TPBO

[Russ Bellinis]

Guys,If I may..

Justin, Railroads have a habit of not "flowing" track that is a LDE(Layout Design Element) we modelers use for our track..A close study of track on a Bing map will show that railroads use curves only when necessary..

As far as industries being close together on Ed's plan..

Think of being 1/87th walking from industry to industry and you will soon note those industries isn't that close. Our 1:1 eyes doesn't scale model distance all that well since we can take in the whole scene on a ISL and small loop layouts.

The modern ISL design follows prototype track designs unlike older ISL track plans which in most cases is based on what I would call a spaghetti bowl design which left very little working room..

Of course that means changing thoughts on the old way of designing a ISL.

There is 2 books I recommend "How To Design A Small Switching Layout" and "8 Realistic Track Plans for Small Switching Layouts" both books are by Lance Mindheim and well worth a fireside study on a cold winter's night.

About 4 years before I retired in 2004 Carrier-Transicold got heavily involved in railroad refrigeration. The railroads had been running all electric refrigeration units made by Trane, and powered by gensets using 3-53 detroit diesel engines for power. The gensets did not have auto start-stop capability, so they ran and burned fuel whether the reefer was down to temp and cycled off or not. By the 1990's Carrier and T-K had perfected microprocessor controlled units that would be started by hand, then when the unit achieved set temperature, they would shut off. If the temperature came up in the box, the microprocessor would initiate a start cycle where the unit would automatically preheat the intake manifold for a few seconds, then crank the engine. As soon as the engine fired, the unit would run for 10 minutes or until the temp came back down (whichever was greater to allow the batteries to be recharged), and then shut off. The railroads decided to try these truck units on railcars. An example is the ARM U.P. car that Intermountain came out with recently or the new Trinity Reefer that BLMA is coming out with.

Obviously they could not bring a rail car to the shop for repairs to the refrigeration unit, we had neither space nor tracks, so I was sent to the rail yard about 1/4 mile from the shop to work on any reefers that failed and were under warranty. We had flat rate time standards that stated how much time Carrier would pay for me to do specific jobs on the units. These time standards included 1/2 hour to set blue flags, and pick them up afterwards. They did not include the time that I might need to sit at a yard throat waiting for an incoming or out bound freight train to clear so that I could cross the tracks. Typically, the car I needed to work on was in a cut of 30 or more cars on a double ended yard track. That meant that I had to place a blue flag at each end of the cut, and I could not drive to either end of the cut, I had to park where ever I could find a safe place to park and walk over rough ground to place those flags at both ends. Generally the 1/2 hour allowance was used up just setting the flags. I used to get "writer's cramp" explaining on work orders why it took me 3-4 hours to change a fuel filter or belt that was a 15 minute - half hour job! The dummies that wrote the flat rate standards sat in offices at the factory and presumed that the railroad would ALWAYS set out the car that I needed to work on all by itself on an easily accessible track where I would just set a blue flag at each end of the car! Needless to say, that never happened.