10-21-2011, 02:26 PM
Here is a commuter operation that's almost in place on my layout. My main passenger terminal, which is named Manhattan Transfer for no good reason, has both long distance and commuter operation. Here is an RDC on the commuter run to West Egg waiting to leave the commuter platform at Manhattan Transfer:
Here it is entering one end of the Walthers swing bridge:
Here it is leaving the other end of the swing bridge:
Here it is at the far end of the run, West Egg:
The whole run is maybe 12 feet. I aim to install a back-and-forth circuit that can be cut in or switched out as needed, since other freight and passenger trains will be using the same track.
Especially in more modern times, commuter operations can be pretty simple-minded. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in New Jersey and Washington, DC and got to ride some of the more complicated operations on lines like the Long Island, New Haven, Lackawanna and Reading, so I have an idea of some of their appeal and will eventually have longer-distance runs with locos that have to change ends. Still, this part of things ain't like the switching on your video, and my thinking is that scenery and incidentals are very important to keep interest. You can never have enough figures, enough vehicles, enough relay cases, enough dwarf signals, etc etc etc -- I'm still working away on these. Also the stations should be architecturally interesting, thus for instance the Magnuson station at West Egg.
Here it is entering one end of the Walthers swing bridge:
Here it is leaving the other end of the swing bridge:
Here it is at the far end of the run, West Egg:
The whole run is maybe 12 feet. I aim to install a back-and-forth circuit that can be cut in or switched out as needed, since other freight and passenger trains will be using the same track.
Especially in more modern times, commuter operations can be pretty simple-minded. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in New Jersey and Washington, DC and got to ride some of the more complicated operations on lines like the Long Island, New Haven, Lackawanna and Reading, so I have an idea of some of their appeal and will eventually have longer-distance runs with locos that have to change ends. Still, this part of things ain't like the switching on your video, and my thinking is that scenery and incidentals are very important to keep interest. You can never have enough figures, enough vehicles, enough relay cases, enough dwarf signals, etc etc etc -- I'm still working away on these. Also the stations should be architecturally interesting, thus for instance the Magnuson station at West Egg.