Merchandise on a coal branch

 In the normal course of events the towns, tipples, and mines on a coal branch are going to need supplies over and above the expected pulling of coal loads and spotting of MTY hoppers.

Many branch’s will have additional “Industries” located on them, other than coal mine's. I’m foreseeing lumber, pulpwood, livestock, and produce (Fruit trees) loads originating on the branch’s. And various loads going up the branch. 

Who should spot and pull these merchandise loads? I’m assuming the only train working the branch will be mine runs. I DO NOT want this merchandise going through Pettigrew yard. On AIR 1 far too much general merchandise traveled through Pettigrew, and the yard  often lost its identity as a coal marshaling yard.

Additionally my plans for the branch’s on AIR2 is to represent the branch with a relatively short stretch of modeled track, the vast majority of the branch would be represented by a staging yard, and the branch would exist only in the “Off-Layout” world.

What I’m thinking is that locals, haulers or through trains would set-out blocks for the branch’s at the Jct’s, on an interchange track*. These blocks of merchandise cars would then be worked either at actually modeled spurs of simply taken off-layout into staging by the mine runs when they arrived. I also see Re-staging dealing with a lot of this traffic. I have made peace with the fact that a lot of what will happen on AIR2 will happen behind the scenes during the staging process.

My overall goal is for crews to have fun, and that which is “un-fun” or does not get finished in the allotted time will get finished by the Re-staging fairies, prototype police be damned!

Now what cars and how many are going up a branch? If the Branch is predominantly coal mines, maybe not too many. But if the branch represents a connection with some towns secluded off the main track, there might be fuel dealers, LCL, and various other cars. 

The local could grow prodigiously!

Should one local start in Charleston (West)  and work to the half way point of the layout, while another departs Chatsworth (East) and does the same?

Livestock operations on AIR2 do involve some of the branch’s. Carloads of stock are loaded up the branch and then spotted at the interchange tracks in time to make a connection with the “Stock Extra”. The stock extra, Day livestock (DLS) or Night livestock (NLS) moves west to east picking up loads and setting out MTY’s. 

A certain amount of lumber is cut and milled up the branch’s. On AIR 1 the Priest Valley branch generated a great deal of lumber in addition to coal, as it was assumed that there was a lumber mill located up that branch. I do not see a reason to discontinue this. MTY flatcars need to be supplied, and loaded flatcars of dimensional lumber would therefore come off the Priest Valley branch.

During seasonal rush periods reefers of assorted fruits come off the branch’s so reefers need to be supplied then moved to ice docks and then appropriately forwarded. This poses an interesting operations procedure. To the best of my knowledge the ice dock will be located in or adjacent to Littlerock yard. Reefers needing ice will need to travel there. 

My overall goal is to keep merchandise out of Pettigrew Yard, but it’s movement to and from the network of branch’s cannot be eliminated. Hopefully the merchandise locals originating from Chatsworth (East) and Charleston(West) will deal with all the non coal traffic.


*On several other layouts, Bill Darnaby’s for example, other roads cross his Maumee at grade. At many of these crossings there’s usually an interchange track. In discussions with Bill, these interchange tracks represent huge “traffic generators”, Bill treats them as industries that require frequent, assigned, switch jobs. On AIR2 the interchange tracks associated with each coal branch would serve substantially the same purpose.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wingedfoot Paper Part 2: Pulpwood

 On AIR1 a large, centrally located industry, was Wingedfoot Paper. As Jon Cure is fond of saying, a paper mill is the perfect Model Railroad industry. The major raw material is wood pulp. In 1952  pulpwood, cut and stacked like cord wood, was shipped to mills in a variety of cars. Nearly any car you can name was used, or modified in such a way as to become, a pulpwood hauler. Generally pulpwood was not valuable enough to travel far. The collection of pulpwood racks I have,  needs a great deal of repainting and re-lettering.  I just don’t think it’s likely to see Atlantic Coast Line cars hauling pulpwood into central WV! I have been toying with the idea of repainting cars from distant foreign roads and just adding a simplified lettering, using the premise that they are not for interchange. We’ll see. [4/19/22 this afternoon I went through the box of pulpwood cars. I think with only a few exceptions I’m going to have to repaint these flats and letter them for the AIR....
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL and Freight Houses

 LCL is a huge source of revenue, car loading, and tonnage for railroads of the steam era. By the end of WWII numbers dropped fast, mainly due to trucks and roads. But to be honest LCL continued to be a big part of railroading. Today all that UPS traffic is LCL. There has been a lot of discussion of late about how to implement LCL  on a model railroad. My feeling is I do not want to perform a function by simply standing and counting off the seconds, pretending to off load LCL packages. What I did on AIR1 was to print up Waybills that simulated packages of LCL.  The peddler car was placed in the consist of a local, the car card for the peddler car had multiple bills in it, and as the local got to each depot, the train crew would check their LCL bills to check for a set out. You did not set out the car, you set out the BILL.  I extended this procedure for REA packages, US Mail, passengers, and now I plan to add this function for loaded milk cans, but more on all that l...
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL from Foreign Road Freight Houses

 On AIR 1 while WM , N&W, CRR, and VGN trains had trackage rights over some or all of the layout, there were no freight houses for these foreign roads. Often in towns served by two or more competing lines one will find a freight house for each of these roads. In Winchester, VA the freight houses for the PRR and the B&O still stand today. On AIR 2 I do not plan model the extensive trackage rights as on the first layout. I plan to have these foreign roads to come on to the layout via either a short run of their track, visibly modeled, terminating at an interchange point, or simply a transfer from an off layout staging yard. In short fairly limited presence. However at each of these interchange points there should be some foreign road structures in their colors to give strong visual clues that these tracks do indeed belong to someone else. In a few cases, WM and N&W  for sure, some of these foreign road structures will be a freight house. Again, relying on the Kalmbac...
Read more