Model Railroad Blog

There is a direct link between understanding prototype operations, layout design, and how enjoyable operating our layout is. Richard Paseman’s “Railroad Man” is an absolute clinic on switching operations.

Page 61.

“One night on the Harbor District, we ran cab hop from Watson Yard to Alcoa and kicked the waycar down the spur. The other brakeman and I took the engine and began switching spot cars from the storage tracks. For hours, we worked lining up grimy black tank cars. At a glance, they might all look the same, but the switch list tells which ones are to be spotted and the order they are to be lined up.”

In other words every car spot is, in effect, its own separate industry.

Watson Yard is located just north of the port and is still very active.

A duo of Nashville and Western units uses a series of push/pull moves to switch the 3M plant in Old Hickory (Nashville suburb), TN.

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After posting yesterday’s blog and track plan, I reached out to my resident expert on prototype operations, retired NS railroader, Tom Holley. My question was, at what point does a shoving move distance become too long as to be impractical? Tom replied:

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Hello, Lance.

The actual answer is, it depends. A lot of shoving moves depend on era. When railroads regularly used cabooses, they often shoved a long way, often several miles.

The last 12 years I worked I was on a NS paper mill switch engine. We made a daily three and 1/2 mile shove to the NS interchange. On occasion we would shove seven miles out to the CSXT interchange. We didn’t have a shoving platform; instead, the conductor lined up a covered hopper or a tank car on the bottom to ride on. That’s a lot easier than hanging on the side of a boxcar.

Another factor, again era specific, is the rules don’t allow you (in most cases I know of, other railroads/divisions may vary) to jerk cars by or even gravity drop them to get around them. So you’re compelled to shove the cars if the switches are facing point, or split the engines to work the industries. Many shortline operate with an engine on each end exactly for that reason.

On one of our local jobs, we had no runaround track at the end point. It was in a dip with a pretty good grade on each side, so we’d put the engines toward the industry, bleed the cars off, let them roll by. and then run out and catch them. Because somebody on another division messed up doing that, we had to stop and start splitting the engines to run around the train. That just took a lot longer…

Another factor is speed of the shoving movement. We were limited, on my territory, to a shoving speed of 15 mph. That’s not a consideration on a branch or short line, but makes a difference on a high volume main line.

As a trainman, I never minded the regular shove of three miles, or even the long seven mile shove if I had a good car to ride on. What is important is having a good engineer who won’t beat you to death with jerky movements while shoving. As an engineer, I always tried to make a light trainline application to make the ride smooth, and not use the engine brake to avoid beating the man on the bottom up with slack.

So, with a good engineer and a good car to ride on, I never minded shoving. I hope this wordy reply answers your question!

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There is a direct link between having an understanding of prototype practices and model railroad design. Runarounds take up an enormous amount of space, space most of us modelers don’t have. If we follow the prototype’s preference for shoves instead of runarounds we can save space, open our designs up, and have a plan that is much more plausible.