After a lot of thought and searching I finally decided on a track plan I like, Housatonic Valley Ry. published in MR How To Build Small Model Railroads winter 2014 publication. The only problem I'm having is developing some sort of operational reason to build it. I was thinking of ditching the turntable and engine facility and making it a small yard in the transition era, but I still can't quite wrap my feeble little mind around a way to operate it. After reading and looking at several prototypes I can't seem to find one that fits so to speak. Anyone have any ideas that might point me in the right direction?
Andy, If I found the correct trackplan (8x9ft, N scale?), I think you could easily modify it for your needs. Since the layout already models a port in the city Eastport, you could easily remove the turntable and engine facility, as you mentioned, and replace it with a small yard and port facilities. Then, the far end of the layout could represent any number of industries or foreign road connections. In my mind, I would see layout operations focusing on the yard at Eastport. A local could be operated servicing the port facilities in Eastport and then servicing the industries in Middleboro and Norwick, as well as set out/pick up cars from the interchange between them. The cars could then be sorted in Eastport and a train assembled for "the great beyond" (staging). Trains could then return from the great beyond to be sorted at Eastport and delivered to the various industries or port facilities on the layout. A single operator could easily prepare one outgoing train in a session, but the operations can be made more complex with the addition of more trains to occupy more than one operator. Just my thoughts! Alex
andy55, I believe the operative word we're looking for; the crux of your matters is,................ **.*..*...*....*.....*.......*.......*.......*........RANDOMNESS.......If you simply think this way, it will help you. I hear ya'. Been there ! Done that ! You're thinking makes it seem impossible to you to make sense of/give reason for your RR's existence and the way the locos, trains, and car movements are to be carried out..Yes ? But the real world don't operate that smoothly in the first place due to real, humans, weather, accidents big or small, your serving 2 industries on SAME spur; how that is figured into the job, when/where their loads or empties will be spotted or pulled and how this affects the RR's (your RR) work hours/salaries/fuel usage/ weight of cars en route to/from, busted knuckle, delays/derail/death... ....yadda yadda yadda........ When you buy a computer program to do this for you, what does it do ? It spits out a random daily, MRR session, or 'trick's' [< RR work-shift, back in the day] car orders for conductor/engineer of your local road freight for near all the same reasons...NO ?..So, therefor, build a beautiful MRR in every advised or improvised way, electrically and mechanically. Call it what you wish, like the Andyan & Eastern, and operate as per above !! Only diff is that we must always observe the rules laws and maintenance of safe/logical railroad operation...This then is where the fun begins ! Yes ? Can do most of this in staging, shuffling cars around by hand or engine, out of the scene/ or not ! *.........*........*.......*......*.....*....*...*..*.*********.*..*...*....*...M
Operating a single spur with two industries....pull cars first, drop them out of the way. Then place new cars. If there is one in the middle that has to stay where it belongs, it gets complicated, and that is where the fun begins...either way, you pull out the cars, then work on putting them in the right spots..
I don't have the track plan in front of me, but you could run one through freight to and from staging, a local to service on-line customers, and a switch job to switch in-town customers as well as the yard.
