Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 As it turns out I have several posts on livestock operations and to be honest, lost count. Over the last several days, while putting a traffic plan together, I have been going over the “Stock Extra”. On the AIR2 as I did on AIR 1, I have a master 24 hour schedule. This is broken up to several 4 or 6 hour sessions*, for example we’ll start at 12:01 am on session one, then session two begins as 04:01, and so on, chasing our way around the clock. At any rate, the stock extra might be scheduled to depart at 4 pm which would be several MONTHS away. (Four hour sessions would yield six sessions to complete 24 hours, and six hour sessions would yield 24 hours in four sessions). My point, if there is one, is that the stock extra runs only once in 24 hours or only a few times a year on my layout. In all likely hood there will be two Stock Extras, a morning and evening version. This is in response to the almost fanatically expedited nature of livestock shipments. On the prototype livestock c...

 AIR 2 is still firmly in the planning stages. The rail to barge transfer operation is still in the plans, although several different renditions of the plan have been drawn up. One of the major evolutions the plan has taken is the move to Charleston, WV, not me but the west end of the layout. After intensive and on going studies of railroad atlases I determined that stopping the Freelanced Atlantic Inland Railway, or AIR for short, at a fictitious city east of Charleston had less and less practical appeal to me.  Charleston, WV is divided into three sections by the roughly east-west running Kanawha River (Pronounced Ka-Naw) and the roughly north-south running Elk River, which empties into the Kanawha. The Elk would provide an excellent location for the rail to barge coal transfer. I actually have no idea, and to be honest, I really don’t care, as yet, where this coal goes from here. I just want a spot to terminate a great deal of coal, carried in foreign road hoppers. As we di...

 About ten days ago I operated on a layout with  soybean processing plant. This layout is set in 1957. Soybeans are a huge and very common crop and a processing plant is an excellent model railroad industry. Below is a description of the basic procedure for processing soybeans, as well as a short list of Soybean products. Soybean Processing:  Soybeans are cleaned, then dried, cleaned again, cracked, and dehulled. These cracked beans are then conditioned (heated) and rolled into flakes. At this point, the oil is removed from the flakes by a solvent wash in an extractor. The oil is then separated from the solvent mixture. The extracted crude oil is refined, bleached, and deodorized, resulting in clear and odorless soybean oil, suitable for edible and non-edible uses. Soy Oil : Soybean oil is a highly adaptable product, not only for foods, but also for industrial use as an ingredient in paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, printing inks, oleochemicals, cleaners, and biofuels. ...

 I went to great lengths and expense to acquire chemical and acid tanks cars to simulate service in paper making. I was concerned about building a suitable unloading facility. About ten days ago I operated on a layout with a fairly large tank car unloading industry modeled: Lever Brothers. On that layout the owner used Walther’s Cornerstone Oil Loading platforms to simulate a complicated tank car unloading operation. I have recently acquired a couple more of these kits and I think two will give me a significant tank car “Spot” at my paper mill.  I also hope to include a “Spotting procedure” instructing the switch crew to leave a few feet between each car to lesson the possibility of a static electric arc igniting fumes from these chemical tank cars when they are unloading. I can also envision using these “Oil loading platforms” at several other industries where a lot of tank cars might get spotted. For now I have a fleet of orange “Hooker” tank cars, as well as quite a number ...

 On AIR 1 I tried to locate a fuel wholesaler at every small town. I will actually do better this time. At least in the era I model, 1952, fuel dealers were often times railroad served, and even smallish towns might have more than one. Here in Winchester, for example there are AT LEAST five still doing business, and I have found remnants of others so that I estimate there were, at one time eight fuel dealers here in Winchester, a city with a population of 26,000. Current hobby press suggests locating several dealers on one spur, which I plan to do in my two main urban areas. My question was what petroleum producers should be represented in my area? What I found out was, in short, pretty much all of them. The major oil companies had a world wide presence by 1952, and would have dealers distributing their products all over the country. Some more than others, and some might be anachronistic. It’s not likely you’d see a “Union Oil of California” tank car in West Virginia, but you’d see...

To recap as quickly as I am able, my idea is to use a transfer with a foreign road as a “safety valve” in order to accommodate operators with differing ability levels. My initial design was to have a number of connecting roads act as these transfer partners, and each session  transfers would be between only one connecting road: For example in January, on the West end of the layout, we would be transferring cars between the New York Central. In February it would be the B&O, and in March it would be the C&O. On the east end we will transfer between the WM every session, but we would alternate between the C&O and B&O every session. After some thought, always a bad thing, I came up with the concept of a M&E (Mail & Express) transfer from each of these connecting roads as well, to flesh out the job that works Passenger Trains/REA/USPS.  A connecting sleeper from B&O or NYC would be among the consist. I had planned a four track staging yard, three full tr...

 As you might know my wife and I have been building our own house. We drove every nail, installed every shingle and siding board, all the drywall, plumbing,  electrical, paint and moldings. We did it all. And in so doing spent every waking moment of the last two and a half years working on the house. We moved in a couple months ago and while we are still doing MANY tasks on the house we have also gone through the basement, at least we have started to go through ALL the stuff in the basement. The entire AIR 1 layout is boxed up down there.  I made a decision to go through every box in order to make a new car roster, and start culling cars out for a swap-meet. Since moving to Virginia, I continued to buy items for the layout, and I am discovering a lot of things in these boxes. Where did I get all those Broadway limited NYC boxcars? How’d I’d I end up with an entire cubic storage box full of Intermountain PFE R40-25 reefers? Where in the hell did all those P2K RTR Type 21 t...

 I am trying to layout industries on the layout. My initial plan is to have two urban districts at each end of the layout connected by a TTTO regulated main line. I would like to develop some type of “Rule of thumb” that I can use to plot out industries on the benchwork. Something like “If the industry in question has two tracks with 12 car spots it will occupy five feet of benchwork (Including the turnout off the access track, what ever that track might be), assuming allowing 12” for a #6 turnout. I hope/plan to have double track in front of a lot of the urban industries. How will that effect the space? I understand that there will need to be an additional turnout.  On several layouts I’ve recently operated I notice double slips. I have seen QUITE A FEW of them on layouts built in the Eastern US (Although I experienced the first at Jon Cure’s Mojave Yard. Jon Lives in Moorpark, CA. I would consider Jon to be one of the best thinkers in Model Railroading, so unorthodox ideas, ...

 On the recent ops weekend AND a previous layout trip, I visited a couple layouts where the waybill information was not visible above the car card pocket. This makes it very difficult to work, and is a nuisance. There is a lot of discussion about format, personally I would prefer a format that simply tells me where the car is going but even that is not always easy. What I do think is that all information on the waybill needs to be visible above the top of the card pocket. On AIR 1 I eventually settled on a card pocket that was a bit shorter than standard and I found that NO waybills ever fell out. I could not figure out a simple system for printing on the part of the card pocket that folded up to actually creat the pocket. If you wanted to print any car information there you had to line it up carefully and it needed to be printed upside down, so that when you folded it up it would read correctly. Always seemed like a waste of space, but the clear sleeves, now coming into vogue, mig...

 On the trip up to an ops weekend in New Jersey I made a side trip to Steam Town National Park. At Steam Town I found something I want to model on my next layouts engine service: the Oil House. This is not to be confused with a place to store diesel fuel, but in the steam era steam locomotives required a number of different types of lubricating oil. The oil house at Steam Town received, stored, and distributed fourteen types of lubricating oils for use at this Steam era railroad yard.  At Steam Town they have a two dome tank car spotted at the receiving track of the Oil House. The two dome tank car in and of itself is interesting, I have a number of THREE dome tanks that could easily perform this service. At Steam Town the storage tanks are all below ground. If I am severely space challenged I might do this, but I believe on the model railroad above ground tanks offer more visual interest.  So I now need to make space in engine service for an “Oil House”, and add one more...

 I just returned from an ops weekend up in New Jersey. Of the many things I saw, and want to copy, are industries, in tight spaces. Particularly on one layout, tucked into a corner was “Lever Brothers”. I think I pulled a dozen tank cars out of there! (Plus a couple boxcars) I model 1952, what cars would a soap manufacturer receive? If you are shipping products to a soap manufacturer in tank cars what types tanks are you using? I own a fairly extensive fleet of tank cars. I did cull off most of the colorful petroleum company tank cars in favor of plain solid black tank cars. My reasoning was that I bright red Mobile Gasoline tank car would have limited use, but a solid black UTLX tank car could reasonably be spotted at any industry receiving products in a tank car. I have quite a few of what I call “chemical tank cars”, they are insulated tanks, many Athearn or Atlas. Of late quite a few manufacturers are producing a wider variety of tank cars for my Era.  I invested in a some...