New track plan # 2

[steinjr]

One of the things I was always told back in the day ( before family life got in the way of railroading ) was to never let your engine ( or caboose ) get trapped.

Well, railroads try to make things flexible when they can. And make do with what they have when they have to. Here is a simulated session from from the same Industrial park as in my staging example (Minnesota shortland Progressive Rail in Airlake Industrial Park in Lakeville, MN, ca 2001).

Quoting from an old post of mine from another forum:

"Now, when they get back to the Industrial park, the park has a mainline running from west (towards the interchange with CP) to east (dead end at far end of industrial park). No runarounds, and plenty of both facing and trailing spurs.

How does Progressive Rail handle both facing and trailing moves without any double ended sidings or runarounds ? They do it in an interesting way - using two switchers, having the crews move back and forth between the two switchers during the day.

Here is a series of images showing how they break down an arriving train and start delivering the cars to industries:

Arriving cut from interchange is pulled into park by the east end switcher:


About a third of the cut is pushed into a convenient trailing spur:


The rest of the cars are then pulled as far into the park as possible by the eastern switcher, which gets trapped at the end of the layout:


The other crewmember (both crewmembers are qualified as both engineers and conductors) starts up the west end switcher, which has been waiting in some convenient industrial spur to let the eastend switcher pull the inbound cars past its spur.

The west end switcher moves out and grabs a bunch of the inbound cars, and starst pushing cuts of cars into various industrial spurs where there is room for cars, to free up the east end engine as soon as possible:


During the rest of the switching, the crewmembers will be switching back and forth between using the east end engine to deliver cars to spurs branching off towards the west, and using the east end engine to switch cars for spurs branching off towards the left.

Pretty interesting prototype, isn't it ? "

It is by no means "typical" - this is an unusual situation. But it shows that you can pretty much find a prototype for any situation.

One also still finds a local freight once in a while trundling up a in industrial spur with an engine at the front and an engine at the other end of a cut of cars, since there is no runaround at the end of the line it is switching. Crews switch over to the other engine when they are going back again.

Or to find a local freight still with a caboose at the end. Which becomes a "shoving platform" where a crew member with a radio can watch what is ahead and help flag crossings while the train backs down the a line leading to (or from) a business that still is rail served.

Never let your engine get trapped is pretty much mandatory if you have *one* engine. If you have two or more, you can in some situations disregard that rule of the thumb.

You don't have to avoid runarounds - they makes things easier. But you don't need to have em all over, either.

But one question. Would staging be something like a fiddle track? I have a small interchange on my house layout and I pull cars into it and pull them back out the same cars next session. Kind of boring seeing the same cars, so I would like to get away from that. And again, I had only planned one staging track, the rest is just a runaround.

In staging, it doesn't necessarily matter if the train at the end of one operating sessions ends up in staging with the engine on the wrong end for the start of your next operating session - you can always declare end of session and spend a few minutes restaging trains for the next session - bring it out on the visible layout, swap out cars you don't want in your next session, move engines to the other end of the layout or whatever.

Using the 0-5-0 switcher (ie your hand), or a passing siding and a turnaround on the visible layout, or a cassette temporarily attached to the layout or whatever. Getting trains in staging ready is not always part of the play - it can sometimes be part of the setup to play later.

Smile,
Stein