Last entry I posted about the Empire Belt R.R. testing the waters of express trains to and from Empire City's North Side Yard going under the name Empire City Service. This week I tested the feasibility of operating such an Empire City Service train that included the local switching of the freight cars brought in by the E.C.S. train. The local switching of Empire City industries is the backbone of the E.B.R.R. and any initiative undertaken has to benefit this work.
The results were not very positive. In theory it all sounded and looked good on paper. The practical application of the Empire City Service however revealed some issues that had been overlooked like yard capacity and duplication of switching moves. Lets take a look;
An Empire City Service train entering Empire City. The FA-FB-FB-FA lash up leads the train thru the east side towards North Side Yard. The High Line to Bedford and Terminal Yard is behind the engines.
Finishing up the Empire City Service switching requirements a Chessie 40' boxcar is shoved towards Drywell Inks and two 50' boxcars will be spotted at Moore & Company.
Conclusions:
The time saving efforts by diverting the train to North Side Yard were not realized. The extra switching required to move the Empire City Service freight cars to and from their consignees is negated by the fact that other non E.C.S. freight cars coming in on EC-1 and later EC-3 would need still need to be spotted. This means the switch crew(s) has to go out three times.
Sorting and segregating Empire City Service and non Empire City Service freight cars at North Side Yard would be a time consuming task that further complicates the daily switch crews lives. Leaving the E.C.S. and non E.C.S. freight cars together for the proposed outbound nightly E.C.S. Train pretty much eliminates the premium freight rate charged for E.C.S.
Building and sorting an outbound train from North Side Yard directly to Selkirk also highlighted the issue of capacity or lack thereof. Holding the cars and engines all day in N.S.Y. is not feasible and would negatively impact the daily E.B.R.R. operations and the all important interchange with the L.I.R.R.
Next I'll be posting about a Joint Effort between the Empire Belt and Penn Central to speed up freight service to Empire City.
Next I'll be posting about a Joint Effort between the Empire Belt and Penn Central to speed up freight service to Empire City.
Thanks for reading!
Interesting read. So it boils down to lack of tracks in the yard. If I'm not mistaken, you have 2 yards? Can you route the dedicated train to one yard and the daily moves to the other? What about splitting the yard? It also sounds like in the modeling world you have too many cars on the railroad? Just some random thoughts...
ReplyDeleteToo many cars on the layout is 100% correct. The whole operation whether too many cars on the layout or too many moves became a pain and drained away the enjoyment of running the layout. The N.Y.C.T.L. ran just fine with all trains originating and terminating at Terminal Yard and the Empire Belt doing the switch work at Empire City with their small North Side yard as a base of operation. Trying to make the E.B.R.R. more than the short line it was designed to be has fallen flat at this time.
DeleteI have full confidence in the management of the EBRR to come up with a solution to the traffic management issues for the ECS to work. You may have to stage the ECS trains as a run through train and either switch the cars as a special run for delivery and pickup. Or maybe have a dedicated ECS trucking service to pick up the trailers and deliver them to a TOFC facility. Overall the ECS service is a great idea. Just needs a little tweaking.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the positive comments and reinforcement on the project Brian. You've proposed some good and interesting options that are worthy of further consideration. Looking at the layout as a whole the parent road NYC/PC had a number of priority freight trains into New York City. I'm leaning towards having the E.B.R.R provide priority transfer and switch moves from Terminal Yard to the Empire City industries for hot cars from one or more of these trains. The TOFC traffic you mention is a definite!
DeleteThis may be outside your current scope, but the JMRI computer-based car routing system could answer many of these issues. You enter your yard capacity and where the existing cars are. During setup, you can run "what-if" scenarios to see if things will work the way you envision. If they don't -- JMRI puts no cars in a train -- you can look at debug messages. You can also set up different routes for the same set of stations to run different scenarios as you're experimenting with here.
ReplyDeleteOnce things reach equilibrium, there's a set of cars on the layout where things will run, and you know what and where they are. You can then swap cars out as needed.
As my preferences have evolved, I like to set up jobs that involve a comfortable number of moves.
Thanks for the reminder on the JMRI John. You've proposed it in the past and showed examples of it in use over the years. I've been resistant to it for awhile but not so much anymore.
DeleteLo and behold a couple of day ago I started entering layout information like locations into the JMRI database. My goal is to get all industries and yards in the system, a bunch of my favorite freight cars and build the routes etc. I just started so it will be awhile as it is time consuming especially when you consider the learning curve.
Much like a prototype road you've investigated an idea to increase service efficiency! Not all suggestions from the board room come to fruition but are worth an experimental run to determine their merit. Personally, anything you do to feature that E.B.R.R. FA-FB-FB-FA consist is worth doing!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ralph! While the outcome was not as positive as I would have liked the 1/87th scale management had their hearts in the right place. That goes a long way for the rank and file. I agree anything that gets the EBRR Alcos more layout time is definitely worth considering!
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