| Joe Fugate's Siskiyou Line :: Forums :: Joe Fugate's Siskiyou Line :: Operations |
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| Charlie Comstock's thoughts on prototype operation | ||
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| bear creek |
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   Registered Member #305 Joined: Wed Feb 01 2006, 01:57PMLocation: Portland, OR Posts: 342 | Prototype operation isn't. At least on a model it really isn't practical. Nor desirable. Prototype operation includes waiting for hours for the DS to clear your further or for a yard to get cleared enough to let you in. It involves considerable boredom as you travel miles and miles and miles over the same track doing the same things every day. So boring that they actually have to pay real train crews to do it... Can you imagine? So prototype operation on a layout is a facsimile of the real thing. Perhaps the biggest difference (to my mind) between prototype operation and railfan operation is that in one trains run to please the whim of the crew and spectators. In the other trains run to deliver cars (hopefully promptly) to allow the railroad to earn a profit (assuming we want to model the book-keeping - which I for one don't really want to do). So on a model prototype operation means taking elements of the way real railroads do things - such as:
and selectively compress them to fit the needs of the model. There are some real issues involved
So a schedule needs to be tweaked so that trains running quickly on the mainline don't arrive in such rapid succesion that they overwhelm the yard crews or prevent a local from having enough time to get its work done between passing trains. There also needs to be enough time for a dispatcher (if one is used) to get warrants or train orders to all the train crews that need them in a timely manner. On the model, the reduced mainline lengths mean the crews are calling the dispatcher much more frequently than on the prototype. The subject of where trains come from and go to needs to be addressed. Do they move between locations on the modeled part of the railroad? Or do they originate/terminate at unmodeled locations (staging)? If they originate or terminate at an on-layout location where is that? A yard? A town? How will the cars in that train be broken down and fowarded onward towards their destinations? Speaking of which, there needs to be a freight fowarding system. Car cards and waybills or train manifest lists are two popular ways of doing this. Some people like to have a computer set up destinations for the cars. Others prefer to do this manually and keep computers out of the train room. If the layout owner ain't careful they can end up creating a full blown railroad transportation plan to define the car fowarding and which trains run where and when! Yikes! Cheers, Charlie Comstock Supt. of Nearly Everything Bear Creek and South Jackson Railway Co. [ Edited Wed Aug 09 2006, 04:20AM ] Bigwig Bear Creek & South Jackson Railway Co. http://www.bcsjrr.com | ||
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| joef |
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   Registered Member #3 Joined: Wed Dec 08 2004, 09:01PMLocation: Portland, OR Posts: 2112 | Charlie: This is all very interesting, but it can be overwhelming to try and throw all this at people all at once, even if it is a "simplified" form of what the prototype does. My idea with the Prototype Operations forum clinic is to first dip the toe in, then up to the ankles, then the knees, etc. And you can stop wherever you like, and still have a good time. Joe Fugate http://siskiyou-railfan.net - 200,000 hits and counting!  In video ... | ||
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| bear creek |
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| Registered Member #305 Joined: Wed Feb 01 2006, 01:57PMLocation: Portland, OR Posts: 342 | Hey Joe... Sorry, I get carried away. Dipping the toes in, then the ankle, etc is exactly how I started. Get each bit of it going then when you're comfortable with it move on to the next. My first freight fowarding scheme was pretty simple. I cut up some 3/4" plastruct I chanel into 1" lengths and put a number from 1 to 7 on them. The number corresponded to the industries on my (*4x8) layout. If an industry could hold two cars then I made two of the "tiles" with its number. When a train arrived in town I pulled enough tiles out of a can for the cars on the train that were to be switched and stuck 'em on the roofs of the cars. Then I delivered the cars to those industries. If there was a car already there it got picked up. When it all was done the train ran some more laps until I figured it had gone far enough to get to the next town (which looked suspiciously like the first town). Then I pulled another set of tiles and delivered those cars, etc. When I got bored with those cars I pulled some off the layout (there was no staging on the 4x8) and put some different cars in place. It was fun. It was easy. And it was quick to setup. And quick to explain to anyone that dropped by expressing an interest in running trains.  But it did suffer from some problems: o it meant the cars had these strange looking "thingees" on their roofs o it didn't match destinations to appropriate car types (so that a stock car isn't delivered to a bulk oil facility!) These problems didn't bother me for quite a while. When they did I tried replacing the "tiles" with computer generated switch lists created by ShipIt! After programming the industries and available cars into the computer program and setting up lots and lots of details about how many cars each industry demanded and how quickly it loaded and unloaded cars the program would grind away for quite a long time (back when I had a Pentium-200). SOmetimes it spit out a decent switch list. Sometimes it kind of messed up. Things I liked about it were: o the paper work looked fairly decent o the correct car types went to each industry o no funny looking "thingees" on the roof tops. Things I disliked about it were: o It was waaay slow to run the program. o It was a pain to set up everything o When the program generated the next session it expected all the cars to be exactly where it had said they should be. This meant that a misdelivered car or a partially run session made absolute hash out of the switch lists it generated! o It generated what seemed like reams and reams of paperwork just for my little 4x8 layout with 1 or 2 trains on it. I didn't even want to think about how much paper would be generated for when I built a larger layout. o I do computers all day long at work. Doing computers for my hobby wasn't so appealing. So when I started building the second BC&SJ that filled the garage stall I decided computer switch lists weren't for me. I also didn't want to deal with tab on car systems. At this point I'd operated a few times on Joe's layout and had seen car cards and waybills in operation. Prior to running at Joe's I had been afraid that the limitations of 4-cycle waybills (each car ping-pongs between up to 4 different destinations in successive op sessions) would not provide a realistic feeling traffic pattern. So I'd avoided CC&WB. But I decided to give them a try. If you've not seen them car cards are created, one for each freight (or passenger) car. They are labeled with the roadname, road #, color, and car type. They have little pockets in them that hold a "waybill". Waybills are created with sets of destinations on them. For example:
The way bill also gets a car type - in this case XM (AAR car type symbol for box car). So when this waybill is inserted in the pocket of a car card for a box car (this waybill would be inappropriate for a tank car or livestock car) that box car would move (typical once per session) from o to the Reland Warehouse carrying furniture o then to the Mill Bend Lumber company which needs and empty to load some lumber o then to the Utah Lumber Distributors carrying the lumber from Mill Bend. o then to the Salem Furniture Company as an empty so they can load furniture o which goes to the Redland Warehouse and the cycle repeats until the waybill is pulled from that car card pocket and a new one is inserted. Between each session the waybill is pulled from the car card pocket, rotated to show the next destination and reinserted. The train crews move the car toward the current destination (or deliver it if their train goes to that location). Here's a link to my CarCard and Waybills page: http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/operations/ccwb.html The Utah and Salem desitnations aren't modeled on my (current) layout so the car is sent to the approrpriate staging area for those destinations. What if there's no staging? Lets do a waybill for my 4x8 layout (with no staging) o Dest 1 - To C.Bandly Mfg, South Jackson - lading empty o Dest 2 - To Elsewhere industries - lading nuts and bolts o Dest 3 - To Brough-Caan Glass Co, South Jackson - lading packing materials o Dest 4 - To OverTheRainbow Supply Co - lading glass products Between each session the waybill is pulled from the car card pocket and replaced with the next destination showing. For destinations 2 and 4 the car is left "on the train" while it moves to the next town. Moving to the "next" town (really there was only one town on the 4x8 layout so its the same town) constitutes the end of a "session" and the waybill gets rotated to its next destination. So after being delivered to destination 1 - C.Bandley Mfg in South Jackson when the train leaves town the waybill gets rotated to the next destination - in this case Elsewhere Industries. Does every car card get rotated every session? The answer is "What ever pleases you" Sometimes every waybill is advanced. Sometimes only some of them are. Simulate an industry taking a couple of days to unload or load by not turning the waybill right away. If you get tired of the same car showing up at the same places pull the waybill out and pick a another one. It's helpful to have little stacks of waybills organized by car type. You have a tank car that needs a new waybill? Pull the old one and stick it on the bottom of the tank car waybill pile. Pull the one of the top of the pile and stick it in the car card. So what do I like about car cards? o simple, low tech solution o no computers involved in setting up a session o if a car gets misdelivered it's not a problem! Just have the next train through that area pickup the car and move it on to where it should be! o I made up waybill blanks that I could write destinations on in pencil to create new waybills while I was restaging (in case I ran out due to a rolling stock building program). Easy! So what kinds of problems are there? o Long trains, say 30+ cars have quite a wad of waybills for them making them easy to drop. o CC&WB don't look much like prototype paper work. o There is a need to provide a place to layout the car cards for long trains. Some operators go through the car cards once when they pull into town and then write up a switch list by hand that details where every car in the train and that is already in town will go. o Sometimes restaging a large layout can get to be a bit tricky (not too bad though) o For a large layout with hundreds of cars and dozens of destinations load balancing can be a bit tricky. For example, having 6 waybills for an industry with 1 car spot my overload that layout. Having 2 waybills for an industry with 4 spots will result in that industry looking pretty empty most of the time. There are other ways of "organizing" how freight is delivered . Some use computers (ProTrak is a good program). Some are more manual (like an index card listing 8 or more destinations with a paper clip that slides from destination to destination to show where that car is going next). The idea is to introduce a measure of order into the movement of cars. You can use as much or as little of this as you like. You can run trains using brownian motion for a couple of rail-fan sessions. Then look at the car cards to see which cars are going where for the next session. If you're afraid of the prototype police showing up just remember rule #1. Rule #1 - It's MY railroad. If you don't like it you don't have to be here. Rule #2 - When in doubt see rule #1 Cheers, C. [ Edited Wed Aug 09 2006, 04:28AM ] Bigwig Bear Creek & South Jackson Railway Co. http://www.bcsjrr.com | ||
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| joef |
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| Registered Member #3 Joined: Wed Dec 08 2004, 09:01PMLocation: Portland, OR Posts: 2112 | Yes, Charlie, no need to be sorry. You have some great insights here.  I moved your insightful comments to their own thread and linked to them from the forum clinic in order to keep the forum clinic thread itself from getting overwhelmed with lots of side comments. It's all great stuff and I don't want people to miss it! I especially like: Rule #1 - It's MY railroad. If you don't like it you don't have to be here. Rule #2 - When in doubt see rule #1 [ Edited Tue Aug 08 2006, 08:58PM ] Joe Fugate http://siskiyou-railfan.net - 200,000 hits and counting! In video ... | ||
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| johncolley |
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 Registered Member #9 Joined: Wed Aug 10 2005, 02:18PMLocation: Port Townsend, WA Posts: 102 | Great start, Joe! This shows me there is a division. There is "Operation" as the path you have started on. There is also "Operation" as time to pump air and do a standing brake test, bunching and running out slack at a crawl and then a slow until you are out of the yard or siding switch, before adding a couple of notches to get up to track speed. Don't forget speed restrictions on bridges, too! And now that we have sound (low volume, please) don't forget the bells and whistles! All part of "Operation" Enjoy! John Colley jc5729 | ||
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