PCCM 60 / LF&NW Part 2

This is part 2 and the final part of the LF&NW's contribution to the virtual ops session 60. Two empties are set to return to the New York Central Train Layout, an Empire Belt hopper and PRR box 9553. They'll go via Zenith Yard.

A pair of New York Central/P&LE RS-3s runs up to City Coal to pick up the Empire Belt hopper:

The job pulls back past CP West Zenith and Rattlesnake Rocks once it's grabbed the hopper.

And shoves back down the hill on Main 2 to Zenith Yard.

It finally picks up the PRR box for transfer to the NYCTL.

PCCM 60 / LF&NW Part 1

This is part 1 of the LF&NW's contribution to the virtual ops session 60. The first step is to rejigger some of the cars to match loads, industries, and interchange a little better based on how the virtual ops system is evolving.

Hoschton Railway 942998 had been at Jaques being loaded with wine, but John R, who is the arbiter of moves, directed it to Reynolds Beverage Distributors, Kings Port NY on Ralph V's Kings Port Division layout. Interchange with the KPD takes place via the LF&NW's West Egg Car Float, which is served by a job out of Mahnattan Transfer. Here's the sequence:

The Hoschton car is first-out on a shove to the car float.

Next is a Virginian & Ohio food service RBL car. (These cars are available from the NMRA Cincinnati Division 7 car project, if anyone wants to get a duplicate for virtual ops. However, as the guys involved get older, they're becoming harder to deal with, so be warned.)

A New Haven boxcar in the final, Alpert scheme.

Erie S-4 528 is on the shove.

Passing EGG Tower

Passing M Neal Milk. Very tight clearance.

And finally onto the car float.

PCCM 59L Part 4

This is the final LF&NW part of this series, covering the cars interchanged to the urban and New England area via Zenith. Since we're still working out exactly how to do this, I've had to make another change. The car distribution form that John R prepared had two cars coming to City Coal in West Zenith. However, City Coal has only one spot:

So I had to make an editorial decision and cut out one car from the delivery, in this case an NKP hopper, since the Empire Belt hopper was closest at hand for this sesssion.

City Coal and the West Zenith team track are served by the same turn that served Woollett earlier in this session. Today's work is being done by Norfolk and Western Alcos. Here's the interchange run arriving in Zenith Yard:

The first order of business is to run around the Southern flat with the front-end loader to get it placed for delivery at the West Zenith team track:

Then it heads up the hill on Main 2:

Here's the delivery to West Zenith Team Track:

Then the turn runs up to the mainline switch and shoves back to the spur leading to Zenith Knitting Mills and City Coal:

And here's a view of City Coal with the car at the spot:

At least for my layout, when assigning cars, it's probably the best rule of thumb to assume that any industry has only one spot.

Explaining My Layout For Virtual Ops

As our virtual operations group gets more experience with what we're doing, we've been tweaking things here and there. I began to realize in session 59 that my layout has a quirky way of doing things that Tony Koester would never, ever endorse, and I would never even try to get my layout published in Great Model Railroads. But John R, who does an outstanding job of organizing our sessions, suggested

You brought up a couple geographical dilemmas your layout faced during PCCM 59. Not having a totally clear conception of how you have your layout divided obviously contributed to the car routing issues.

To remedy these car routings can you provide a map or list of the regions of the country you have included on your layout, the industries in these specific areas and any off layout interchanges via other RRs in these areas. Once we have that and a better understanding of your layout we can come up with better car routings and interchanges that will not be troublesome going forward.

So I worked on updating the track plan to show regions of the country and locations, as well as an updated list of industries that may be of some help. I would point out that as far as I'm aware, our group is not closed, and others who may wish to participate in various ways are certainly welcome to join and start. You certainly don't have to have the sort of layout Tony Koester would approve of to do so, as my example ought to show.

Here is the track plan in the main layout room, with some color coding added to show geographical regions:

The colors are blue for New England (or upstate New York/northern New Jersey), orange for Rocky Mountains/Great Basin Desert, and yellow for California. Gray represents urban area, which extends across the aisle from Zenith to Manhattan Transfer. I recently added an extension to an adjoining storage room, reached through a hole in the wall near Reiden Lake on the main plan:

Malabar is also in California, the idea is somewhat similar to branches in the Central Valley served by the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Western Pacific. (You can click on that image to get a more readable plan.) An extension from Malabar reaches a micro layout now mounted on a connecting shelf, designed by Scottish modeler Jack Trollope, and originally named Box Street by him, now renamed Paper Box to represent a paper mill. Conceptually, this is still on the West Coast. I had a work assignment at such a mill in Bellingham, WA, which is something like what I have in mind. Jack's original plan is below:

I should point out that Anthracite on the big plan is entirely HOn3, so standard HO equipment can't be routed there. Additional HOn3 trackage is under construction in the area where the Bay City name appears on the left hand peninsula.

John R is particularly concerned with setting up interchanges in a logical way. So here is how I see it: interchange with railroads west of the Mississippi and locations there will take place in Reiden Lake, which is actually a fictional location on the Fringe TV series where people cross over to the alternate universe. Zenith, as I explained in a previous post, is a fictional city created by the novelist Sinclair Lewis located, by his account, between Pittsburgh and Detroit. That's probably good enough for our use, although I had a work assignment in Rochester, NY, and sometimes think of it in locating structures and details. Interchange with railroads and locations east of the Mississippi should take place there.

West Egg is a town on Long Island, probably comparable to Great Neck or Oyster Bay, in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. On the LF&NW, it has a car float connection to railroads serving New York Harbor, and interchange with the LV, PRR, NYC, Erie, Lackawanna, Jersey Central, Long Island, New Haven, and so forth can also take place via car float there. Manhattan Transfer can loosely be thought of as corresponding to Harrison, NJ, with Hoboken thrown in, but only very loosely.

I'll post an updated list of industries and shipments at each location on my layout in my next post.