How to Use Your Layout and Use it Often How do we ‘play’ with our layouts? It’s an important question because it ultimately determines how much we enjoy our railroad or whether we enjoy it all. Fewer people than you’d expect can answer the question accurately. The result is layouts that sit idle, never […]
Category: Operations
Hand Brakes
In talking about switching operations with my friends that are professional railroaders, one recurring topic that keeps coming up is the importance of setting hand brakes. When a locomotive cuts away from its train to handle a switching move, the hand brakes on one or more cars on the now engineless train need to be […]
Brake Tests
For some time I’ve been trying to come up with a way to simulate brake tests above and beyond just “waiting a bit”. I wanted some form of interactive device that wasn’t too gimmicky. Enter the iPad and a free app called Timer +. Timer + allows you to input an infinite number of tasks […]
A One Turnout Layout
A layout with only one turnout? One that offers diverse, hour long operating sessions without ‘make work’ complexity? A layout that could be built in two weekends and then morph into something that provides several years worth of craftsman projects? A gimmick? Absolutely not. It’s all a matter of selecting the right theme, understanding prototype […]
Crossing Flashers Explained
I’ve never understood crossing flasher behavior in industrial settings. Regardless of location when a train approaches a crossing at speed, industrial or main line, the behavior is simple enough. A predetermined time/distance away the lights activate and the gates drop. After the train passes a few moments later everything resets to normal. Not so during […]