CTU spur Alaska

[iandrewmartin]

Happy new year to you also Chris.

Thanks for the feedback on operations on the new layout. It is always interesting to see the difference between exhibition and home layout design philosophy.

• 1. 80% of the British exhibition goers are not interested in American layouts, they just walk right past. That’s fine, each to their own.
  2. There is no need to have a great-complicated set of moves planned out with switch lists and like, because 80% of the 20% exhibition goers who do stop and look at the layout only stay for a few minutes. All they want to see is something moving. So once they have moved away from the layout I can start the move all over again.
  3. Of the 20% who do stay and watch longer, 80% will start up a conversation. So if I do have a switch-list to work to, I soon lose where I am if I’m talking to them and I’d rather be talking, with something be moving on the layout, than keep stopping to look down at a list to follow.
  

It is interesting to see the difference between the english "general public's" attitude toward USA themed layouts versus the locally themed one. In Australia when I was growing up during the 1970's the club owned USA styled layout with SP Black Widowed schemed diesels and long trains were predominant. Specifically the Prospect Model Railway Club comes to mind in Sydney's west. The English layout with Black Fives and Brittania's were easy to do too due to the ready to run models available. The local prototype however was in short supply.
Only those with the skills to scratchbuild or to kitbash had anything remotely close to Australian prototype running.

This to some degree still exists with the predominance of UK themed (mainly British ex-pats) and the odd BRMA (British Railway Modellers of Australia) member's layout being easier to make and exhibit off the shelf than Australian themed layouts that require more kit building and or a larger cash outlay. WHen added to the fact that Australian trains are not available as starter sets from Hornby, Bachmann, etc you can see where the new bloke on the block will start with something he can get as a package and build from there. It is how I started.

Haston ... had a couple of operational shortfalls that I wanted to improve on, these being:
the way freight cars would appear on the layout. They were pushed on [to the layout ]from behind some trees with the loco on the rear. Quite normal practice in the States for a loco to shove a load of cars up a branch line because there is no run round at the end.

I've not designed and built a layout for exhibition. So your insight into aspect of the hobby this is greatly appreciated. The ones that seem to hold the attention of the folks here are the through station types, with lots of traffic, running to no specific timetable, and so on. You are correct in that it is all about movement for the paying public. For the remainder (train nuts) it is all about operation, quality of modelling, scenery, or whatever is your particluar field in the hobby. I think that this holds for us nots even when we are in a different country, society or culture.

Now, I’ve noticed on a number of forums both in the UK and overseas, there is a growing view, by some so called experts, that all sidings should be facing to the same way because that’s what the real railroad does, you shouldn’t have sidings flying off in all directions, or a siding where you have to pull spotted cars out, so you can server a customer at the far end.

If you mean, to put a face on this current trend "Lance Mindheim", I must agree. There are several railroads that bear no resemblence to the current "taste" of layout designs with switching only in mind. Many railroads in the US north west have facing and trailing switches all over the place. It is mostly the newer laid tracks into industrial switching areas that feature the "Inglenook" style of all facing, or all trailing switches. Yet even in these environments there appears to be a creeping side effect of customers needing trailing or facing points that run counter to the remainder of the switching plant.

I’ve even heard it said, that the railroad would make up their train with all the cars in the correct order in the yard before they set off, so they can just drop off cars without the need for complicated switch moves down the line so as to not waste time or fuel…(I can understand that's how a railroad manager would like it to happen

Generally it is true that everything is blocked in station order, but there is not enough time to block every train in the order for switching by spur. When they can do that railroads can stop employing thinkers and doers, and simply employ doers at half the cost.

The APU spur is a prime example of real world operation. It has three turnouts, two facing and one tailing.
(so that's blown the first idea out of the water)

I find that one of the benefits of modelling from prototype track layouts is that no matter what happens, so long as you stay true to the real track plan you can never go wrong with the nit-pickers. I might vary from their operating plan somewhat due to space contraints or the section that I am modelling, but the general plan is still in place.

To make it worse, the only place you have to make a switch to reverse the order of cars is the Katmai spur. If it is occupied or out of service for some reason you would have to run all the way back out to the mainline (over a mile) to line up your cars and then shove them all the way back where they belong.

The joys of real railroading. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems on paper. There was a spur off the UP mainline in Austin that ran for about 6 miles out toward the old Bergstrom Airforce base that had in the past served the company I worked for Sysco Foodservice & then US Foodservice. There was one passing siding about a mile from the end of the line. Trains worked their way up to the siding, switching all the trailing sidings on the way. After being turned at the run-around, and with mostly empty cars, the facing point sidings were switched (trailing on the way out) on the retrun to the mainline. The entry off the mainline was facing for North-bound trains.

Without the run-around siding there was no means to serve the facing switch customers. Railroads do only what they needed to do. If there were no customers with switches in the reverse direction they'd have put that run-around out of service in a heartbeat. And the train would have had to push back the entire 5-6 miles to the main with a conductor riding the end of the train as it crossed several grade crossings along the way, one of them the frontage road for I-35 (north and south bound) at Ben White Blvd in South Austin, TX.

This is just a one-mile long branch, in one city, in one State. How many places must this type of operation, be duplicated across the United States of America? There is a prototype for everything; people have just got to look for it.

There is one railroad that I found in an MTI #80 that Shortliner Jack sent me a while back that is a half mile long and serves the largest Marshmallow plant (Kraft) in the mid west. I have doodled the track and the industries to see what could be managed if you modelled it to full scale length. You can see some of the data here: http://www.huntervalleylines.com/gallery...p?album=27.

I've not drawn a layout for this one yet, as I want a few more pictures from Bing before I do so. Even here there is a run-around, two facing and two trailing spurs and a long siding with three industries on it. So there are many of these out there. Mostly, thank the train gods, are run by shortlines.

I love the new layout by the way, looking forward to seeing more as it completes and then hearing more about it as it is shown over the next year or so.

With regards Andrew