Transfers: blocking cuts of cars in a transfer

 Should cuts of cars in a transfer to a foreign road be blocked? If there are no contractural agreements between the roads I’m saying no. If your yard has a track devoted to connecting road “a” and you place only cars for that road on the track, when you are ready to transfer it, IT IS BLOCKED, as far as you are concerned. 

Now that cut might be a Dogs breakfast when it gets to the connecting roads yard, but as long as all the cars in that block all belong to Road “A”, you have done your job.

Now what if your road is, in its daily course of business, part of a consortium of railroads who agree to forward TRAINS from one to another in such a manner that they are not delayed and moves to its final destination in an efficient manner? Would the cars in your interchange cuts be “distant blocked”* to facilitate fast, efficient, easy handling? The point is, it’s not just an interchange block, but a THROUGH train, being handed off to the next operating road.

On the Alphabet Route there were numerous such trains, I have a couple on my schedule and will probably, through research, discover more. So the Alpha Jet, for example.

My freelanced Atlantic Inland is supposed to be part of such a consortium, the Alphabet Route**. On the West end of my layout my connection is distant, and far off-layout, the W&LE in Zanesville, OH. Cars for points west from Littlerock would be blocked correctly because they would be, at this point, in AIR trains.

To the East however we interchange directly with the Western Maryland.  Cars for Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York, and Boston might be together in a train that we are handing off, but cars FOR inclusion into that train might need to be “Distant Blocked” for the transfer at this, on-layout, point.

In short, TRANSFERS do not get blocked.

Trains, Do.

How are you accomplishing any interchange you model? Do you distant block for connecting roads? Do you simulate being part of a larger contractually obligated railroad consortium?

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*Distant Blocked, I am using this term to describe blocks of cars grouped into like destinations that lie far off from the edges of my layout.

**The Alphabet Route was a prototypical consortium of eastern roads working together to compete with the PRR, NYC, and ERIE, for business between New York/Boston to Chicago and St. Louis.

The Alphabet Route got its nick name from the number of letters clerks had to type on waybills when filling in the routing:
From Left to Right
NKP, WLE, PWV, AIR, WM, RDG, CNJ, LHR, NYNH&H