Mixed Trains

First, let me extend the warmest and most sincere New Years Greetings from the Atlantic Inland Railway to all of you. Happy New Year!

 A few blogs ago I mentioned that I wanted to add some passenger service to the assorted coal branches spread over the PLAN for AIR2.

My plan is to have a Passenger Combine included with the coal hoppers on each branch. This car would get collected by the mine run and be brought “Somewhere”.

Where?

Let me give you some background on the coal branch’s on the new layout. On AIR1 the coal branch’s were relatively long terminating in a one or two track staging yard, concealed beneath benchwork and scenery. There might be two or three tipples on each of these branch’s. Additionally there was always short a merchandise train staged that came out from time to time. One or two of these trains was Mixed*.

On AIR2, ,my plan for these branch’s is that nearly full mine runs  will be staged in the branch staging. The mine run will come out of staging where it will have one tipple, or two small truck dumps or coal loaders, to switch. Then this mine run will head to Pettigrew*. (The theory behind this is simply to get more hoppers to Pettigrew, thus emphasizing loaded coal trains heading to off-layout destinati9n, as opposed to the smaller, and time consuming mine runs).

At the junction where the branch meets the AIR main track there will be a small depot and an interchange track. On this interchange track merchandise cars will be spotted for pick-up by the Blitz or Leesdale local. These two locals will then spot cars FOR the branch in question.  The cars on these interchange tracks represent cars an unseen branch local has collected, or will retrieved for the industries on each branch.

Okay back to those combines. At each junction’s depot I plan to install a house track, upon which an AIR combine will be staged. This car represents the passenger connection between this branch and, well, the rest of the works. 

On the prototype these cars would carry passengers, mail, and express up and down the branch. 

Okay, NOW, how should I employ these cars? Should the car simply sit on the house track, then when the next train that is working the branch appears it takes this combine with it, up branch, and into staging?

It would seem to me that the train tasked with doing this would be the branch merchandise local, which I will not be modeling. The only trains going up and down the branch will be mine runs. So the entire use of this car is to run back and forth over a few feet of track, between branch staging and the depot house track at each branch’s junction.

I have thought that the combine could go on the end of a returning mine run. The mine run would bring the car back to Pettigrew, where before entering the yard the mine run could set the combine out on the Pettigrew Depot’s house track.

The cars would then rest there until the returning mine run came by and picked up the combine for the branch. 

This would make the mine runs mixed trains. Not the best solution prototypically, but one with a lot of play value. 

These cars COULD  be collected by a passing Mail & Express train, which would bring these cars back to East Charleston*, but this idea seems REALLY cumbersome to me.

Whatever I do it seems pretty clear that these combines will start showing up at the junctions of my coal branch’s, and whether very short duration or long, mixed trains will begin to run on AIR2.

Do you operate Mixed trains on your layout? How do you do this?

*A Mixed train is a train that has passenger cars “mixed” in with freight. While not always the case, mixed trains usually lived on rural branch’s, where costs prohibited running multiple trains of a specific type, IE., a passenger train and then a freight train. Passengers usually had to endure the uncertain timing of mixed trains, since their freight work didn’t always dovetail with passenger schedules. Modelers often use this term, Mixed, incorrectly, when describing trains. Additionally Mixed trains were generally 3rd class or Extra as opposed to 1st class.

*Pettigrew, Pettigrew or more properly Pettigrew Yard is the coal marshaling yard on this layout. All coal goes through Pettigrew where it’s weighed, classified, built into trains bound for like destinations, and dispatched. Additionally MTY coal hoppers return to Pettigrew Yard. These MTY’s are then built into mine runs which are sent to various coal branch’s.

*East Charleston is the WEST end of the layout, and the location of the large passenger facility.