Well Tom, I saw just this (well... a very close version thereof) modelled at a UK show last weekend.

Although the layout was a 1970s diesel depot (could easily have been a 1950s freight yard), it had a simple, plain pale blue/grey backscene in front of which were 2 long sidings on which stood 2 full rakes of coaching stock - the perfect backdrop to the layout and very reminiscent of what I remember from visiting depots in the 70s. The coaching stock rakes did not move all weekend - their sole purpose was to act as the scenic break at the back of the layout.

I don't see why we shouldn't do the same - other than this obsession we seem to have about every track must have a purpose and every piece of rolling stock must be used <bg> And don't worry... most Brit layout builders think the same, I can't think of a single other layout where I've seen this done - I guess people baulk at the thought of 'wasting' the car's value by just using it as scenery.

Another (1970s run-down freight yard) layout had a couple of lifted roads, ties still in place but no rails - again very realisting and prototypical, but so rarely modelled (again... folk want to maximise 'playability' of their trainset by making all roads usable)

If I had the space, I'd certainly build in one or 2 roads at the rear of the layout, unconnected (though not obviously so) to the operation part and filled with an assortment of cars, probably from my 'reserve' fleet of old blue-boxers and the like - good enough to appear as scenery, but not in a moving train. Fit them with plastic wheels, dummy couplers and just basic details (depending on how closely viewed they might be) and weathered, they'd look the part.

Cheers,
________________________________________
Alan Monk
London, UK

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Tom Madden wrote:

In a late-night bull session many years ago, the late Terry Metcalfe got to musing about PFE's reefer fleet in the mid- to late-1950s. Many wood reefers were still on the roster, but few ever showed up in contemporary photos. Terry decided they were all stored on sidings in California's Central Valley, waiting for the call that never came.

Must have been quite late at night. Certainly the PFE statistics on cars in use in the peak harvest months do NOT support the idea of any significant number of cars in storage prior to 1960. Whether or why contemporary photos in Terry's possession may not have shown what he expected, I can't address.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Jim Betz wrote:

. . . We are "programmed" to work every car in every siding at every industry in town.

Jim, waybills can help <g>.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

A major problem to consider is how we go about reducing actual time to scale.There are too many factors to consider as we try to shrink time and function into an acceptable compromise or just play with trains.Armand Premo

Jim it sounds like the layout owner is not using the CC/WB system as it was intended. Most owners using a CC/WB system have a car
card for each car on the layout. And there is a waybill for each CC. The WB's I use are four sided, with a little number in the
corner to help me in turning the WBs. Such WB's have four destinations for the car, and they are turned to the next destination
between operating sessions, NOT during the session. Once a car arrives at the destination noted on the WB, it stays there unless
there are special instructions in addition to the WB. IE I have an insert for meat reefers giving instructions for all the spots
at my meat packing plant.

Between Op Sessions I flip the WBs to show the next destination, no one else does this.

Along with CC/WBs I also have CC boxes at each town marked: setout, hold, pickup. When a car is delivered to an industry in that
town the corresponding CC is put in the setout box. The operator checks the CCs in the pickup box to see if any cars should be
picked up, ie cars going in the same direction or to the same yard or staging yard. The hold box is for cars I (the owner)
determine should not be moved during that session. Some cars are a quick turn around, ie stock cars, other cars may be held for
several sessions, ie the scenery cars. Some owners will have a fourth box for "offspot" cars. If I choose I can leave a lot of CCs
in the hold box, meaning they must remain in town at their spot.

A town may be worked by several different trains, ie an EB and a WB local. A through freight may drop off cars on a siding for
later arriving local to spot. It depends upon your operating design. As the owner I control what cars are moved and how frequently
they are moved. I have many cars that are not moved during an Op Session, it is by design.

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

"Maybe an OP would be 'less fun' if you ran it too much like a real RR."

--Jim Betz


I think that's the kernel of why model operations tend to be a bit frenetic.

SGL






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Bob

Methods like that work ok on private layouts where one person
usually has strict control over the layout and its operations.
All car card methods tend to fall apart on large club layouts
if the "velocity" of cars falls below a critical threshold as
I described yesterday. It's extremely common on the operation
I'm familiar with for cars never to actually be delivered to
a customer, although they often do arrive in the final yard
(from which they would go into a local or switch job for final
delivery). Because there are real breaks in the operation and
personnel (many weeks or months of time, and two or three or
more people involved) the flow is lost unless there is some
incredibly complicated way of handling car cards that "stores"
the sense of sequence of operations for each individual car.

In other words if a car's waybill from origin to destination
assumes that steps 1,2,3,...,10 are all executed without error
then over the 2 or 3 months these steps actually take, there
is the random factor of mishandling and quite often, the car
never gets to step 10... or maybe just repeats a step. I've
seen plenty of both.

Tim O'Connor

I operated on a layout once where each waybill was numbered hold for one, two or three days for unloading. When the car reached its destination, the industry had card boxes labelled one, two or three days hold time. The card was placed in the appropriate numbered box and moved up one box each operating session until the final box was reached and the car was picked up. Note that the car cards, obviously, were not so labelled as they might be used for different lading, different restinations and different hold times next go round. This might solve some of your problems.


Jim Pickett

Tom Madden wrote:

<snip> I don't have a layout but occasionally operate on the layouts of
friends. It's always bothered me that, at the end of a session, every
piece of rolling stock on the layout has been dealt with. Even cars that
are spotted where they were when the evening started had to be moved at
some point. No allowance for stored cars on the visible portion of the
layout.

I recall the article by Douglas Smith on card operation [The latest word
from Doug on card operations, Model Railroader, December 1961
<http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=MR&MO=12&YR=1961&output=3&sort=\;
3> page 52] that the sequence was to leave a car stay in place at the
customer's spot for at least one sequence of the local freight passing
through a town with the sequence being drop-off, load or unload, and
then pick-up. No doubt methods to operate layouts are more complex
today, but this simple step to allow time for a car to be either loaded
or unloaded should be incorporated into any operating scheme.

Bob Witt
Indianapolis, Indiana

In Valley, NE, the old UP stockyards had two tracks paralleling the loading chutes to the main barn that stretched for more than a mile in length. Out the outside track (away from the chutes) many stock cars were parked after they were unloaded. Depending upon the need for cars to continue the trip to the Omaha packing houses (about 25 miles to the east), a car(s) would be pulled out to be loaded. Many times that outside track was "stock" full (pardon the pun) of cars.

An overflow would often occur with the excess cars parked along double-ended spurs, east and one west of the stockyard siding. These spurs are still in existance and grain cars are occasionally parked ther.

Just a few miles west of Valley there is a siding at Mercer where bad-order cars, or MOW cars are frequently set out from the UP mainline. They will often set along the double-main for days or even weeks.

Jack Hanger
Fremont, NE

Hi,

Most of the time the runs I'm referring to -were- using car cards and
waybills. But the operators seem to always 'have' to work "every car in
town". Yes, I know about the 'number in the upper right corner' ... but
that doesn't seem to prevent an operator from working every car in town.
In addition - the waybill systems don't really support the topic of
"how long it takes to load a car at the industry after it is delivered"
topic. Conceptually this is 'easy' ... just have the way bill say 'don't
move this during this phase' ... and you could even have a way bill that
leaves a car for more than one phase. But the problem is that this will
quickly create a problem in terms of managing the waybills themselves.
I've actually tried this - and you end up having to figure out "which
waybills will be used for this session". An exercise that is very time
consuming, tedious - and quickly gets abandoned as "too much work".
Most layouts that I know of that are using the car cards and waybill
system don't actually use the number in the upper right corner to
decide if a car moves this time or not ... most of them just use it
to cause a particular card to 'rotate around the layout'. I'm not
saying this is "wrong" ... I'm just recognizing what a lot of layouts
are doing.

The layout I operate on the most has a large book of waybills - and
they are placed in the car cards for the run ... and it works ... with
the exception that if every car in town has a waybill (or not) then the
operator on the local in that town tends to think that he is supposed
to "work them all". My instructions (about 'how many cars to pick up'
etc.) are intended to make them think about that - and to not do it.
It fails pretty miserably ... even experienced operators will pick up
"everything in town".
One of you responded to this thread with "I'll take the local every
time if I can" (sic) ... and I understand this. And it is a very
common preference. And "kicking cars" is a lot of fun. And I enjoy it
just as much as you do. But the fact is that if you are trying to be
more prototypical in your ops sessions ... that working all of the
cars in town just doesn't simulate what really happens on the prototype.

I was also referring to the fact that many, many layout operating
schemes are set up so that too many cars are worked in any one session.
I go to runs many many times a year. About 15 to 20 different runs
a year - several of the layouts repeat in a year. And the thing is ...
the vast majority of them work way too many cars in any one town in any
one session for it to feel "prototypical" to me. I'm not saying it
isn't fun to take one of those jobs ... I'm saying it doesn't fit the
goal of "more prototypical ops". But maybe that is OK. Maybe an OP
would be 'less fun' if you ran it too much like a real RR.

**************

What I'd really like to see is the local jobs doing less on any one
visit ... but maybe have more than one local visit a town/location
during a session. That way each visit is more prototypical ... but you
still have lots of work for the operators to do. For instance, let's
say you have a 'town' that has 15 car spots at the various industries.
So if 'about a 1/3rd' of the spots are occupied at the start of the
session and if the first local to visit that town works 'about 3 cars
max' at that town ... and then later in the session a different local
(with, perhaps, a different operator) visits and works 'about 3 cars'
(but not the same ones) ... then each train would have a more
prototypical workload. And yes - I'm willing to live with the idea
that it would be highly unlikely that there would be more than one
visit to that town in the 'period' of the op session ... because

-to me-

this is the lesser of the two evils.
- Jim

--- In STMFC@..., Jim Betz <jimbetz@...> wrote:

Hi,

I -often- try to get layout op sessions/owners to understand that when
a local goes to a town that they shouldn't "pick up every car and drop
a car at every industry". I.e. - that at most 1/4th to 1/3rd of the cars
should be worked during the visit to the town of any one train.

My comments, for the most part, fall on deaf ears.

I even go so far as to provide operating instructions such as
"leaves ____ town with 4 to 6 cars, goes to town ____ (a different
town) and picks up at most 1/4th of the cars in town". And find
that at most 1 out of 10 operators will follow those instructions.
We are "programmed" to work every car in every siding at every
industry in town.
*** SIGH *** ... Jim (preaching to the choir here)
Wouldn't car card & waybill, or computer printout solve this problem?

Bill Williams

Jim,

Many layouts have a dearth of local industry sidings.
At my club, it takes about 3 months to execute a single
operating "day". If cars were left on industry sidings
for 3 days, you can do the math: the car would only be
moved after 9 real months. That kind of operation turns
a whole fleet of cars into scenery. Also, on a club
layout, cars may be taken off the layout and put back
on only during operations. That means 8 times of taking
that car off the layout, storing it, and putting it back
again before it is ever moved by a train. Mistakes and
damage are very common in such circumstances.

Such are the joys of "realistic" operation... My own
preference is the totally senile approach: I have no
idea where the cars came from, or where they'll go in
the future. I'm only interested in running a local with
plenty of work to do. I'd run the local every op session
if I could -- 6 times per "day" -- as long as someone
wants to crew it. I'd probably feel differently if we
could get through a "day" in one month (two op sessions).
Then at least, I could actually experience the flow of
cars over the layout, as opposed to just theoretically
imaging such a flow but never actually remembering it
over an extended period of time.

Tim O'Connor


I -often- try to get layout op sessions/owners to understand that when

--- In STMFC@... <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> , Jim Betz <jimbetz@...> wrote:

I -often- try to get layout op sessions/owners to understand that when
a local goes to a town that they shouldn't "pick up every car and drop
a car at every industry". . . .

My comments, for the most part, fall on deaf ears.

I even go so far as to provide operating instructions such as
"leaves ____ town with 4 to 6 cars, goes to town ____ (a different
town) and picks up at most 1/4th of the cars in town".

Sounds like you need to adopt some sort of waybill system, which would tell your crews exactly

what to pick up and

what to drop off at every station. I'm sure there's a Yahoo list devoted to such operational

niceties.

Walt Lankenau

Yahoo's op-sig list comes to mind.

SGL





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--- In STMFC@..., Jim Betz <jimbetz@...> wrote:

I -often- try to get layout op sessions/owners to understand that when
a local goes to a town that they shouldn't "pick up every car and drop
a car at every industry". . . .

My comments, for the most part, fall on deaf ears.

I even go so far as to provide operating instructions such as
"leaves ____ town with 4 to 6 cars, goes to town ____ (a different
town) and picks up at most 1/4th of the cars in town".

Sounds like you need to adopt some sort of waybill system, which would tell your crews exactly what to pick up and what to drop off at every station. I'm sure there's a Yahoo list devoted to such operational niceties.

Walt Lankenau

Hi,

I -often- try to get layout op sessions/owners to understand that when
a local goes to a town that they shouldn't "pick up every car and drop
a car at every industry". I.e. - that at most 1/4th to 1/3rd of the cars
should be worked during the visit to the town of any one train.

My comments, for the most part, fall on deaf ears.

I even go so far as to provide operating instructions such as
"leaves ____ town with 4 to 6 cars, goes to town ____ (a different
town) and picks up at most 1/4th of the cars in town". And find
that at most 1 out of 10 operators will follow those instructions.
We are "programmed" to work every car in every siding at every
industry in town.
*** SIGH *** ... Jim (preaching to the choir here)

To say nothing about how many wound up as storage or whatever on farms and other locations.....

Jerry Glow

Back in the late 50's and early 60's ( up to the early 70's) the Santa Fe would fill most of the sidings between  Barstow and Needles, CA with ice reefers with the hatches and doors open to dry out in late spring and summer. I used to repeat this scene on my layout with about 25 SFRD ice reefers. When I would notice the reefers out on the desert, these cars came out their box's for a few months of drying then go back to the shelf (on paper they had been sent else where for use). Then a MOW train of bunk cars, tool cars and supplies would show up on some of the sidings for awhile. Santa Fe also kept several 10 car strings of reefers at Summit on the Cajon Pass to be added to downhill west bounds as braking cars with the retainer valves set.
 
Michael Bishop

This may not be as far fetched as it may seem.In Alburgh on the Rutland, foreign hoppers would be stored awaiting unloading in a rather large coal facility.The coal would then be transferred to company wooden hopper bottomed Gons for storage or on line delivery to other on-line coaling facilities.It was not unusual to see long strings of these cars waiting to be loaded.Several ballast gons were also on hand to be loaded with ashes from the ash pit which then would be used elsewhere on the line.Thus these seemingly unglamorous cars could be considered scenery,but were an active part of the daily operations at this terminal.I suspect that this practice was not unique to the Rutland.Armand Premo

--- In STMFC@..., "Tom Madden" <tgmadden@...> wrote:

Maybe that's how to overcome the Better Homes & Gardens effect - put a line of idle gons or box cars on the far track, or at the end of a few sidings. They wouldn't be a factor in an operating session so presumably wouldn't impose themselves on your conscienceness. They'd just be there, as scenery, "present but not voting".

Just some thoughts of a wandering mind.

Tom Madden

The problem with that is most layouts already have a track to scenery ratio that's way out of kilter. However, Tom raises a good point; storage tracks could really be part of the scenery, track along the backdrop, or even behind background buildings, that aren't physically connected to the rest of the layout. Might even represent part of another railroad's yard... we don't know, because we'll never move the cars.

If the layout is large enough, this problem tends to diminish. When I run Defiance Yard on John Swanson's DW&LS, I classify cars for an eight hour trick (four actual hours) and build several outbound trains. But, I have some classifications that only go out on one train every twenty four hours, so some of those cars have been sitting in the yard for three sessions when they finally leave.

Bill Darnaby's Maumee Route is much the same; each session only runs twelve hours, so the locals only switch the towns every other session.

On both layouts there are cars that have been sitting quietly in the background for a while.

Dennis