your layout and what you think of my operations.

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