Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[Green_Elite_Cab]

There's a lot more to ISL operation then just "resetting the cars"..A good rotation plan is a must..The cars you picked up today must be removed and another inbound cut be placed on the layout.

I don't recall seeing many runarounds in industrial areas in fact many urban branch lines didn't have them-we pulled or reverse into the branch.Even today runarounds seems far and few between since a lot of locals still uses cabooses for long reverse moves or a locomotive on each end..

There is a reason for that...

I suppose I might be a little skewed, because run arounds seem fairly common to my eye, not only is there one near my house, but often when i review my Conrail ZTS maps, there is some sort of provision for getting around a train near most large industrial areas. That said, I've seen plenty of Cabooses being used for those long back up moves in areas such as those industrial tracks along the Northeast Corridor (see the last pic in the "Trains from the Sky" thread in the Upper Berth) and in Southern New Jersey (i think you may also need a caboose if you running on certain commuter tracks, but I'm not clear on that one, it could just be that to stay out of the way of commuter trains, you would be making long back up moves anyway). However, even these didn't seem to be to far distant from some sort of small yard or something.

In the grand scheme of an ISL, you probably don't need a run around. If you're not resetting cars, you're rotating them .

I definitely hadn't considered the excess time as far as freight goes, but i guess its the same problem that led to the Push-pull commuter train, all those extra moves hold things up. Given that many of the industrial tracks by me have trains creeping along at 15 MPH for almost the whole route of somewhere around 10 miles, i wasn't sure that time was all that important (within reason, of course).

This also makes me curious then. in my earlier Hainesport example, there are no industries that are required to be backed in from the east. everything can be switched with the locomotives heading westbound. Why not just back the whole train in from the main yard in Pavonia, Camden? The only thing I can figure is that the train will be on parts of NJT's Atlantic City line, and a some other "main" tracks in the area.