I did take some photos to demonstrate the problems of modern times / modern equipment.

The first photo shows short but sufficient track used by two 50' boxcar and a SW1500 switcher. Both boxcar can be accessed by the trucks and the turnouts are not blocked. Rather dense but acceptable on space constrained layouts.



In modern times box cars are mostly out and gone. Two standard wellcars and a pair of Genset use the very same team track. It is obvious that track is much to short now. The forklift can access one car only. The second car would require the forklift run run on unpaved dirt and the engines block the turnouts.



My lessons learned is that you might shift from transition period with NW2 and 40' boxcar to 1980 with MP15 and 50' boxcar with some minor modifications. But if you go into the 2000'th you need another layout design.

The three stub tracks have been designed with 40' boxcars in mind. The shift into more modern times followed later.

While the other side of the old south yard has been designed with 50' and possible some 60' cars in mind. They hold the covered hopper, reefer and tank car much more easy. The longest track with the tank car looks "spacious" But the right most track (covered hopper) would overflow with wellcars and a pair of Genset.



The new part (harbor / north yard) does not have tracks to right and to the left but uses the full length for one set of tracks only. That is a fundamental design changes required to have tracks long enough to look good with 60' reefer. However, a pair of Genset is still not the preferred engine for that layout.




How do you handle "modern times" on space constrained layouts?

ps. I am talking about ISL only. I have no idea haw to run "modern trains". That topic is left to the Texans and Ohios wit an extra house for their layout

Interesting observations and very illustrative pictures! I'm happily stuck in the late 60's and earl;y 70's on my layout but I'll be curious to read the response you get from contemporary modelers. By the way, it is always a pleasure to see images of your layout!
Ralph

Reinhard wrote:In modern times box cars are mostly out and gone.
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Don't sell the boxcar as "mostly out and gone" by any means because it will return to bite you.

Let's look at UP car handling week ending 11/26/10.

Boxcars:22,832

Intermodal :12,573

Seems boxcars out numbered the intermodal cars.

Data source:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.railroadpm.org/Performance%20Reports/NS.aspx">http://www.railroadpm.org/Performance%20Reports/NS.aspx</a><!-- m -->


As we can see by studying the performance charts boxcars still have a lofty perch in modern railroading and that's contrary to the experts myth that the boxcar is nearly extinct..
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As a add on..

Your industries looks good and prototypical.

Here's the thing..

Freight cars has gotten longer over the years while the industries kept their sidings at the same length they been when the building was built.

Another problem is modern car weight on older rail but,that's another topic.

Reinhard;

This is really great and sure gives a person plenty of food for thought.

Nothing wrong at all with the first photo where you have two boxes spotted on the short track, but man oh man, when you get into dealing with modern well cars, centerbeam's, autoracks (both standard 89ft and the new articulated ones over 100ft) and of course larger motive power you really are looking at space eating equipment!

Handling well cars? Take a look at the NS Delaplain facility at the Toyota plant in Georgetown, KY.http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.26...5&t=k&z=17. The Google image is just of the container handling area. Look around at the rest of it.

I wouldn't have any idea how to deal with all this bigger equipment on an ISL. Wonder how many others have discovered what you are clearly demonstrating here? Glad I'm still in the late 70's to early 80's!!

EDIT EDIT EDIT
Larry;
Look's like it's time to start your thread comparing the 60's, 70's and most of the 80's to today!!!

Ed wrote:I wouldn't have any idea how to deal with all this bigger equipment on an ISL.
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Ed,Just like the prototype..Deliver what the siding can hold and hold the rest till there's enough room..

Of course there is another way..Chase off the smaller customers with lousy service or sell them on the idea of intermodal. hock:

Brakie Wrote:Of course there is another way..Chase off the smaller customers with lousy service or sell them on the idea of intermodal. hock:

Gee, that's exactly what L&N/SBD/CSXT did around here! Now like the old folk song - "The L&N Don't Stop Here Any More!"

I run a modern layout (well, I've got nothing to show yet, as it's under construction, and we all know what foamboard with unballasted tracks etc look like). I have looked at the same issues Gerhard demonstrates here. I in the end went for a 50'box car with one 4 axle single motive power to access the shortest track, I have no space for big autoracks or huge multiple lashups of 6 axle road diesels, so these considerations determine the style of your layout in our available spaces (certainly for us here in the UK, the average house is quite a bit smaller than the average house in the US, and thus available space is at a premium). The other option is to down in scale to N, but it's a balance between running long trains and a bit less superdetailing, or short switching layouts with oportunity to go wild with detailing...

Brakie Wrote:...Don't sell the boxcar as "mostly out and gone" by any means because it will return to bite you...

Don't worry. I did overstate somewhat intentionally. I am still in deep love with my high cube boxcars!

torikoos Wrote:...in the end went for a 50'box car with one 4 axle single motive power...

I learned that areas (e.g. LA basin) with political enforced modern equipment for environmental protection are a critical choice for a modern layout because the rather short SW1xxx and MP15xx are pushed out fast. There are other regions in the US were those short, nice and well available from Atlas and Athearn switchers are still widely used. The BN part of BNSF county and the more northern UP area looks good from that perspective.

I read all of the above discussion with great interest. Reinhard makes some interesting and valid points. Makes me think that faced with the current track arrangement in that corner of his layout, the pair of GenSets would have to switch one car at a time into that siding to be unloaded.

After thinking about it, I'm glad I initially picked 1935 and steam and have stuck with it all these years! 8-)

I have been considering a 10' or 12' ISL along one wall in my bedroom, with a mid-'70's time frame (gotta have a place to run my OMI Reading GP39-2 ... and my daughter's Athearn Blue Box Conrail GP38-2 that she and I painted, decaled, detailed and weathered using photos we took of the one we used to visit in the small transfer yard in Lansdale, PA when we lived there!)

But seriously, faced with an existing track arrangement and no opportunity to "tear it all up and build a new layout," What Would the Prototype Do? (WWPD?) :?:

Well my layout is set in modern times, but not this century, I've opted roughly for the time frame between 1980 and 1995, so the environmental laws requiring gen sets are not yet written, however, I could still get 1 gen set plus box car in my shortest siding if I wanted to. First though, onwards with the layout, and in future get a few MP's to do some of the switching (I've only got a GP38 and a SW1200 geared up to do that job for now :-) ) There'll be GP15-1's by next year to.

I know that the LAJ does not handle any well cars or intermodal equipment. I also never saw any intermodal equipment behind PHL power when I worked in the area. In the case of the PHL the only intermodal equipment I ever saw was BNSF or UP pulling containers out of the harbor or hauling some into the harbor. The latest thing for the last 20 years or so here in the Long Beach and LA Harbors has been to load and off load from trains directly to the ships and from the ships directly to the trains in the larger shipping terminals. The UP also has a large intermodal yard near the old SP Delores Yard. The idea is to get as many of the trucks hauling "cans" off of the freeways by transhipping directly from ships to trains or using very short trucking runs from the ships to the trains. Unfortunately for BNSF, their nearest intermodal yard is Hobart in Los Angeles about 20 miles from the harbor. Their may be well cars taken to shippers by LAJ or PHL, but I don't think that is the case. PHL is less than 5 miles from any container terminal in the either harbor, so a container needing to go to a location in PHL territory, will be picked up by a truck and delivered, never by train. In the case of LAJ, it is less than a mile from BNSF's Hobart Yard or UP's Washington Street Yard, so again containers needing to go to a customer in LAJ territory will be picked up or delivered by truck. Trains can deliver 100 double stack cars with 200 containers across country for much less expense than trucks, but a single switch engine with crew delivering one or two well cars is not economically feasible. In addition, a container in a well car cannot be unloaded without a crane to pull the container out of the car and put it on a chassis to be backed by a truck into a loading dock. It is much less expensive to load the container onto a chassis at the shipping terminal and deliver it by a truck to the local industry than it is to try to do anything locally by train.

Is there any place in the country where a well car would be delivered to an industry for unloading rather than to some rail yard where the container is transferred to a truck & chassis?

Russ Bellinis Wrote:I know that the LAJ does not handle any well cars or intermodal equipment. I also never saw any intermodal equipment behind PHL power when I worked in the area....

Russ, I did use the wellcars only because they are the longest cars I own. You may freely substitute them with any car longer than 50'or 60' frequently used today. I refrain from buying such long beasts since I saw the wellcars on my layout. The white reefer are the longest I run and they do not look so good in curves.
I did also not specific address LAJ or PHL. I did think about the more global problem of modern (2000 and newer) layouts after I learned what BNSF and UP use for switching and transfers these days. That area was dominated by much shorter engines some years ago. I did also notice how frequent BNSF and UP run those kind of trains with more than one engine adding even more length. What is used by CSX and NS these days for switching and transfer?

faraway Wrote:What is used by CSX and NS these days for switching and transfer?

In my area (Central Kentucky) NS seems to use whatever is handy. At the Danville and Lexington yards they tend to keep GP-38's for the yard crews where NW-2's SW-1500's and MP-15's used to be the norm. But they use six axle GE/EMD power for yard and local service all the time.

Nothing looks stranger to me then to see a local freight switching an industry with an SD70-2 or ES40DC!! Not as God intended!!

As for CSX - At their yards in Louisville, KY and Evansville, IN, they seem to be using SW1500's and MP15AC/MP15T's in pairs to do all the yard and switching work.

In this part of the country you can find plenty of "real" switchers. The only GenSet's in the area are a couple that R J Corman keeps in Lexington, KY. They are now in the business of trying to build and sell them and they use one of them to switch industries in Lexington and for demonstration purposes for potential customers. The RJC GenSet seems to be about on equal to a GP38 as far as pulling power.

FCIN Wrote:

faraway Wrote:What is used by CSX and NS these days for switching and transfer?

The only GenSet's in the area are a couple that R J Corman keeps in Lexington, KY. They are now in the business of trying to build and sell them and they use one of them to switch industries in Lexington and for demonstration purposes for potential customers. The RJC GenSet seems to be about on equal to a GP38 as far as pulling power.

Info on the r J Corman gen sets is here. They are basically rebuilds with new engines etc on existing frames. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rjcorman.com/Pdf/RJC%20Railpower%20Info.pdf">http://www.rjcorman.com/Pdf/RJC%20Railpower%20Info.pdf</a><!-- m -->

I had thought of this when I saw the thread about the "interesting" track arrangement at the produce terminal. The tracks are set up to allow loading/unloading boxcars and reefers through the cars on adjacent tracks by lining up the doors on the spotted cars. If this terminal was built in 1930, it would be based on 36' reefers, would it not? The 4 foor increase in car length when the 40' reefer became the de facto standard would probably be still somewhat workable... but definitely not 50' cars. So the terminal would be forced to use certain tracks only, ripping up the others, unload less cars, or rebuild the loading facility.