Tabula Rasa - New AD&N Plan

Two crews during the Day shift on Monday through Saturday.
One crew on Evening shift.
One crew on Graveyard shift.

Sunday they had one crew on Days and one on Evenings.

The wider part of the layout would be towards the wall/shelf with the narrower end with the wye projecting into the room.

The intent would be for two switch crews to be working during a session.

There will also be up to eight road trains.

 

So does that mean it sux?

As I said before, I did borrow heavily from Mr. Holley's HO plan that is in the new book, 101 More Track Plans. It is Plan #90.

Prototype Trackplan ~1980.







The wye and the tail track on the right of my plan are for the AD&N shop, depot/offices, and the Piggyback Ramp.

Working from there to the left, the first three sidings are for the Plywood Mill.

The next one is for the Stud Mill.

The next two are for the Chemical Plant.

The sidings inside the loop are for the Paper Mill and the Tissue Mill.

The top sidings are for the Flakeboard Plant

The siding at the bottom left is for the Extrusion/Milk Carton Plant, and could lead to Bemis Bag Co, Alton, Box Co., Textile Paper Products, Crossett Concrete, and Dunn Ready-Mix. These were all non GP local industries that were serviced by the AD&N

The sidings on the far left is pulpwood unloading. The loop track immediately to the right of hem is for woodchip unloading.

The yard at the bottom is a compression of Front Yard and the MoPac Interchange.

The top yard is Pond Yard. That is the AD&N's main yard.

I had to leave the rest of it out.

I would really like to hear some constructive feedback. It won't hurt my feelings if someone does think that it sux.

 

I don't have another place that I store images online, so Rail Images resized it down.

Maybe it is enough to get the idea across.

 

I figured out that I do have a place online to stash larger photos.

This is an overview of the plan for Crossett and Whitlow Junction. The benchwork is not drawn. This plan is ~ 16' x 16'. It is actually 15'5" x 15'9". It fits in the back room designated Trainroom on this drawing.






The Yards at the bottom, the interchange at Whitlow Junction and the AD&N mainline on the right side of the plan are on shelfs that are no greater than 18" wide.

The Mills are on a large peninsula. The area around the shop is not finished and that tail track will not stick out quite that far.

The industrial park is on a peninsula.

The Rock Island mainline, and the AD&N mainline both exit into the shop. The temptation has been too great and I think that I will have to annex land in the shop for the layout.

This is all single level and after thinking about it, I believe that the part of the layout in this room will all be single level. I think that I will save the two level stuff for the part of the layout in the shop.

 

Could someone please let me know if the plan is visible. I edited the link and I hope it is now visible.

 

Thanks, Bob.

 

I just found out that closing on the new place will happen on Monday, 15 November at 8:30 AM.

So, I am definitely going to own this shop and have this area to build a new All Day & Night layout.

I am pretty happy about that.

 

Thanks, Ken.

I wish I could go straight to work on the layout, but the wife seems to think that I need to help her move all of her stuff and do all of these things she wants done for the house.

Realistically it will probably be a few more months before I can start any work on the layout. I guess I'll keep working on my planning and try not to let myself get too far out of control.

I keep hoping someone will actually offer some feedback or want to discuss this thing.

 

From what I see, operation on this layout will be something else. Looks like a lot of fun. You seem to have this thing tied down track for track. I assume the benchwork will be around the walls with a peninsula down the middle.

 

Thanks, it is still in the draft phase. I am open to changing or adjusting things if necessary to improve reliability or operability or if anyone sees something that just looks wrong or stupid. I am seeing a thing or two that probably need tweaking or fixing.

There are two peninsulas. Where the mills are at will be a larger peninsula. The industrial park will be on a narrow peninsula. The rest will be around the walls on shelves.


I hope it will be fun and that I can find a few folks to operate it with me when it gets to that point. And maybe help me get it to that point.

I am still working on the plan for the mainlines and staging that will extend into the shop. I want the layout to be operated in a point to point manner. But if you look at the part that is currently planned, there could be continuous running for display or just sitting and railfanning.

I have a pretty good idea how I am going to do the AD&N mainline to Monticello. I am also pretty sure that the Rock mainline at least to Tinsman, maybe to Fordyce, will eventually be modeled.

I want to figure out how to run both of the MoPac locals, Monticello and Crossett, and have them switch off between sessions. That way the cars that the AD&N local hauled to Monticello will be brought back to Crossett by the MoPac Local. The cars that the MoPac local hauled out of Crossett will be interchanged back to the AD&N at Monticello. Then these two trains would be restaged automatically for the next session except for switching some loads and flipping waybills.

The All Day & Night is intended to be an operations oriented layout that replicates the operations of the Ashley Drew & Northern in the late 1970's and early 1980's. During this time the AD&N averaged over 50,000 loaded cars annually in switching and line haul movements. That's a daily average of 137 loaded cars handled.

There was a daily average of 70 carloads of outbound shipments just in boxcars. Daily trains of 90 and sometimes up to 100 cars were hauled to Monticello to interchange with the MoPac, which ran a dedicated train from MeGehee to Monticello on the Warren subdivision just to handle AD&N traffic.

Now there is no way that I can model all that traffic, but the point is that the AD&N was a busy shortline railroad. There were up to 6 daily switching jobs assigned to the mills, a daily-except-Sunday local freight, and frequently an extra to handle higher volume.

I am thinking that there could probably be 9 or 10 jobs on this layout per session, maybe a couple of more.

That is probably enough for now. Thanks for taking the time to look and comment.

 

Thanks, Paul.

I actually own the place as of tomorrow, the 15th. My wife wants to paint all of the interior of the house before we start moving in. I am off of work from the 19th of November through the 1st of December to start the moving. As soon after that as I can, I want to start prepping the shop and the layout room.

We still will have to sell our current home. So realistically and fiscally it will probably be March or so before I can really get started doing much.

I have four MoPac units that I could put into service on the layout. I have two Atlas early GP38's, a chop-nosed GP18, and a GP35. That is if I don't go all rivet counter, which I won't. The problem being is that the units are all in the early 70's scheme before the renumbering. I'll just turn a blind eye to that for the forseeable future.

I have some other MoPac units, 3 GP7TT's and 3GP18's, but they are in the delivery scheme. I bought them before I really knew what I was about.

I have some undecorated shells and may have to get some more to eventually paint into the correct scheme for my era. There is a whole lot more that I need to worry about before I get that far.

I really wish that I had bought a set of the GP15's when they came out, but I passed because that was before I was going to have the opportunity to build a bigger layout. I guess I will have to keep an eye out for a set.

Are you looking to part with some MoPac units or something?

 

I know something about the AD&N and I have the prototype trackplans to base my layout on, but that doesn't mean I can't make a dog's breakfast out of trying to model it.

There are a lot of folks, you included Ken, who probably / almost certainly know a lot more about layout planning and building than I do. What I would appreciate is someone, anyone looking at my plan and discussing the technical aspects of the planning with me.

For instance, "Hey Tad, do you realize that on the right / east entrance of Pond Yard you have three (3) wyes stacked in there back to back without any straight track in between any of them? Do you really think that is smart and will be problem free at the entrance to your main yard? Maybe something like this ... will work better."

That is something that I have spotted that I think needs to be reworked. That is the kind of thing that I am talking about.

 

It's difficult to critique a prototype plan. How much do you want to stay with it and how much do you want to stray? The best option is "selective compression" where you reduce things but keep the look/feel the same. For example a 15-track yard could be cut in half but still be a pretty accurate model of the real thing.

That being said.. here are a few suggestions that I can see. First, almost all your yards are center-throat. Not really sure if there is "mainline" for most of them - since your mill area seems to be a heavy switching spot. But something to look at configuration-wise.

Your MoPac interchange/Front yard need a better deliniation I feel. I would attempt to shorten the bottom of the wye and bring the switch for Front yard off between the wye switch and the "main" - makes it look a little closer to the prototype and clearly defines the yard. Also you won't need to get on the "main" to access the stored cars. The prototype comes back to the main, but I'm not really sure you need that access with that track going nowhere.

Your industrial park is too simple in my opinion. That could be another interesting switching challenge. You'll also want to consider putting a runaround on it.

Now the two yards on the bottom I feel could be combined or streamlined somehow. Just seems much too busy in the space you have available. Good candidate for selective compression.

 

Corey, thanks for taking the time to look at and critique my plan.

I am in total agreement with you. My objective is to make as accurate of a model of the operations of the AD&N as possible. Since the mills were the reason the AD&N existed, that makes modeling the mills necessary. I have already cut out quite a bit while trying to keep the essential operational elements.

The AD&N mainline is the track that exits Pond Yard from the left/northwest end. AD&N yard limits actually extend to Whitlow Junction on the main. Nearly everything else that you see is within Yard Limits as designated within the AD&N, Rock, MoPac, and A&LM rulebooks/employee timetables.

You are right. Most of the yards are center throat on my layout. I did that on purpose to try to mazimize yard capacity and number of yard tracks by shortening the ladders. But I am going to relook it.

The exit/left/northwest end of Pond yard actually was center throat so I'll probably keep it that way. The entrance/right/southeast end of Pond Yard had a normal type ladder. If I went that way I would lose a couple of yard tracks, 4 vs 6, the prototype has 8. But it would simplify the track work at the entrance to the yard and would actually be more prototypical. It might even eliminate a couple of potential problems. I'll try that out and see what it looks like.

I agree that running Front Yard and the MoPac Interchange together came out a mess. I'll work on this. I've watched them switching Front Yard and it is mainly used for storing cars. Every time I've seen them switch Front Yard, they switched it from the east end. It could probably be made into a stub ended yard and not hurt anything operationally.

The MoPac local actually entered the interchange from the east side, but I flipped it so that it will come in from the west. I did that because of the peninsula and all.

Yes, it is simple, but it really was. If you look at the bottom left of the prototype trackplan you will see the industrial park or the first part of it anyway. There are a couple of industries that are not shown. The first building was the GP Extrusion Plant. There were 4 double ended tracks there. The other industries, Bemis Bag, Alton Box, Textile Products, and Crossett Concrete were set up exactly as you see on my plan.

I'll look a it and see about moving Extrusion back into the park proper. That was where runarounds were done before and after crossing over First Avenue. I may have to drop one of the other industries to do that, but it won't be Crossett Concrete. That gives a different kind of traffic as the other local industries were all box car traffic. I already had to drop the other concrete plant, Dunn Redi-Mix, that the AD&N serviced on the other end of town because of the peninsula. I might could relocate the industries to preserve a switch job.

I'll have to look at reworking the industrial park.

I cut out three AD&N yards in this plan, but I was trying to keep the yards that each of the other railroads had in Crossett. Not only did they interchange with the AD&N in Crossett, but they did do some interchange between themselves. Each of these railroads had their own yard in Crossett. All three of the foreign road yards were pretty close to each other.

The MoPac Interchange is the only one that is in approximately the same location that it really was, but the MoPac local enters from the opposite/west end instead of the east.

The Rock Yard was actually just east of the AD&N shop and the wye at the east end of the mill and north of the 90 degree crossing on the prototype plan. It is not shown on the prototype trackplan.

The A&LM Gator Yard interchange was just to the east of the 90 degree crossing on the prototype trackplan. Gator Yard is not shown on the prototype plan.

So while my design and implementation of modeling them may be screwed up, it is prototypical that they were all in the same area because in real life they were all within a 1/4 of a mile of that 90 degree crossing. I'll look at reworking that shelf.

I appreciate your suggestions. I will see about getting an updated plan posted in a day or two.