Model Railroad Blog

Op. Session Design

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Cruising through the desert on David Barrow’s layout.

 

I feel like I should track down all of the attendees of my early op. sessions and issue a formal apology for what I put them through.   It’s a common mistake layout owners make when they get into the operations game and have their first several years of sessions.  We feel obligated to make sure our guests are entertained and also want to show them all aspects of the layout.  By “all” I mean EVERY industry, every aspect.

This leads to what I call “job stuffing”.  Job stuffing is overloading an assignment with way, way more tasks than any mortal can handle and still have a good time.  Switch lists with dozens of pick ups and set outs, “puzzles” so the operator has “fun”, way too many trains on the schedule.  Cars aren’t blocked.  Pickups are buried behind other cars.  Schedules are too tight.  Working EVERY industry.  The session takes on the appearance of Hartsfield International at rush hour.  My guests were polite but, having been on the receiving end of this scenario on more than one occasion, they probably didn’t have that much fun, or at least as much as they could have.

What I, and many other layout owners, failed to grasp is what it’s like to be thrown into an unfamiliar environment.  We know the geography of our layouts like the back of our hand but a newcomer will be disoriented even with the best of labeling and signage.  I also failed to grasp how important the recreational and social aspects of an op. session are to most folks.

I just got back from a thoroughly enjoyable ops. weekend in Austin where I operated on David Barrow’s, Tommy Holt’s, and Riley Triggs layouts.   I was really struck by how they designed their sessions and how much fun I had.  What do they do differently?

  • They don’t run that many trains on the schedule.  Barrow and Holt’s layouts are huge but you cruise forever without running into oncoming traffic.
  • The workload of individual trains is light.  On my train in the photo above, there were only three set outs of a few cars the entire route.  All of the cars were blocked so they’d be where you expected them.
  • Every aspect of the job set the operator up for success and was designed to make it as easy as possible to do the work.  No tricks, no puzzles, no ‘gotchas’, no fishing for pickups behind ten other cars.
  • The equipment operated flawlessly.  No derailments or power failures.
  • Delegation.  There are defined duties for yard crews. You don’t have to do it all.  When you arrive in a yard you can perform one move, beyond that the work is somebody else’s problem.
  • There is a definite quitting time at their sessions. When the clock hand hits five o’clock the power goes off and it’s time for the craft beers whether you’re done or not.

Set up correctly, operating sessions can be a blast and still be absolutely prototypical.  Thanks guys!

Audio “Props”

When it comes to simulating the multitude of tasks an actual switch crew performs, each modeler has to decide for themselves which methods add to the experience, which are simply mind numbingly boring, and which just feel moronic.  These tasks, which include things like setting brake wheels, throwing out fusee’s, three step procedures, opening industry gates, brake tests, or simply walking are why it takes a real crew twenty or thirty minutes to do a set-out and pick-up and twenty seconds for your average modeler.  If you can find the right balance for your temperament, such props can greatly add to the operating experience and effectively “stretch” a small switching layout.

Many years ago Jim Lincoln suggested I consider finding a way to use audio props for some of these activities and even sent me a clip of a brake wheel being set, a clip I can no longer find 🙁 .   Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about the whole audio prop idea.  By audio prop I mean using a sound clip instead of a mechanical device to simulate at least some of the crew’s activities.  I always became hung up when it came to finding the sound clips and capturing them.

I did a little digging and have come across some programs which would make finding and editing the clips relatively seamless.  A lot of the sounds we need exist on rail fan videos posted on YouTube.  Great, but how do you get them onto your computer?  How do you edit them?

First, you CAN in fact capture audio from YouTube and save it on your computer as an MP3 file. It’s a simple process using the free “YouTube MP3” program .  Once you have the file on your machine, you can edit or crop it using another free program called Audacity.   Other sounds, such as the crunch,crunch, crunch of a conductor walking on gravel can be purchased cheaply from Sounddogs.  You can get a sense for the “walking sound” on my YouTube video HERE if you scroll to the 43 second mark.

Once you have the sounds, they can be stored, triggered, and played via the players and triggers on a Pricom DreamPlayer.   I’d envision keeping it simple and limiting things to the most common and significant activities.  For example:

  • Sound of conductor walking short distance  10 second clip
  • Sound of conductor walking longer distance – 20 second clip
  • Three step audio
  • Brake wheel set audio

I’ll keep you posted.

A Little Time Study

In the past few years, when planning a layout for myself, I’ve taken a more time oriented approach.  How long do I want it to take me to reach the fifty or sixty per cent completion point?  How long do I want an op. session to last?  Will I be operating primarily solo? What work will the imaginary crew be doing during that session?  With the answers to those questions in hand, I feel I’m more likely to come up with a layout size and track density that fits my lifestyle.

Keep in mind that I still have my “main” layout, the Downtown Spur in the basement.  I still maintain it and still operate it.  The only thing that has changed is that the final push to finish the remaining twenty per cent or so of scenery has been put on the back burner.

With the LAJ layout, I wanted it to be more than half done at the eighteen-month mark.  Check.  I’ve always been intrigued by corn syrup facilities and their long strings of nondescript, flat black cars, outwardly looking the same, but actually quite different by virtue of the different grade loads they contain.  I guess I’m a simpleton but I don’t really get bored running through a similar operational scenario repeatedly.  As such I don’t need a broach variety of industries.  This isn’t for everybody and if that approach would bore the hell out of you, as it likely might, you need to plan accordingly with your industry selection.  In the real world, a switch job looks similar month in and month out.

The last thing I needed to check was the length of  operating session my design would support. My attention span for intense switching operations is about a half hour.  My original thought was to double track the Sweetener Products facility.  That would have put the capacity at about ten cars.  Add in ten more cars for inbound loads and the rolling stock cost, and the time to detail it, starts mounting.  My gut told me that so much capacity would far exceed my thirty-minute goal so I ultimately decided on just a single track.  The plant’s capacity is five cars  serving three grades of syrup.  Right now I only have four cars detailed and on the layout.  How long of a session would working just those four cars produce?  Time to put it to the test.

start

The diagram above shows the starting arrangement.  The switcher approaches with three cars containing loads of 55, 200, and 300 grade syrup.  Those cars must be spotted at the corresponding unloading hoses at the plant. Complicating matters is the fact that the spot for the 200 grade syrup is occupied by a car still being unloaded.  The incoming load of 200 grade will need to be spotted outside the gate for later placement.

So how long did my test op. session take?  About twenty minutes, just a little shy of my half hour goal.  Not bad at all given how few cars I had to work with. Getting the tank car roster up to seven or eight cars should easily put me where I want to be.

 

finish

Fusee’s

 

I love this video by Snuffy’s Cat Productions on the Malabar Job.  In particular, check out the use of fusee’s for the grade crossing at the 2:07 mark. LogicRail Technologies makes a nice fusee device that’s easy to install.  Modeling this safety procedure adds time to an op. session, effectively “stretching” the size of your layout.  It also does so in a way that doesn’t feel hokey or contrived.