04-09-2012, 11:17 PM
Brakie --
My brother has worked on "the railroad" over here for almost twice as long as you worked as a brakeman. His wife, my sister-in-law has also worked on "the railroad" for well over over a decade. Her mom and dad were life long railroaders before retiring. Three of my cousins are long time railroaders. Three of my dad's brothers worked on "the railroad" for 30 years. Before that my grandpa and his brother worked on "the railroad", and my great grandpa worked on "the railroad". "The railroad" in all cases being the same railroad company - the Norwegian State Railroads. But operating conditions of course were pretty different at the time my great grandpa signed on with the railroad, compared with what they are now.
The relatives who works or worked on the railroad knew their jobs. My brother e.g. has worked as a conductor, worked traffic management and worked as a hump yard tower operator. He knows quite a bit about how to do safe switching on a 1:1 scale railroads. Quite a bit about procedures for moving passenger trains safely over the road. Quite a bit about dispatching trains under rush hour conditions. Quite a bit about hump yard operations.
But my brother knows nothing about track planning for model railroads. Or about track planning for real railroads, for that matter - his training and experience is in operations, not in infrastructure planning.
What he knows how to do is to take whatever infrastructure he finds (much of which sadly is not optimized for current operations, as construction, at least on "our" railroad, tend to lag operations by years - moving and laying track usually costs far more than adjusting operating practices), and use this infrastructure to get his job done, trying to balance working safety with getting the job done reasonably fast and efficiently.
Having operated on real railroads gives you experience with how operations were done at those railroads at those time and at those places, and what track configurations made the job easier and what track configurations made the job harder.
By all means continue to point out how a yard or an industry could be switched in a different way on a model railroad. Or describe how places you have seen were laid out, and how you used those tracks to do your job. Or point out bottlenecks in plans. First hand experiences are very valuable.
But designing model railroad track plans under various constraints is a pretty different discipline than being a crew member operating a 1:1 scale train, and takes a different skill set. Some people are good at both things, some are good at the one or the other, and some will never get the hang of either discipline.
Getting back to that track plan of the Woodsriver yard.
I have not made any claim that this yard is especially realistic. Dolkos has not (as far as I know) made any claims that the yard it is very prototypical.
I have not made the claim that nine car trains are typical for a busy yard.
I have not made the claim that one should have engine terminals for every piddling little yard, even though I know many model railroaders like to have engine terminals - as taking an engine to be serviced or taking an engine from the ready track to the train adds play value to an operating session, and it gives a place to display extra locomotives (most of us have more locomotives than we strictly need).
I have not made the claim that single ended yards are more prototypical than double ended yards.
And so on and so forth.
What I have tried to convey is that from a model railroad track planning viewpoint, it makes little sense to pretty much always go "but that's not how it looked when I worked on the railroad".
Yes - I know that. It is not news. But sadly, saying so repeatedly does not change the brutal reality of how much space is available for a given model railroad. Or remove the need to deal with compromises and trade-offs.
To decide e.g. whether it is most important to each of us, for a specific design whether a yard is double ended or whether it can hold more cars.
Or to decide whether we are willing to back a short train into or out of a yard and thus get longer A/D tracks, or whether we insist that trains must always go into yards locomotive first, using the escape track for the engine.
Stuff like that is not about operating 1:1 scale railroading - it is about track planning for model railroads.
Smile,
Stein
My brother has worked on "the railroad" over here for almost twice as long as you worked as a brakeman. His wife, my sister-in-law has also worked on "the railroad" for well over over a decade. Her mom and dad were life long railroaders before retiring. Three of my cousins are long time railroaders. Three of my dad's brothers worked on "the railroad" for 30 years. Before that my grandpa and his brother worked on "the railroad", and my great grandpa worked on "the railroad". "The railroad" in all cases being the same railroad company - the Norwegian State Railroads. But operating conditions of course were pretty different at the time my great grandpa signed on with the railroad, compared with what they are now.
The relatives who works or worked on the railroad knew their jobs. My brother e.g. has worked as a conductor, worked traffic management and worked as a hump yard tower operator. He knows quite a bit about how to do safe switching on a 1:1 scale railroads. Quite a bit about procedures for moving passenger trains safely over the road. Quite a bit about dispatching trains under rush hour conditions. Quite a bit about hump yard operations.
But my brother knows nothing about track planning for model railroads. Or about track planning for real railroads, for that matter - his training and experience is in operations, not in infrastructure planning.
What he knows how to do is to take whatever infrastructure he finds (much of which sadly is not optimized for current operations, as construction, at least on "our" railroad, tend to lag operations by years - moving and laying track usually costs far more than adjusting operating practices), and use this infrastructure to get his job done, trying to balance working safety with getting the job done reasonably fast and efficiently.
Having operated on real railroads gives you experience with how operations were done at those railroads at those time and at those places, and what track configurations made the job easier and what track configurations made the job harder.
By all means continue to point out how a yard or an industry could be switched in a different way on a model railroad. Or describe how places you have seen were laid out, and how you used those tracks to do your job. Or point out bottlenecks in plans. First hand experiences are very valuable.
But designing model railroad track plans under various constraints is a pretty different discipline than being a crew member operating a 1:1 scale train, and takes a different skill set. Some people are good at both things, some are good at the one or the other, and some will never get the hang of either discipline.
Getting back to that track plan of the Woodsriver yard.
I have not made any claim that this yard is especially realistic. Dolkos has not (as far as I know) made any claims that the yard it is very prototypical.
I have not made the claim that nine car trains are typical for a busy yard.
I have not made the claim that one should have engine terminals for every piddling little yard, even though I know many model railroaders like to have engine terminals - as taking an engine to be serviced or taking an engine from the ready track to the train adds play value to an operating session, and it gives a place to display extra locomotives (most of us have more locomotives than we strictly need).
I have not made the claim that single ended yards are more prototypical than double ended yards.
And so on and so forth.
What I have tried to convey is that from a model railroad track planning viewpoint, it makes little sense to pretty much always go "but that's not how it looked when I worked on the railroad".
Yes - I know that. It is not news. But sadly, saying so repeatedly does not change the brutal reality of how much space is available for a given model railroad. Or remove the need to deal with compromises and trade-offs.
To decide e.g. whether it is most important to each of us, for a specific design whether a yard is double ended or whether it can hold more cars.
Or to decide whether we are willing to back a short train into or out of a yard and thus get longer A/D tracks, or whether we insist that trains must always go into yards locomotive first, using the escape track for the engine.
Stuff like that is not about operating 1:1 scale railroading - it is about track planning for model railroads.
Smile,
Stein