Preparing to shove into Weeks Gas on my East Rail 2 layout.
Weeks Gas is the “problem child” of the East Rail industrial park. With one exception (the problem child), all turnouts in the park are oriented the same way. Doing so, makes switching straightforward in that every industry can be worked with push/pull moves. Every turnout is trailing point.
Weeks is the exception as you can see from the map above. A model railroad operator would likely use the East Rail siding to run around the entire train, jump through hoops, in order to service the industry. So, does CSX do the same? Nope. They don’t have the same inclination to look at things from the point of view of making it entertaining. They would just work Weeks at a different time, or likely on a different day, than the rest of the park.
If the local was heading south, to The Downtown Spur for example, they’d just stop for a bit, pull into East Rail, and work Weeks. Whenever the train was heading north either that shift or another day, they’d work the rest of East Rail.
Very interesting. So the railroad dictates when they will get worked in this case instead of the other way around? (Or is that always how it goes?)
It varies by situation. Often though we aren’t dealing with rush commodities. The dealer likely has an inventory in their tanks so waiting a day, or a few hours doesn’t matter that much to them. They’re essentially “topping off the tanks”. The main point is that real railroads use run arounds much less than modelers do. They use the run arounds much more efficiently.