I’ve just uploaded Episode 5 of my Switching Operations 101 video series. In this segment I take a look at switching an LPG dealer and touch on how buffer cars are handled for an industry like this.
My friend Tom Klimoski made a great analogy when it comes to operational practices. View them as a dinner menu. You don’t have to implement every practice. Gain a basic understanding of how things are done, and then pick and choose what you want to incorporate and what you do not. (Thanks to Tom for recording the brake release audio).
I took an interesting twist with this one. A few years ago Tolga Erbora filmed a great rail fan video of the local on The Downtown Spur. I took this and copied it (somewhat) in model form.
One takeaway from this segment is that running sessions don’t need to be complicated. A simple swap of a load for an empty can spin off thirty or forty minutes of run time.
While I do plan to become more active on YouTube, I’m still mulling over formats. I don’t want to get bogged down with production. These aren’t intended to be tightly produced Emmy award winners. I’m looking more for a conversational tone as if you were in my basement and we were running trains together.
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.
It’s taken me awhile to grasp what can be accomplished via video but I’m starting to get the hang of it….slowly. I plan to experiment with a variety of topics and formats. Stay tuned and, if you think there’s something there that will help or inspire you, please subscribe!
A key scene on The Downtown Spur is the point where the line crosses 12th Avenue. A major element is the Metrorail line running overhead. However, just because it’s there, should we model it?
My next book will be “Realism Principles For Model Railroaders”. Give me four to six months to get it on the shelves. Throwing a spoiler alert out there, it’s not going to go in the direction you might expect. Here’s one example. It’s counterintuitive, but there is tremendous power in strategic omission. That is, intentionally leaving something out. It’s odd, but the concept is one of “not” doing something to improve your results. Looked at another way I’d call it, “not shooting yourself in the foot”.
Prototype modelers have a tendency to fall into a subtle trap of what I call the “placeholder approach”. We look at a scene, make note of the elements in that scene, and then dutifully try to represent them tit for tat. It sounds reasonable but let’s think it through for a second. Three problems commonly come up. First, a high quality casting for that part may not be on the market. Putting a soap carving on the layout just because Tichy or Alkem doesn’t make what we need is, in fact, shooting yourself in the foot. You’re just checking a box on a laundry list. Second, we may not have the skill to pull it off. For example, there may be very prominent graffiti in the scene but graffiti can be very difficult to model. Finally, the geometry of the element may not lend itself to being represented in model form. A common example is elevated features, such as roads or mass transit lines, running into the backdrop.
Here’s a mockup of the 12th Avenue Metrorail scene on the layout. The point where it meets the backdrop is a total visual nightmare. I made the strategic decision to exclude it from the layout. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
I intend to allocate an entire chapter of the book on developing an awareness of visual landmines so that you can make strategic decisions as to whether you are better off just not trying to model them. Once again, the old adage is “no detail is better than a bad detail”. Stay tuned.
When I’m running a solo op. session on my layout I try to visualize what the crew would be doing along the way. This encompasses things such as allowing time for the conductor to walk, setting car brake wheels, three step protection, etc. The question becomes, how do you represent some of those activities? Perhaps the bigger question is, “should” you even try to represent them with anything more than a pause? Over the years I’ve gone back and forth on this and even experimented with props from time to time. For me, personally, the props were something I grew to dislike. You may come to a different conclusion. To each their own.
Is there a middle ground? Is there a way of representing at least some of these activities realistically without resorting to the gameboard approach? In the back of my mind I’ve always wondered if short sound clips were a partial solution. Push a button and a short audio clip plays of a brake wheel being set, calling for three step, etc. Obviously this won’t apply to everything. As an experiment, I bought a sound player (Pricom’s Dream Player Lite), loaded the sound of brake wheels being set/released and gave it a whirl. The results are promising. The key to making this work is to keep it simple. One button push followed by the sound. Stationary decoders have their place but they involve a lot of hoops to jump through to get a result…aka the sound. The more “button pushes” any sound prop approach involves, the less desirable it becomes….in my opinion. One push…instant sound….K.I.S.S.
I just uploaded a YouTube video showing a live version of the experiment.
Working with the Dream Player Lite is as simple as can be. You do need to get the sounds though. To do so I use a free sound editor called “Audacity”. After you have Audacity on your computer, search through YouTube prototype switching videos for the track you want. Play the video and hit Audacity’s “record” button. When finished, hit the “End Recording” button. To save the file to your computer, go to “File” then to “Export” (export not save) and export it in .wav format which is the only format that the Dream Player will accept.
Start your desired YouTube video in motion and when you get to the desired audio hit the “Start” button on Audacity. When finished, hit the “Stop” button.
Next, go to “File” and then “Export”. Export your clip in .wav format. Simple!
Once you have your audio clip on your computer, save it to the SD card that comes with your Pricom player. In order for the player to recognize it, you need to put a “1-” designation in front of the file name. For example save it as “1-ThreeStepAudio”.
Plug the player into some computer speakers, hit the red button, and you’ll have sound! Note that the Dream Player Lite only handles one sound file. If you want several files on one board, you’ll need to get their MK2 player.
At this point it’s only an experiment. Will the sound clips improve the ops experience above the simple “pause and visualize” approach? Time will tell but the tests show promise.
Correction: I made a procedural error in the timing of releasing the hand brakes. They would not be released until AFTER the loco. couples on. Thanks to professional railroader Tim Garland for writing “No, you definitely need to couple to the car first before releasing the hand brake, otherwise it could roll away if the air brakes have bled off during the time the car has been at the industry. Before 3-step was mandated around year 2000 we used to say air and brakes or A& B over the radio. We also had a hand signal for it. On a side note, it is good practice to stop short of a coupling when initially entering an industry to check the car out before coupling. You want to check to make sure they are no wheel chocks in place, the wheels are all on the rails, no dock boards in the cars and that the doors are secured properly. At facilities where they receive tank cars and covered hoppers you want to make sure nothing is connected to the cars and that the roof hatches are shut.” Check out Tim’s excellent YouTube Channel HERE.
