Operations/shunting article in July MR?

[steinjr]

OK, here is an overview shot of my layout.

Mmm - a nice looking (and compact) layout, but maybe not your typical "switching industries" type of layout.

You do have a passenger station and a small yard. But do you have any rail served industries on that layout? Somewhere where you would want to set out or pick up cars to be loaded or unloaded?

Stein, just curious

Thanks, Stein. Well, only the front half to 2/3's of the layout is finished so I could try to create & add some industries at the small yard. Otherwise, I admit that the layout mainly works as a passenger layout but I do occasionally run freight trains through. I was thinking that maybe I could start a freight train out from the "fiddle yard" and deliver various cars to the different sidings in the middle of the layout.

I also have a small shelf switching layout but that's a side project that I occasionally work on. I was thinking of re-laying its track. It's bascially an "Inglenook" shunting layout -- maybe I could use apply these shunting guidelines to that?

Mmmm. You certainly can do fairly realistic car shunting/switching on an inglenook. Or maybe on a super-nook (an oversize inglenook). Using whichever method your prefer, but I suspect that a hand written switch list probably would be the easiest way that also had a realistic flavor here - like on this web page: http://oscalewcor.blogspot.com/2010/02/t...tions.html

But what kind of operations would suit best for your main layout?

For one thing - you do not really need (in my opinion) a simplified system to keep track of what freight cars should go where. You will have very few destinations, and won't be moving a lot of cars.

Based on a quick look at your layout, I would say that with your layout I think my main focus would have been on handling passenger trains at a junction town depot/station, not local freight trains.

Maybe having a train arrive at the depot, switch engines, maybe take off a sleeper that will go onto a connecting train, adding an express mail car, and then wait for another arriving train that will have another coach that needs to go on with our train. I.e centering the action around the depot/station, using the yard as a coach yard for passenger cars.

With the freight train occasionally making an appearance, switching out some cars from the track on the left side of the layout (on the loop side of the little forest), and then going on to pick up some cars from the yard before backing out of the layout back onto one of the staging tracks.

Anyone else have some ideas about possible overall operations plans for Robert ?

Smile,
Stein