The crew keeps a watchful eye out for traffic as it works Longview Fiber.
My post on the 1960s era version of the LAJ layout garnered more interest and questions than usual. That being the case, I thought it would be helpful to circle back and have a quick review and pull some of the previous posts together in one spot. Prototype knowledge translates into opportunity from the standpoint of “stretching” a layout. By picking and choosing which practices to copy, you can add time and interest to a session without resorting to silly tricks, crazy props, or enduring mind-numbing boredom.
In summary:
- It’s the number of car spots not the number of turnouts that drives operational interest.
- Representing hand brake operations is a simple, interesting, and highly prototypical way to add time to a session. You can add this dimension via a simple pause in the action or using the TrainCrew app. When a car, or a short cut of cars, is set out, the hand brakes must be set. When you want to pull a car, the hand brakes must be released. When spotting, the brake is set before the loco. pulls away. When picking up, the loco. couples on first, and then the brakes are released. (If you have a cut of several cars coupled together, you only need to set the hand brakes on one car)
- In LA’s Central Manufacturing District most of the grade crossings are blind and not protected by crossing flashers. How do they handle that without having daily accidents? A retired LAJ explained, “Normally, you would just slow down at each crossing, almost to a stop. Most of us would throw flares out at crossings as we approached.” During an op. session I add this procedure of slowing down or stopping at crossings.
- A common complaint among professional rails is customers who are super slow unloading their cars. Referring to Longwood Fiber the same conductor wrote, “They would get switched almost every day, but not releasing all of the cars. We always had a couple coming out empty, a couple going in loaded and a couple set backs not unloaded yet.” In other words, when they came in with a cut of incoming cars to be spotted, they needed to temporarily pull cars that were still being unloaded, spot the new cars, and then put the cars back that were still being unloaded. Doing this at more than one industry in a session gets old quickly, but done once, it does stretch a layout.
- I was asked where the cars for a switch job are sorted, in the yard beforehand or on the road. My experience has been that before leaving the yard, the train is “neat, tidy, and blocked”.
Here’s a 1964 aerial of LAJ’s Horn Lead. To put things in perspective, it’s only about a twenty-minute walk from B Yard to Longview Fiber. Not far at all. A train would be assembled and blocked in order in the yard (as opposed to sorting things out on the road). In modern times, the switch job often makes up their own train. Real railroads don’t share model railroaders’ love for artificially fabricated, “make-work” run-around moves. Every single turnout on the lead, all twenty-five of them, faces the same direction (facing point). There’s a design lesson to be learned here. The switcher is on the back and shoves up the lead. A series of push/pull moves is then performed to work the industries. No runaround moves are performed.
Design lesson number 2. Operational interest and op. session length is driven by the number of car spots NOT the number of turnouts. This is a helpful reality for the space-starved modeler. The spur I’ve highlighted has a whopping TWELVE car spots and seven industries and only one turnout. (Charlie Slater article. 2003 Warbonnet Magazine)
Unlike Miami or Baltimore, very few grade crossings in LA’s Central Manufacturing District are protected by crossing flashers. As you can see from the photos, the rail crew and oncoming traffic are totally blind to one another. Crews come almost to a halt at every crossing. This video shows the practice in action.
I’ll close with a diagram of how operations are handled when one of the industries you’re trying to work still has some cars that haven’t been released for pulling.
A train of incoming loads bound for Longview Fibers leaves the yard. The job entails replacing empties with loads, but things are made more complicated by the fact that the car in the middle isn’t ready to be pulled.
To begin, all of the cars are pulled from Longview and placed on a sorting track. Then, using a series of back-and-forth moves, the loads are spotted and the re-spot is put back in its original location.
When the loads and re-spot are in place, and the hand brakes set, the empties are taken back to the yard.