Livestock: Part 47(!) [Actually Part 5]

 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 cannot be loaded into a car only to have that car delayed in some yard for even a few hours. So train symbols DSX (DLS) and NSX (NLS) will in all likelihood end up on the line-up.

The stock extra runs Eastward only over the entire layout, picking up livestock loads and forwarding them all to meat packing plants around Richmond, VA. In Chatsworth, the east end of my layout and junction with the Western Maryland, the stock extra will set out loads that need to be forwarded toward Baltimore and New York City. Kosher meat is big business in the New York area. This brings up the question of blocking these stock trains. In addition to the obvious blocking of cars for New York or Richmond there is the question of blocking by species of animal.

Upon the arrival at the slaughterhouse cattle do not go into the same pen as sheep, or hogs. And while many slaughterhouse operations do process multiple species, this is not performed on the same “Dis-assembly” line. So livestock loads will, at some point, have to be blocked by consignee AND species. Where this blocking is performed is another question. The play value of Re-blocking the entire train into these sub-blocks needs to be weighed against the nuisance level of this procedure.

As this train progresses across the layout the stock extra does not set out. MTY stock cars are set out by locals during the rest of the 24 hour schedule. It may also be easier to block this train during this time, placing each car picked up into its correct spot in the train as you cross the layout, so that a massive time consuming re-blocking isn’t needed at Chatsworth.

This train runs extra, and slowly progresses across the layout collecting livestock loads. Once at the rest station in Chatsworth it would pick up its final loads, divide into blocks for the Western Maryland or AIR,  and FINALLY forward the appropriate loads eastward into staging and off the layout.

Like other extra locals the dispatcher will have an afternoon of “Right over” orders getting opposing extra trains across the layout.

On the surface, I thought this train would be simple, but upon closer examination I found that it is an EXTREMELY complicated undertaking. Do you run stock trains on your layout? If you do have you taken some of the above noted “complications”  into account. By no means do you have to, but if you do how does your livestock operation play out on your layouts? I want to hear from you.

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* 4 or 6 hours sessions. Here again, to be honest, is a major problem. I’m facing several physical “Issues”, namely very bad knees, that make standing for six hours nearly impossible. I’m not alone here, and many sessions I attend are only four hours long. That seems to be the defacto standard for the over 65 set of layout owners. I am scheduled for knee replacement, and we’ll have to see if I can do a six hour session after that.