Gas Local

 One of the mid-sized industries I’m building on AIR2 is a coal gasification facility for the production of “Town Gas”. If you have seen the movie “The Best Years of Our Lives”, you’ll notice  Dana Andrew’s and Teresa Wright kiss in front of a gasometer, the large tanks that so clearly marked these Town Gas facilities, in the parking lot of the little Italian restaurant.

On AIR2 the job that will switch the Town Gas plant is the “Gas Local”. I stole this name from Mike Peters and his late “Wyoming Railink” layout where he rostered a Gas Local. I liked the name, so sue me.

My Gas Local will switch the town gas plant, it will switch an associated LP tank car facility, and move on to switch the P.E. Frantz Elevator and Mill. While the Gas local will originate in Littlerock yard, there is a small yard near the Elevator he can work out of.  My assumption is that this train will depart Littlerock yard (LRY) at the start of the session, run through the urban area that dominates the western end of the layout, within yard limits,  to the yard near the mill, break down, and classify his train, then run out and back to each industry from that point.

I’m scheduling this job to run once every 24 hours, so it will show up on my layout about every four or five months. I also plan this job to be included in a sort of “flex schedule”,  something I can add or delete every session depending on manpower. So if, for example, I have an extra person showing up, I can run this job; it will last all session and it will have little impact on the over-all TTTO controlled traffic schedule.

It’s not a small job; at this point it’s got about 45-50 cars worth of work. But then again it’s not a huge job either.

Another point I probably should have made a long time ago (I frankly forget if I did or not) every job on the AIR is crafted following one basic criteria: Would I personally like to do that job? On the AIR you will simply not find a job that comes out of staging, goes a few feet, and terminates. On my layout you’re going to run, switch, or run and switch, often until you’re exhausted. My layouts are three dimensional game boards where I bring people to “Play Trains”. I stress Playability over Prototype. Function over Form. Make peace with this. 

At the gas plant the primary inbound commodity is coal. About ten to fifteen loads of coal daily. The plant might receive various assorted plumbing supplies like pipe or fittings to extend gas to new customers or make repairs to existing lines. It might receive loads of fire brick to re-line the retorts. On the outbound side gas plants produce coke which is often used within the plant but some percentage is shipped out by rail. A byproduct of the coal gasification process is Tank Cars of coal tar and ammonia.  Finally clinkers, coal cinders might be shipped, ever hear of Cinder block? (Often most waste products were simply dumped on the property- Think Superfund clean up sites). 

The LP gas facility has a symbiotic relationship to the town gas facility. Town Gas had far less BTU’s than natural gas and was, late in its life span, fortified with other gasses. Now admittedly I’m pressing this process to the limit here, but town gas often had several other gasses mixed in with it. Propane, butane, and methane. So strings of LP tank cars will arrive, will require classification, and spotting by content, as well as having the MTY’s pulled. 

At P. E. Frantz boxcars of inbound grain arrive. They are classified and spotted for need: What grain are we loading today? Wheat, Corn, Oats, Rice, etc. The elevator here simulates a sub-terminal elevator, where the flow of grain to the end-user is evened out to compensate for times of the year when the grain harvest is smaller. 

Loaded boxcars of grain are forwarded to end-users further down the supply chain. MTY boxcars are pulled and either re-spotted on the clean-out track or returned home. Boxcars from the clean-out track get re-spotted to the coopering track. On the mill side, clean, coopered boxcars are spotted for loading with one hundred pound bags of flour: No covered hoppers here, it’s 1952. Loaded boxcars of flour, are pulled and forwarded. An occasional boxcar of a milling bi-product, “Mill Feed” is also pulled and forwarded to a feed mill or farm nearby.

A portion of this mills production of wheat flour product is carried, by covered conveyor,  over to the adjacent New World Pasta (NWP). At NWP boxcars of packaged pasta are pulled, MTY boxcars are spotted for loading, and a boxcar or two of packaging materials are spotted. 

Finally the Powerhouse for this complex needs coal.

The Gas Local is just another in a long line of busy jobs on the AIR.