Shelf City Turn Finally Arrives

Greetings Blog Followers,

This past week I was able to get back into the train room and take care of some of the railroad delays from our previous operations session. This first train out of Terminal Yard was a block of empties for Hudson Coal. The empties have been spotted and the Hudson Coal brass is now off my back for the time being.

The second train to get out of Terminal Yard was the Shelf City Turn (still needs a better name) that we can follow along in the below pictures. My 1/87th scale sales personnel are going to be working overtime to keep these customers on line. A four day delay is going to be a bit tough to explain!

Power for the S.C. Turn are two Fairbanks Morse H16-44s. These are Spectrum models that I custom painted a few years ago. I used the same switch list that I prepared for the prior ops session. I must admit it was kind of fun pulling and shoving the cars into their rightful places. 

The freight cars of the S.C. Turn. Four of the five industries on this side of Shelf City will be switched today. Lots of work and the cars are not all blocked correctly adding to the switching activity

The SCL covered hopper is destined for Wonder / Hostess, the two PC boxcars go to Berk Industries (tall building in middle), the flat car with wood load and the two NYC 40' double door boxcars in front of it are going to Universal Milling and Lumber (white building at left), the NYC 50' boxcar is destined for Wonder / Hostess and the three reefer cars are going to Heileman Brewery a little further along the line. Not shown in picture is a 2 bay covered hopper destined for Wonder / Hostess. 

University Lumber & Millwork has it's cars spotted and is back in business

Berk Industries is getting two loads today 

Wonder /Hostess has been switched and the cars correctly spotted. The S.C. Turn crew will have a few choice words for the Terminal Yard Yardmaster who did not block the train as efficiently as he could have.   

3 empty reefer cars have been spotted at Heileman Brewery and the beer drinking world has rejoiced. The weekend beer scare should be over. 

A wreck train was spotted on a siding last week prior to our first ops session. The thinking here was that if any major incidents occurred we could dispatch the train quickly to clean up the mess. I thought this would add a bit of prototype action and realistically impose some delays on RR operations. This train had to be moved to Terminal Yard before the Shelf City Turn could arrive and begin it's work. 

The remainder of the wreck train with the big hook. Thought this would also be a bit more attractive than just the big hand from the sky. 

The wreck train heads back to Terminal Yard to await it's next call to duty.