Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 I think in the first week of my blogging I wrote about the geography of my layout. Additionally I covered my decision to move the modeled portion of my layout to Charleston, WV a year or so later.  I thought after a couple years I’d go over it again. What I mean by layout geography is, “Where in the world is my layout located?”. I think the answer to this question is actually one of the top three or four questions you must answer when building an operations oriented layout. Frankly I cannot, off hand, think of anything more important, even though I’m sure there is something. Where you are determines your traffic plan. Your traffic plan practically dictates everything else you’ll do. What kind of trains will you run? Your car and locomotive fleets. What else? I spent a GREAT deal of time with railroad atlases and determined where my railroad would go; connections to be made; traffic plans; logically what trains I’d be running over my layout. I made a decision that I WANTED a r...

 Something I wanted to add to this, in the Steam era it’s important to remember that the Railroads themselves could NOT set rates. A railroad could not charge more if they could get a product somewhere  faster than their competition. They could not charge LESS either.  Of course, as a shipper, you knew it was going to cost you $10 a ton to ship a car load of widgets to Peoria, but Railroad B could get them there two days faster. This might be an inducement. If the All-Rail route saves you the demurrage charges because your widgets are in those cars five days LESS than other routes, than that might be an inducement. If, on the other hand, you could move your widgets to Boston for $8 a ton, but part of the trip was in an inter-coastal freighter that was going to take a week longer, Is the delay going to be a problem ?  If it isn’t,  then that’s the routing you’re going to choose. It’s the way the routes are sewn together. The all-rail route, no matter which way yo...