Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 Some industries on our layouts get switched once every session. Other’s would normally get switched multiple times a session. How can we establish a procedure that facilitates switching an industry multiple times a session, that doesn’t require some sort of outside influence?  What I’m trying to say is how can this procedure start at the beginning of each session, and continue until the end, with out ME (IE., the layout owner) having to flip waybills or somehow generate a new switch list? A system that is non-mechanical or non-electronic.  Currently I’m very interested in multiple car-card boxes. I’m not simply referring to a three box system: Set-Out/Hold/Pic-up. Although, to be honest,  this is simply a variation of that system. I’m looking at a multi box system that regulates the unloading times of cars, and randomly picks cars to be pulled by the next shifts local. I certain I’ve described this system several times before, but you install a number of card boxes,...

 This is going to come back to bite me, I KNOW it will. When we build a model railroad, what we are really doing is building a large, scratch built, electro-mechanical-computer, with no actual plan, that we then ask ten people,  who have never seen this machine before, operate it. Is there any wonder there are as few problems as there are? When you go to a layout and you’re plagued with problems, the engines don’t work reliably, the cars constantly derail, the command system breaks down constantly all you want to do is leave. “There but for the grace of God go I”. If I accomplish NOTHING else, I sincerely hope my layout operates reliably.  Commercial track does go together well. There is no REAL reason for the rails at a joint to have miss matched heights.  Commercial track and the vast majority of our equipment is remarkably forgiving. I’ve seen equipment negotiate some pretty rough roadbed.  Turnouts actually work very well. I would guess that straight out of ...

 I’m slowly, VERY slowly working on the train room prep. Right now I’m immersed in electric wiring. Something we ALL talk about is running every 110v circuit through a series of switches so that when you leave the train room you can simply flip a switch and shut off the power. The idea is that if you leave a soldering iron plugged in on the layout, when you leave, you turn off the lights and the power is killed to the soldering iron too. This is currently what I’m doing. Each area of the layout has a 110v utility circuit under it.  I can plug in a soldering iron or saw, do what ever work I need/want to accomplish and I’ll need minimal extension cords. In addition layout room lights and power to the DCC system.  This is a bit more time consuming than just running a “Home Run” back to the panel and to a circuit breaker. Additionally each outlet, switch, and the wire needs to be rated to 20 amps. The power needs of the layout do not require 20amp circuits, but every outlet n...

 I have at least three models of P2K 53’ flatcars with tractor loads on them. Two John Deere and one Farmall . These flatcars usually get billed to Team Tracks in small towns all over my layout. One flatcar is modeled completely full of tractors, another has one or two MTY spots between the tractor loads, to simulate a car that has dropped off one or two tractors to a small farm equipment dealer. What I learned recently was that the larger farm equipment manufacturers establish distributors around the country where full carloads of equipment were shipped. THEN from these large distribution centers, LCL shipments of equipment AND parts were made up and shipped to local addresses. The idea was that it cost much less to ship in car load lots than it did to ship LCL*. Equipment went 9/10th of the way at a car load rate, then the final leg was billed at the LCL rate.  Knowing this a modeler might want to build Farm Equipment dealer on his layout. This industry might receive l...

 After a recent clinic on Freight House Operations it was determined that a clean-out track needed to be placed near or adjacent to the Freight House. The reason is because of the amount of bracing materials used in LCL operations. When loading LCL packages into cars these loads needed to be braced so as to minimize the amount of shifting that would occur during transit. This reduced L&D claims, the bain of Railroad LCL operations. LCL shipments arrived at Transfer Freight Houses, these cars were unloaded, the interiors of these cars were stripped, and the bracing materials that could not be re-used were discarded. A significant number of LCL cars took a trip to a local clean-out track. Once clean, they were re-spotted at the freight house for re-loading. Now I’m guessing, but do not KNOW, that in the 1950’s this discarded bracing material was burned at some convenient spot adjacent to the clean-out track, but burning trash does not help us on model railroads. So a trash haulin...

 My local train club got a small home layout donated to it. We had to go over to this families home to remove the layout because they were cleaning out the house to get the house ready to sell. So about seven or eight club members went over there. Afterwards we stopped for lunch and talked about layouts we’ve been to. I get around a bit. Over the last thirty years I’ve made a commitment to fly, and now drive, around the country to visit and operate at layouts all over the U.S. I’ve tried to make connections with layout owners so that I can finagle invitations for follow up op sessions. I think I can get invited to a lot of places, or in most cases bring a group of operators for an ops weekend. As is my nature I try to keep planning to an absolute minimum. Planning is WAY over rated, and in my opinion often ruins trips. To much thinking caused re-thinking, and the results are, trips get cancelled. But I digress, my club members are, as a rule not extroverted, like me. To be honest o...

 After an ops weekend in Vancouver, BC. and a clinic given by a retired CP employee, I’m considering a change to my planned freight house procedures. I will go into more detail from this clinic, but the speaker detailed how much bracing was used at the CP freight houses. After the inbound cars were unloaded, these cars needed to be pulled and Re-spotted at a clean out track. At the P. E. Frantz elevator there is a clean-out and coopering track. This is what the retired CP employee was talking about. These cars from the freight house needed to have all the bracing removed. The good lumber was sorted out and saved to be re-used, and all the protruding nails and broken boards needed to be removed or repaired so these boxcars would be suitable for another LCL load. So how do we utilize this knowledge at our model freight house? How does it affect playability? Do we add a step to the procedure? For example: Step 1: Spot inbound loads at the freight house Step 2: Pull and sort the inboun...

 This whole thing is a confused mess. I’m getting a lot of information about the La Mesa* MRC’s blocking symbols and how prototypical they are. Yet every effort to determine if these symbols are in fact the way things were done is leading me in another direction. La Mesa has a list of blocking symbols too long to list here. Their large Bakersfield yard builds blocks of cars based on these symbols.  The premise is that the SP-ATSF blocked cars by commodity, then when enough cars were gathered (Either from one block, or by combining several blocks) these were assigned to a train.  At La Mesa there are three basic eastbound trains, #802, #804 and #806. Each of these trains covered the needs of the railroad within a particular block of time, over a specific Route.  So, for example, 802 took all freight between 8:00am and noon; 804 took all freight between noon and 4pm and 806 took all freight between 4 and 8 pm from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. Each train was further sub-...