Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

  I have a couple advantages over a lot of other layout builders when it comes to benchwork. After that, not so much. On AIR1 I used birch plywood ripped into 2 1/2” strips, or 1x3’s. I am used to building out of 1x3’s because of what I did for a living. I owned the pneumatic nail/staple guns, chop saws, table saws, compressors, etc to easily put it all together, fast. I fully understand that many layout builders do not have the investment, at hand, in power construction tools I am still very much in favor of using plywood as opposed to dimensional lumber for benchwork. From time to time at my work, I was able to order some dimensional lumber of EXCEPTIONALLY good quality, that would have made great bench work material. But that was ALWAYS hit or miss. When I ordered lumber  I got what I got. I suppose I could specify better graded lumber, but in those cases the decision was always based on price. Also I ordered, generally, in full lifts. 144 - sixteen foot boards. With plywoo...

 One of the problems I am admittedly overly concerned about is crafting jobs that can more easily accommodate different operators skill levels; the pace at which they accomplish tasks. Given an op session length of four hours some operators can switch 100 cars, while others can switch 10 cars. Both have fun. One has greater “through-put”. What I don’t want is for one guy to finish in two hours and have to sit around, while the other is busy,  happily switching cars,  but by the end of the session has left 90 cars in the yard, un-touched. So I adopted the idea of transfer runs to allow each operator to draw additional cars, at his own pace. What I was missing was a timing procedure. I believe I found it last weekend. I was operating the Paper Mill job on Jim Rogers B&O Charleston Div. Layout. Jim has a series of card boxes at the mill. They have various labels, which I do not specifically remember, but something like: Spot Processing  Working Filing paperwork Pick...