Read the book first ...

... to get a basic understanding of what is involved.  After that, try to visit some Op sessions if you can.  Armed with the basics, you will learn much more from seeing it in practice (and will more likely recognize mistakes rather than repeating them later).

I hate cliff hangers

Joe, I hate cliff hangers. I am now going to have to wait a month to see the formulas and consider the ramifications they might have on designs I am working through my head. You get 5 stars for comming up with a way to update and use something old. I almost gave you 2.5 stars now and what ever next time because 1/2 a five star colum is 2.5.

Like the idea

But somewhat hard to get it done outside CONUS... I know most of the MRH readers are live in USA or Canada and visiting operating layouts would not be extraordinary, but there are lots of us from other continents and we strive to do with what we can get our hands on. I've read books, magazines and yet I cannot create a realistic operating model railroad. Visiting an operating layout might be the last push over the hump, but it would mean a vacation trip for me and lots of others... Still great point and I look forward to your Operation Potential Stats.

That's where the Ops Live series comes in

That's where our Ops Live videos come in. Lets you visit an op session bug-on-the-wall style and get some good insights. Not as good as a real op session visit, but the next best thing, IMO.

Just now releasing a new one on Mike Confalone's Allagash.

Every track DOES have a purpose

On my under construction layout, I tried hard to think through operations while designing the track plan. Read Armstrong, read Lance M. I was heavily influenced by Mr. Mindheim. 

I learned that my imagination was not sufficient to anticipate everything that could/should happen during an op session. I also learned that my wants can change during construction. As a result I learned to be flexible and willing to tear something up if it wasn't going to allow me to have a satisfying op session for two or three crews, whether one or two man. The big change I made was to add about 15 feet of track, making that much more double track. This allowed two things to happen-first, a local turn could be working the paper mill siding while a transfer ran by it, and second, it gave me a long enough run around to allow the power on my grain shuttle train to make the run around move all at once rather than in two pieces. This would have tied up most of the railroad for close to half an hour.

More details are on my blog. The reminder to design for operations and to observe what the prototype does is real good advice. 

Jim

DVD or download?

Joe, that's a DVD or a downloadable video (or I get to choose?)? Shipping rates and customs fees are a killer for me, so I am sticking with digital only as far as I can go... Also my DVD color system does not support US zone DVD formats...

Moderator note: For info on the downloadable version of the new Ops Live DVD, click here.

Every track has a purpose.

 and sometimes that purpose can just be having a feature we want to see and enjoy. If one wants a crossover and a diamond crossing and a draw bridge and an elevated city line I see no reason they should give them up for operations. Build the layout you want then design an operating plan to fit what you got which is pretty much how the prototype approaches operations. The advantage we modelers have is we can control the environment to fit our needs instead of letting it control us...DaveB 

...

Crossings happened because there was another track there at grade level...

Everythign happened for a reason, of course, but I dare say they designed them following necessity.  The caboose became the caboose track because that was where they always put the caboose, or where it would be the most convienent place to put it...

If you want to learn the "loads in, loads out" principle, I dare say a really good place to start is Railroad Tycoon II platinum...sure, you won't deal with empties at all, but the simple concept of raw materials in, refined goods out is in and of itself a great place to start.

Joe This is a fantastic addition to MRH magazine

Joe Thank you for this article !! It may be one of the most important model Railroad learning and awareness articles that MRH E-Zine has ever posted. I had this exact question running through my mind as I finished dismantling my first HOn3 Rio Grande Southern railroad just 6 days ago. 

In the past few months I have been going through my many Books and Magazines in my library trying to figure out what exactly I did wrong on my now dismantled RGS and where I could find the answer.

Up until the past few years I had never considered operations. I was more into building the models and scenery and not the actual running of trains in a prototypical  manner. Well After laying close to 200 plus feet of track, mainline and numerous turnouts and passing sidings I came to a dead end. The DCC worked perfect the trains ran smooth but nothing made any sense and I knew something was missing. So, back in the first week of July I made the decision that my Railroad is a Chain Saw layout and I started reading again as well as carefully removing all my tracks and at the same time redrawing a new track plan with two levels and more prototypical operations.

During this dismantling I kept going through my 12 volume RGS story collection and many other RGS books trying to figure out what I needed to know to make this next Narrow Gauge RGS RR work as an Operation oriented model. I hadn't considered my Kalmbach Book collection as having the answers I needed.

Your suggestion about reading John Armstrong’s Track Planning for Realistic Operation  turned out to be the only Kalmbach book not in my library, I do have "John Armstrong" Creative Layout Design and another Kalmbach book by "Bruce A. Chubb" Realistic Operation for all scales - How to Operate Your Model Railroad.

Joe Do you know of the Book by "Bruce A. Chubb"? and is this as good on Operations as "John Armstrong" or do you suggest I also pick up a copy of Johns book "Track Planning for Realistic Operation"? Thanks again for this article as it is a class "A" addition to Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine and I look forward to your October editorial on operations.

Dan

thinking about operations during the design process

Joe,

Years ago when I first tapped into your Siskiyou Lines layout pages I recall utilizing some of those posts you made on determining siding length etc. I didn't have a clue really how to go about incorporating these "operating criteria," into my design and those inputs really helped get me started. I think republishing this material is a good basis to start the conversation and the MRH modeling community thinking about this. For me anyway, watching trains go round and round although fun, just doesn't cut it. The fun starts when a few guys come over to operate my Placerville Branch. It just brings the layout alive. I'm not a hardcore operator and truth be told I can't say I am that good at it, but that doesn't mean I won't have operating sessions which through the formulas you published years ago really got me going in the correct direction. 

Tom

Track Analyzer

Yep, just like Tom, back in the stone age of model railroading online, and the old Siskiyou Line website, I remember having those conversations. This month's column reminded me that I wrote a program back then in Visual Basic, to make all those calculations. I grabbed it off the server I had it on, re-installed it to make sure it still works, and put it up for download at Model Railroad How To It's in the right column, at the bottom. Look for Layout Track Analyzer, just above the Follow Us! heading. When you run the TrkAnalyz.exe, it will extract the setup files. Run Setup.exe to install the program.

Joe, if you're interested, you are more then welcome to include a link to the application in the column about how the formulas work. The direct link is http://www.modelrailroadhowto.com/Downloads/TrkAnalyz.exe

The application basically does the math for you, once you put all the relevant numbers into it. It's nothing more than a specialized calculator. The same thing could be done with an Excel spreadsheet. The Track Analyzer only runs on PC's. Someday I'll actually learn java, and then it'll run on Mac as well. 

Lost on the server

Ken, the link on your web site is a big ole 404 buddy. The direct link in your above post works. Thanks.

Aaaaaaaaaa...

I can move only a single train during a session. Better be a long one!  

"I can move only a single

"I can move only a single train during a session. Better be a long one! '

  Looks like it says maximum train length 12 cars?  With 137 cars on the layout.  That looks like modeling a shortline that makes money storing out of service cars on it's branch line tracks?  A few in or out per day .DaveB

One long train

Yeah, apparently I need to read Joe's information to better understand what values Ken's calculator is looking for. Sure is an awful lot of layout in the basement to be moving only one train.

The sidings are spaced 1½ 16 car trains apart. There are 4 sidings along 130' of mainline. Various industry spurs scattered throughout. A full yard is 112 cars. The coal tipple spur holds 25 cars all by itself. So I must be inputting values wrong.

Connecting track is a minus number?

C'mon Alan. Your connecting track is a minus number - no wonder the results are bogus.

Assuming you meant for the connecting track to be a positive number, your cars moved is computed as:

40% of (staging x 2 + passing + connecting)

(135 x 2 + 72 + 312) * 0.4 = 262 cars, or in 16 car trains, that's 16 trains during an op session. In a typical 4 hour op session, that's an average of one train every 15 min.

According to this analysis (262 cars) your layout can handle a lot of cars moving around on the layout because you have a huge connecting track value. That suggests your design assumes a lot of trains originate or terminate on the line rather than in staging.

Is that true?

C'mon Alan

That is a calculated number. Not a value that is user entered.

Yes, that is true.

Connecting track number

Alan, then your connecting track number is bogus completely because not every inch of track is mainline, siding, storage, staging, or service trackage. Connecting track is how you get from here to there, so a yard ladder, for example, is connecting trackage. You don't store anything on it, it's not mainline, and it's not staging or service trackage. What did you count your yard ladders as?

Also runaround tracks, wyes, yard switching leads, turntable leads, industrial switching area leads, and long leads to spurs where you don't store cars are all connecting track. The part of every passing siding that's between the main and the clearnance point for the cars in the siding is connecting track.

Alan, the way this is supposed to work is you compute the total amount of track on your layout to the inch, then you determine how much of that total track is mainline, passing, storage, staging, and service track. Your total trackage on the entire layout, minus the mainline, passing, storage, staging, and service trackage should leave some amount of track leftover - that's the connecting track and it's vital to having a layout that's fluid.

Sounds like you approximated on the staging track and storage track, for intance. Yard ladders don't count, and track that's inside the fouling point doesn't count either - that's all connecting track and not a place where you just leave cars sitting. Also, track can't be more than one thing, it's either storage or staging, it's not both. Pick the category for each track and only one category. It's storage if it's a destination for cars to be routed to. If it's simply off-stage storage for pre-made up blocks of cars, then it's staging.

Make sense?

Ops Live

You can watch the OPS live dvd's on TMTV too.

Facts

OK Joe, since you seem to really be into this, I used my XTrkCAD drawings to get hard data about the layout.

Here are the stats. Good numbers?

Now you're cooking with gas

Alan, now you're cooking with gas! (sorry, that expression really dates, me, I know ...)

Yes, much more believable numbers.

Yes, and given the number of cars moved per session exceeds your staging capacity by a fair amount, what I said earlier still holds - your layout design appears to include some number of trains that either originate or terminate on the layout, rather than running from staging to staging.

Taking your trains per session of 16 and dividing into cars moved per op session, you get a train length of 16 cars. Some number of those will be locos and the caboose (assuming you're in the caboose era), so 12-14 cars is the size of your train, the rest will be motive power and caboose.

Your passing sidings at 21 cars is about 4 cars too long, suggesting you could shorten your passing sidings a bit and get a longer mainline run. Your staging tracks of 22-28 cars also exceeds your dispatching threshold of 20 cars, suggesting you could either: 

1. Easily clog the layout up with trains that can't pass each other without doing sawbys.

2. Or you need to shorten your staging and perhaps give that back to more mainline because the staging is excess in light of how the layout is designed (16 car trains and 21 car passing sidings are both shorter than staging).

In summary, you could have a bit longer mainline run and the layout would still operate just fine. Your passing sidings and staging tracks are longer than they need to be - at least according to the stats.

Caveat: These stats are not the be-all end-all. They suggest some things your design can do and where you can adjust it to get refinements. At the end of the day, you will run the layout the way you want to run it, these stats be hanged. But you also can't violate the laws of physics, which these stats help highlight.

We cook with propane - high btu gas!

True. Purposely designed. Brittain Yard is the layout focal point because it is the prototype area most dear to my heart. Recall my railroad's tag line - A railroad with relevance.

True. Exactly the train length used during design.

There is a reason. All of the passing sidings except for one also serve as extra pull length for industry spurs. I think pull is the wrong terminology but you get the drift. Local can work the spots off the siding while another train passes on the main. Example:

Staging occupies space between a helix and the entranceway onto visible lower deck - space not practical for the main. But I understand what you are saying. Staging length was originally defined but I extended it after-the-fact to absorb the unused space.

All in all I'd say Ken's calculator, and Joe's formulae, work pretty slick. Nice to see my design numbers independently verified. Makes me feel good. Thanks for making it available Ken.

During this dismantling I

Dan,

The Armstrong book is very good and does a great job of explaining the fundamentals of railroad operation and how and why certain track arrangements are used.  That being said, isolated narrow gauge lines like the RGS typically operated quite a bit differently from the larger standard gauge lines that are focused on in there.  Still a worthwhile primer, but the RGS Story is probably the best reference for you.  Another great (and succinct) resource for narrow gauge operations is Dave Adams' excellent article in the May 2000 MR about integrating timetable ops into his beautiful On3 layout.