Rough operations plan for small switching layout

[steinjr]

Hi Guys --

Just thought this one might make a starting point for some more discussions on operating a small switching layout (the one below is just 8 feet long in N scale, without separate staging). Plan and start of discussion is something I wrote up for a fellow model railroader as a one-on-one private communication. Anyone have comments or suggestions for other things my friend might want to do to get some interesting ops sessions for one person on his layout ?

Here is a sketch that is worked up a little more - still based on Jonathan Jones "Mid-Atlantic and Western".



Some of the changes : have taken shelf depth in from 15" to 12" - would look better to have it a little deeper, but it should work with 12" shelf depth too.

Have added a big industry (Industry A) with three car spotting locations in the center of the layout. One car spot for arriving tank cars of chemicals at the farm left of the lowermost spur, then one or two cars of other arriving stuff next to that, and one or two car spot for stuff to be shipped out by rail on the other spur.

Layout now has yard space for a maximum of 15 cars, plus room for 4-5 cars on the interchange track at the bottom.

A total of 12 industry spots (3 cars spots for elevator, 5 car spots for Industry A, 2 car spots for Industry B and 2 car spots on the transload (team) track.

Central runaround is long enough to run around a cut of 8 or 9 cars.

What we have here is an urban industrial district with it's own little support yard that supports 3 on-line customers plus a few off-line customers (served by the transload track in the lower right hand corner).

The yard is serviced by a switch crew from the city terminal railroad (which is jointly owned by the class 1's that serve the city). The yard also servers as an interchange point between the terminal line and a shortline serving an industrial park on the outskirts of the city.


A typical operating session will consists e.g. of the following moves:

It is morning. The yard is pretty empty - no more than 4-5 cars there, tops. A transfer run of 7-8 cars arrives from the class 1 on on the upper (westbound) main (we postulate that the class 1 has a yard somewhere off to the east - ie right).

The class 1 engine cuts off, moves over to the eastbound (lower) main using the crossover and departs eastbound for it's yard again (ie - it drives behind industry B and stops at the end of the track there, not to be seen again for quite a while).

Local switcher crew comes out from the switcher pocket in the yard. Moves up using the eastbound main, and crosses over to the westbound main, to the right of the cars dropped off by the transfer run. Grabs the first four cars and pulls eastwards before backing them into the yard, then goes back and grabs the rest of the cars and backs those also into the yard.

Next switcher starts pulling outbound cars from industries.

One interesting touch here is to say e.g. that it takes 2 days to empty a car at e.g. industry B, and that one new car loaded car will be arriving every day.

Spotting instructions for industry B says that the full car should always be spotted at the innermost car spot on the track. So a typical spotting sequence for industry B would be:

Pull empty car and half empty car from industry B
Spot full car at industry B, with half empty car on "top" of it (ie closer to switch)
Take empty car back to yard.


And do similar things for the other industries - you could e.g. say that for the elevator, it takes 30 fast minutes to unload a grain hopper, it unloads six grain cars every sessios, and every day you start with three inbound loaded grain hoppers left in the yard by the afternoon shift yesterday, and three new inbound cars coming with the transfer run from the class 1.

So every 30 game minutes you pop over to the elevator and pull the string of 3 car forward one car. When all three cars that started spotted at the elevator has been unloaded, you pull the three empty hoppers, and leave them temporarily on the westbound main, west (left) of the crossover, while you grab three inbound loaded grain cars from the yard and spot them at the elevator. And so the cycle continues.

The transload track (team track) has room for two cars. Here you can spot pretty much anything - including boxcars, flatcars, tank cars, hoppers - it is easy to imagine that a truck will arrive at the concrete apron next to the track and unload the car in some way - using a crane, fork lift, vacum hose attachment or some such thing - allows you to make quite a few different trucks and sets of unloading equipment.

It is also possible to use the transload track to spot more boxcars for Industry B - the Industry could be unloading cars on spur 1 (closest to the industry) first, and then go through the boxcars on spur 1 to reach boxcars on spur 2 (just putting a small iron "bridge plate" between the doors of the boxcars. Also creates interesting spottin - since it means that totally full cars should be left on outermost track, partly empty cars should be respotted to track closest to building.

Lots of opertunities to create some interesting switching with such a small switching layout, and lots of opertunity to do some interesting detailing of things like overpasses, tracks, cars, large industrial buildings (with all the cool vents and pipes and whatever on the roof).

Edit: btw - looking at the track plan, again, I would have said that it would have been more logical if the eastbound main (or eastbound "running track" in this case) had been the top one, with the westbound being the bottom one.

Then industry tracks branching off from both running track would be trailing tracks, the way the railroads generally try to arrange things.

But in this case, if trains had arrived on the westbound (lower) track, and the class 1 engine were supposed to drive off towards the hidden staging behind industry B on the eastbound (upper) track, then that would interfere with switching operations in two ways later.

1) The incoming cut of cars would be on the lower main, blocking the exit from the yard - so either the yard switcher would have had to wait in a siding somewhere along the top of the layout, to pop out and grab the inbound cars after the class 1 engine had departed, or the class 1 engine would have had to push the inbound cut into the yard. Not a biggie - just adds a bit of operating interest


2) But worse - the class 1 engine, while in staging, would be taking up space we really need (at the right end of the uppermost running track), instead of space we have to spare (at the right end of the lowermost main).

Still - you could always claim that you only have one main/running track (the lower), and that the uppermost track is a long siding or some such thing.

Smile,
Stein