Blocking in the Steam Era: Part 2

 What I need to discuss with Mark Amfahr is the following. 

Your Railroad prepares a train for points East. The next Station East is “B”.

In “B” you have several interchanges with other railroads. 

When you make up this train do you block cars for these interchanges?

Or do you simply create a dogs breakfast and let the next yard pull out all the cars for interchange?

Could this be interpreted as some sort of union rule? That is, by blocking the cars for these foreign roads in town “A”, when the train gets to town “B” you have taken the work away from the switch crews in B.

-NOW-

After speaking with Mark, here is his take on this question.

The yard crew at “A” would include the interchange cars into the block for town “B”. At “B” the crews there would break down and classify the block into the cars for local delivery and those cars going to foreign railroads via the interchanges located in town “B”.

However, what Mark also implies that the switch crew at “A” would PROBABLY build blocks for each town along this trains route. So the train is not a dog’s breakfast, but the blocks for each town probably are.

This is very different from the way I interpreted Mark’s remarks about steam era blocking.


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