Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 LA- Southwestern Bag. I bet if you look carefully you’ve seen this industry on TV or in the movies. Southwestern Bag is a company that actually does produce packaging materials, burlap bags, sacks, boxes etc, but they are also a major movie location. They make their entire plant available for movies and tv. I, in fact, “Acquired” a railroad cross-buck from LA-Southwestern Bag that read “Railroad crossing, Pacific Electric, 5-Tracks” on a trip I made to Southwestern bag for a movie I worked on years ago.  I always thought “LA-Southwestern Bag” was a great name for an on layout industry. It wouldn’t fit on my layout, which is set in West Virginia, but what about “Mountaineer Bag and Box”, or “Mid-Atlantic Bag”? I think names should be plausible. “Ralph’s Tool and Die” does not sound as good to me as “Eisenthal Machine Tools”. I do however have a “Fred C Dobbs Mining Equipment”, I’ll let you movie fans IMDB* that one. West Virginia is the Mountaineer State so “Mountaineer” plays...

We have had discussions about train or job briefs for a long time. At least fifteen years. A job brief is a short concise document that describes what responsibilities each train or job has. The discussion revolves around what we should try to tell each potential job holder about the job they have selected. For a long (LOOOONG) time I maintained that the job brief should be targeted at the novice so that a visiting guest can understand what is expected.  I overlooked the obvious. A regular crew member, someone who will be coming over every session and who will, over time, get the opportunity to work a job multiple times will, in time, work himself out of the need for a job brief. But first time job holders, even from regular crew members need to know what you want. The brief is targeted at the novice, every time. I think what the potential crewman needs is two separate sets of instructions. First, he needs a “Job Brief”, that outlines general responsibilities (“Switch the Transfer ...