Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 On AIR1, My waybills directing cars to off layout locations were, in my opinion, ultra-simple. I had four staging yards: WM, EAST, SOUTH, and WEST. Each of these bills was a different color. My idea was that YM’s could block cars by color, or by the written word, that is, WEST, etc. Recently I asked one of my crew members for some input about the coal waybills. His most telling comment to me was, “I blocked cars by their destination, if the bill read “EAST”, I sent it EAST. If the bill read “WEST” I sent it WEST. I have no idea where “Green” was. So much for my ideas.  My idea, currently, was to give the operating crew the ability to accomplish the same task, but with different skill levels. My current waybills are, in my opinion, ultra simple. They have a colored box printed on them. In the box is a directional destination and a city. The waybill might have an ORANGE text box that reads WEST/Chicago. So, for example, a YM could block all the cars by color, all the orange’s o...

 My partner in crime, as far as planning our respective railroads, is Al Daumann. We have adopted a system on our layouts we call “Good, Better, Best”. It refers to our expectations of how a visiting crewman accomplishes the tasks we have given him. If someone takes the Littlerock Yardmaster job on my layout, I’d be happy if they were able to route all the cars to the correct staging and on-layout yards: call this a good job. If this Yardmaster was able to accomplish rudimentary blocking: I’d call this a better job. If this same Yardmaster was able to block the Chicago/West cars as follows: Zanesville, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago. And then was able to accomplish the same detailed distant blocking for the St.Louis/West cars, as well as the blocks going to Jay Yard, 8th Street, NYC Transfer, B&O Transfer, and the C&O Transfer I’d call this the best job. Will this crewman be able to do all those things I’ve just described, maybe, but probably not. However, my system wi...

 33 Years ago, when I was a member of the Antelope Valley Model Railroad Club, we regularly had heated discussions about adding to the Narrow Gauge portion of our layout.  “Why are we spending a significant part of our resources on a part of the layout that is only used infrequently by one member for his Narrow Gauge steam engines?” I said this quite often at business meetings.  What is your takeaway from my statement? I’ll tell you what the majority of the club thought and said. “Paul Catapano hates steam engines” Then I got a TRAIN LOAD of flak from the membership when I brought my standard gauge 2-8-8-2’s down to the club with an “endless string of coal hoppers”.  “I thought you hate steam engines?!” “That’s what you’re always complaining about at business meetings”, “You want to ban steam engines from the club! Now you’re running your own!” Again, I must not have made myself clear. What I was complaining about was how we were allocating our resources, and that SE...

 All I really want to ask is, “Will the operators notice?” I model a grain elevator and mill, PE Frantz Co. This elevator is not a Collection Elevator and not a Terminal Elevator, it is a buffer elevator, or a “Sub-Terminal Elevator”. Grain of various types come in during harvest or rush seasons and it is stored until months later when it is shipped to end users, there-by evening the flow of grain from farmer to consumer. Whew! Like the elevator located in the north end of the town I actually live in, Winchester, VA, there is a “Consumer” directly adjacent to the Elevator. In the case of Winchester it’s “Miller Milling”, On my layout it’s PE Frantz Milling. Directly adjacent, in both cases, real life and my layout, is New World Pasta. So wheat comes in, some of it gets milled into flour, and that flour is made into Pasta. Boxcars of grain come to my elevator. Each waybill is marked with a different grain type. So when the local arrives he finds out what the elevator is loading toda...