a simple pick-up

The other day I discovered that one of my N scale railbox cars was derailing because one of its wheelsets was slightly out of gage. So I replaced it and the derailment stopped. So I put the boxcar back on the layout, by itself, on the siding in the mill town. This meant it was out of the train it had been in. So this called for an operation - pick up the repaired car. Photos below show the operation step by step.

thoughts on siding length

A friend asked me recently what I thought about the tradeoff between siding length and distance between towns. I wrote him a reply and thought I would copy it here as well. Just my thoughts.

My sidings are between 36 and 40 “40-foot car lengths” long, which is between 18 and 20’. We generally run with the rule that the maximum train length is 25 cars plus locos and caboose, which generally works fine (for the 1973 era when the average car length is more than 40 feet), and then sometimes the superintendent will give approval for a longer train, and sometimes that means saw-bys at sidings, which are always fun and can be the highlight of the session, especially if three trains are involved, which happens more frequently than I would expect. I don’t think in HO, especially in the transition era, that you need longer sidings than 20 feet. For one thing, it’s too complicated for operators to keep track of what to do with that many cars, among other things. And a 20 foot long train feels like a big deal when you’re running it.

The distance between towns is obviously a key tradeoff, that I have some random thoughts about. I tend to experience an op session as having two modes: local switching and mainline running. I’m in either one or the other. So in my switching mode I don’t care if the next town is nearby because my mind is caught up in which cars go to which town. If I’m mainline running, all I care about is whether the track ahead is clear, which is an issue no matter how much space there is between towns. And even if you run the train painfully slow, you are in the next town before you know it, with our condensed distances. I was just at an op session last night at Bill Sornsin’s layout, and it struck me that, while it was true that we were using a timetable to protect for first class train movements, the length of time it took the Empire Builder to get from Everett to Seattle was so short that for all practical purposes we (those of us with switching jobs) just all stopped work while a first class train was running, and then resumed afterwards. Especially because the train was a gorgeous brass model that we couldn’t take our eyes off while it was running. Another point from operating at Bill’s - I was operating the Sky Local and switching at Edmonds one day while Gary Jordan was switching the Oiler at Richmond Beach, and the distance between the two is about a train length. So we had to coordinate with each other, which made it more fun than operating alone. I guess the bottom line is that I tend to enjoy switching more than mainline running, so I prefer more towns and yards and less distance between towns. But I also don’t think you need sidings longer than 20 feet. I wouldn’t go too much less, because you want a decent train length behind those massive 2-8-8-2”s! Bill ran one of those last night that was so cool, it almost made me weep!

Three more points on this. The length of my sidings was basically dictated by layout geometry, trying to get them as long as possible. As a result, they are all slightly different lengths. This adds an element of fun for both the operator and dispatcher to keep track of whether a particular meet will work, and of course if it won’t we are back to the always-enjoyable saw-by. So what I’m saying here is that the tradeoff between siding length and mainline run is something that you could make differently on different places on the mainline, rather than a layout-wide decision, and having operators adapt to it will be part of the fun of operating there.

Sometimes the territory you’re modeling is a combination of double track and single track, urban and rural. (with the odd exception here that the mainline through Balmer is single-track!). I have a feeling that the tradeoff is different in the two zones. I experienced this at Bill’s also, where at the same time Gary and I were enjoying fighting over one of the mainlines between Edmonds and Richmond Beach, we were both assiduously keeping the second main track open for the impending passage of the International. Out in the rural areas the pace is just so much slower in general, so I don’t think the distance between towns is that much of an issue.

Finally, if there is any significant amount of switching in a town, I have found it very valuable to have a crossover somewhere in the middle of the siding. Not only does this make runaround moves a lot quicker and easier, it introduces a lot of options for having shorter trains meet each other or get out of the way of the varnish. I have crossovers in the middle of both Everett Bayside and Burlington, and they are both used more frequently than I might have expected. You’d be surprised at how crazy it gets when a local and a switcher are both holding on the siding for the arrival of a through train, and then it turns out that the through train needs to drop some cars there. Hopefully the train is blocked properly, or it can take so long to resolve this that the whole railroad is plugged up!