Miami Taxi Meter (or whatever the name of the business actually is) isn’t just one building but a small complex of non-descript, low lying masonry structures. Over the past week I finished the masonry storage building above. I’ve uploaded the photo wallpaper of this model into the how to section on…well…photo wallpaper for others to use. It’s vital to include a large percentage of these “nothing burger” structures on the layout or else it would look like a total circus.
Here’s how everything looks together in place so far. Still lots to do. The Crown Vic cabs are from Busch. Next up is the fencing.
In the above video clip, The Downtown Spur job works Miami Iron and Metal.
Let’s take a pause in our day (pun intended) and talk about switching operations. Looking at a crew’s shift, where does the bulk of the time go? Moving cars? Nope? Travel time? A little but not that much. Where then?
Last week Tolga Erbora produced an excellent video of operations on The Downtown Spur. At this point in history the spur has five active industries. Four of them are “very” active. One of the great things about the clip is that on the day it as made ALL five of the industries were worked and the sequence was fully documented from end to end. It doesn’t get much better than that.
After watching it, I reached out to Tolga to fill in some blanks. How long did it take to work the whole job? Answer: Four hours! They pulled onto the spur at 6am and went back onto the CSX main at 10 am. What is the speed limit on the line? Answer: 10 mph. Of the five industries, three of the moves were basic “swapping loads for empties”. The other two just involved picking up an empty. Simple.
You’ll notice in the video that they aren’t “crawling” down the line. I did some speed testing on my layout. Actually, 10mph is faster than you’d think. The spur is 3 1/2 miles long. At 10mph that’s only 20 minutes of travel time down and 20 back. The moves are simple, travel time isn’t that much. How on earth did this take four hours?
The answer is in the pun at the beginning of the blog…… pauses in the action. Walking, waiting, throwing gates and switches, …..more walking and more waiting. The tip off is subtle but there if you look for it. Go to the 6:20 mark of the video. Look carefully. See the crew member struggling with the gate? Keep watching. Notice the time spent for the crew to walk back to the locomotive. They aren’t sprinting nor are they dawdling. Notice how much time is spent as the engineer waits for his crew to come back to the engine, a sequence that is repeated over and over.
What are some takeaways to apply to our op. sessions? Gimmicks and tricks get hokey in a hurry. Try as we might, many aspects of real railroading just aren’t practical to replicate in model form. Forcing a model railroad crew (or yourself) to spend inordinate amounts of contrived time waiting on an imaginary crew to walk from A to B isn’t practical. (On a related note, at many points in the sequence the loco. isn’t crawling so you wouldn’t want to be going down your entire line at a 3mph walking speed. At times in the sequence yes, but not always.) For me the main point is the overarching theme of assuming a measured, relaxed pace when switching our layouts. The atmosphere isn’t that of a Starbucks barista on a frantic weekday morning, filling orders at a frenzied pace. It’s a middle ground. Not a contrived turtle pace, not run and gun, but one of just relaxing, knowing you have plenty of time, and enjoying your layout. (The gaps in the video where the loco. isn’t moving give some guidance as to what this looks like). In other words going about your work leisurely.
The primary Miami Taxi Meter building is now done. Atlas’ hairpin fencing worked out very well for the window security bars. I uploaded the roofing file to the photo wallpaper section if anybody wants to use it. I think it’s safe to say that the prototype was never nominated for any architectural awards! It’s certainly not a beauty queen for sure. Next up is adding the surrounding scenery, fencing, and details. For lack of a better word, this building is actually part of a “compound” of several structures. I need to think about whether to model those.
Located at the corner of 38th Avenue and 36th Street in Miami is (or was, may it RIP) one of the most non-descript, utterly forgettable structures one could image, Miami Taxi Meter (one of numerous businesses located there over the years). It’s not something that would spring to mind when picking a subject to model. While the architecture wasn’t notable, it’s location was significant. Situated at the junction of The Downtown Spur and CSX main, it’s where railfans would typically park their cars and set up their cameras for “money shots”. In times gone by the spur was the SAL double track main leading to the passenger station downtown. If you let your mind wander to all of the trains that have passed in front of Miami Taxi Meter, all of the photos taken from beside it, spanning seven or eight decades, this “nothing” structure is seen in a different light and takes on some sentimental value.
In this vintage photo, likely taken in the late ’50’s, the yard switcher pulls a SAL passenger train eastward, towards the passenger station downtown on what is now The Downtown Spur. At that time, Miami Taxi Meter was a Ford dealer (lower left portion of photo).
Here’s a closer look at the structure as it looked in 2014. It was demolished sometime around 2018 and is now a taxi cab parking lot.
By the early 2000’s I had learned the hard way never to take a rail subject’s future existence for granted and began documenting anything I had an inkling I might want to model in the future. This shot was from 2012.
As of this weekend I have the core of the structure and the photo wallpaper files finished. There’s still lots of work to be done though.
The new CSX main with concrete ties is now down, replacing the old cruddy effort. Much better! I used the color technique outlined HERE in my how to section.
The turnout is a heavily modified and detailed Atlas product soldered into the diverging position for reliability.
