After the less than positive results from the Empire City Service train that I posted about last time I tried running a joint PC-EB train from Selkirk that stops at North Side Yard drops cars for the Empire City industries and picks up outbound cars for Terminal Yard.
The 30 car test train is on the main where it will drop off the cars for the Empire Belt.
The PC-EB train has backed into North Side Yard and coupled to the cars for Terminal Yard.
The joint effort train worked OK. Freight cars were in North Side Yard bright and early w/o having to build a train for Empire City at Terminal Yard. The downside is not having to build a train for Empire City at Terminal Yard which is one of my favorite activities.
The N.Y.C.T.L. operating scheme was designed so that Terminal Yard would be the clearing yard for all trains arriving and departing the layout and be the feeder yard for all rail operations. That scenario has worked well and been quite enjoyable. Getting away from that scheme did not improve operations or the overall fun of running the layout.
To close on a positive note it was fun coming up with the new operating scenario and testing it out. I got to run the layout and experiment with proposed rail traffic efficiencies. While those were not realized running the trains was still fun and to me that's the bottom line.
Thanks for reading!
The impression I have is that your layout has a lot of yard capacity. If you're working on implementing JMRI, it sounds as if you could get things set up to work very efficiently. I would look at using "classification/interchange" tracks in the yards with certain trains designated to set out and pull from them to go to other yards.
ReplyDeleteThanks fr the JMRI Tips John. I've been working on putting the JMRI into use.
DeleteHi John,
ReplyDeleteI think that you are trying to establish credible operations between your freelanced Empire Belt and the NYC/PC. Having been bitten by the freelanced railroad bug myself I've sometimes run into dilemmas trying to determine what responsibilities my freelanced road might have related to the dominant Class 1 it interchanges with. You're doing some creative experiments to tease that out. Am I correct that the main work of the E.B.R.R. is accept cars at North Side Yard from Terminal Yard for local industries and then to transfer cars from North Side Yard back to Terminal Yard? By the way, I'm envious of your ability to run 30 car trains that don't like like they are filling the entire layout!
Your take on the main work of the E.B.R.R. is correct. It's main focus is serving the industries at Empire City with their base of operations being North Side Yard. Transfer runs from North Side to Terminal Yard will be handled by the EB and the PC/NYC will make the transfer runs from Terminal Yard to North Side.
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