Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 I went to college to become a history teacher, but spent most of my collegiate time looking at a three square foot piece of grass, “Let’s run that again offense!”. I played football. To be more accurate, I played left tackle. BEFORE it was fashionable.  In graduate school I was working on my doctorate in History*, when a dispute between one of my professors and I lead to strongly worded suggestions that I might find a better future in the trades. So I swung a hammer for 32 years in the movie business. Anyway, I made more money*. As so often happens in my writings, I go around the long way to get to the point. I THINK I have the perspective of someone trained in “historiography” when I look at model railroads, and in looking I see that I am sorely lacking. Modelers who follow the prototype are closer to the pure religion of history than those infidels who freelance. I want my layout to be built for operations. I want my op sessions to be fun. I have a background in “Historical...

 I’m designing the layout. I’m involved in several projects at once. When the weather is good I’m out front working on the front porch. When the weather is bad I get into the basement where I have to frame in walls, do wiring, drywall, and I am contemplating my next big project, T-Bar Ceiling. In addition I have any regular maintenance around the house, and the normal diversions of my attention as directed by my wife. Finally there is the biggest obstacle to my progress, my laziness. But I digress… I’m designing the layout. I have it all planned out, then I submit my drawings to my friends and after their input I must re-design. Almost all of the suggestions for changes are good ones.  This brings us to “flow”. What I mean is the flow of traffic between the layout and Littlerock yard, my main yard. Between Littlerock and the rest of the layout is my passenger depot. The potential of switching the passenger trains MIGHT interfere with the flow of trains and transfers to and fro...

 Over the past week I was in Minnesota and Wisconsin at Pro Rail and some associated bonus sessions. I came upon two industries that intrigued me. On Jeff Otto’s enormous DMIR layout was a grain pier, and on Ron Copher’s huge layout was Del Monte Canning. I already plan to have a rail to barge coal loading facility on my layout, and I have mentioned my thoughts about a grain loading facility. Jeff Otto’s grain pier would have to be slightly reconfigured to be situated on a river. Jeff currently has his grain pier jutting out into the room, a short peninsula with elevators on each side. No ships or even water is modeled. Each elevator has three tracks adjacent, with a roughly 30 car total capacity. One track is for loading the other two are for storage. Entire cuts are spotted for loading, then pulled, after a time, and replaced by a cut from the storage tracks. Inbound cars go to the storage track. MTY cars are returned to their home road for reloading. If I were to do this on AIR2...