It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted an update on my layout as it’s been a busy few months (combine summer yardwork with the birth of our first child in August, it’s been a lifestyle adjustment! And guess which one has taken more adjusting) but as the days have gotten shorter and the nights cooler I’m turning my attention back to my layout.
Construction
I've decided the “TBA industry” in the upper left hand corner of my track plan will be a bulk flour terminal patterned after the prototype Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal facility. It will incorporate the same two track unloading arrangement as the prototype, so an additional turnout and parallel track need to be added. This industry will be fed by a fleet of 40’ covered hoppers (I have an ample number on hand as stand ins while I build up a fleet of airslide hoppers) which are brought in twice a day. As on the BEDT, this industry will be a railroad owned property serving the various commercial bakeries in the area and function as a commodity-specific transload facility. The structure will be simple; any combination of Pikestuff steel buildings would look great.
The hoppers are sitting on one of the tracks that will make up the bulk flour terminal. The structure will flow back into the corner of the benchwork and help break up the hard right angle in the backdrop.
What was originally planned as Riverside Waste Oil will now be a coal fired power plant (I like the name ‘Brooklyn Industrial Light and Power’… I’m moving my railroad to a NYC borough and deserting Hoboken) with coal in/ash out operations. The facility will be flush against the backdrop with a hole cut out to allow longer strings of cars (read: 4-5 cars at a time) to enter the facility and give the idea that the plant is in fact much larger than what is visible on the layout.
I’ve seen many layouts where the industries are so physically small that make it hard to believe that they would be able to justify rail service as the goods they produce and/or raw materials they demand would not be enough to sustain things. My hope is to create a scene which overcomes that problem by inferring much larger facilities which exist outside of the modeled area with “slices” of many of the buildings in the viewable area.
The power plant track is in the center of the picture at left. The track will continue through the backdrop and into the staging area behind the backdrop. The cutout to the right is for the Long Island Railroad Interchange which also serves as storage tracks for unused rolling stock. My original plan called for far more traffic being generated from the LIRR but I now have extra room on the staging benchwork so a track for the power plant is easily accommodated.
The transformer factory will now be an American Can Company manufacturing facility. Inbound cars will be coil cars of rolled aluminum and box cars of aluminum sheet while outbound shipments will be box cars of finished products and an occasional car of scrap metal. The tank car siding associated with the waste oil facility in my original track plan will now be a chemical delivery track for the can factory. Following the same strategy as the power plant, both of the tracks going into the manufacturing facility will punch through the backdrop with 12-20” extensions increasing the siding capacity of each to 4-5 50’ cars.
This is by far the least finished portion of my layout. The boxcars sit on what will be one of two indoor sidings in the plant. One will be for aluminum sheet delivered in boxcars, the second will be for coil loads in coil gondolas. The track closest to the camera will be for outbound shipments of finished product and will be outdoors with a loading dock. The hodling tank for the chemical track can be seen in the right of the image.
Operations
Carfloat Operations
My railroad will interchange with multiple Class I railroads via two carfloats, one arriving in the morning and one the evening. To model this, each operating session will represent a single shift as opposed to a full day of operation. Each session will alternate between an “AM float” and “PM float”. For cars destined for railroads or industries off layout (excluding my LIRR Interchange) wy waybills will have either the AM or PM float listed as their final destination so that operators plan on delivering cars to the appropriate carfloat depending on the session. I don’t know if this is at all prototypical (I haven’t seen anything in print either way, but it seems strongly implied that schedule carfloats were the norm in Thomas Flagg’s books on the subject) but it will force me to plan ahead more with my car movements as cars picked up from industries don’t automatically get routed to the float yard but instead may need to sit in storage for a session waiting for the appropriate car float to arrive. It could end up being held for even longer if it’s there is more outbound traffic than the carfloat can handle.
Typical Operating Session
Since my layout is a terminal switching railroad designed for operation by a single locomotive crew, operations should follow a pretty consistent pattern from one operating session to another:
- After departing the engine house, the locomotive picks up an idler car and unloads the car float into the adjacent carfloat yard. Once the carfloat is clear the outbound cars from the yard are in turn loaded to the carfloat for their return trip to the Class I yard. For operational purposes, I will restrict loading of the carfloat to the period of time right at the beginning of the session from the carfloat yard as opposed to coming directly from an industry to the carfloat. This is designed to imply the need to keep the carfloat on schedule. Alternatively I could use a fast clock and assign a departure time for each session.
- Traffic in the Carfloat yard is sorted as necessary and pickups/deliveries to the trailing point sidings are made as required. This consists of the transload/team track facility, the bulk flower terminal, and the scrap metal yard(again, these can be found on my trackplan here). Any pickups due to be shipped out on the next car float (i.e. cars due to be shipped out on a PM float picked up during the AM shift) are taken to the carfloat yard and placed on the departure track. The rest are then stored in the secondary yard until such time that an appropriate carfloat is scheduled.
- The locomotive then pulls any cars destined for delivery to any facing point sidings and brings it around to the runaround track adjacent to the storage yard. After the run around move is complete, the loco makes the setouts and pickups at the printing plant, power plant, Long Island Railroad interchange and can factory. If there is more traffic than can be handled in the runaround (it has enough space for 6 50’ cars) then this is accomplished in two moves.
- Returning to the storage yard, the cars are sorted with traffic due for the next carfloat (i.e. if I’m working the AM shift, cars due out on the PM carfloat) are blocked together and brought back to the carfloat yard and stored with the cars dropped off during step 2. Any other cars not due on the next carfloat or that need to be stored off spot are kept in this storage yard to allow maximum flexibility when loading/unloading the carfloat.
- Once the outbound cards in the carfloat yard are properly sorted for the next shift, the locomotive is returned to the engine house and the crew ties up for the day.
Following the above procedure and running at scale speeds of 5-10MPH for most moves (my railroad will have a speed limit of 15 MPH on all track and a 5MPH speed restriction on street trackage) my test operating sessions have run 1-2 hours length without feeling artificially long. I should also note I’ve tweaked my locomotive decoder so that acceleration, deceleration, and brake rates are fairly slow so that any changes in speed or direction as well as accurately spotting cars takes some precision and planning on the operators part. Having a two hour operating session on an 8’x12’ without it getting too “roundy roundy” has me VERY satisfied with the track plan I’ve developed.
Traffic Management
One issue of concern has been the ability of my carfloats to deliver enough traffic to sustain the industries on my railroad. A better layout designer than I would have anticipated this issue long before building their benchwork and laying track, but I didn’t give this much serious thought until well along in construction and I think I have luckily dodged a bullet. Here is my thought process and how I tested my trackplan:
- By design (a railroad who’s primary connection to the outside world is via a carfloat interchange) my railroad can only accept 9-10 incoming cars per operating session. Using this information, I realized that in total my railroad is limited to a total of 18 cars (two carfloat operations totaling 9 cars per shift) in and out of the layout each day.
- I made a list of every location that can require delivery of a car on my layout making an entry for each siding or distinct track location. I laid out the days of the week along one row and then listed each spot location along the top and ended up with the spreadsheet below.
- With the framework in place, I started adding car quantities in the grid according to the number of cars that I wanted to deliver to each siding over the course of a “week”. The right hand column contains a simple formula subtracting the sum of cars allocated to each industry for that day from the total capacity on the carfloats.
With this basic test I am confident that I can generate enough traffic to supply my larger industries as needed. This is an easy test for anyone who wants to test if they have enough staging (as that is all my carfloats really are, on-layout staging) then this is quick and easy way to do it. You still need to do the math on the capacities of your sidings, yards and mainline (Joe has a great tool for measuring this here) to ensure that your layout plan will allow for workable op sessions, but this was a simple exercise that answered some basic, fundamental questions about the feasibility of my layout design.
Final Thoughts and Future Projects
Overall, I’m very happy with what I’ve produced in the last year given my limitations of experience and time. I would love for things to be progressing more quickly (but I don’t know of anyone out there building a layout who doesn’t say the same thing) but after a year of working on various aspects of the layout I still take great pleasure in the project. As my daughter is slowly getting some semblance of regular sleep patterns, the major projects for me going forward will be as follows:
- Figuring out a way to power my frogs without having to pull up all of my turnouts. This was a real rookie mistake, but after pulling up and relaying some track I want to avoid doing that again like the plague. I’m especially worried about doing it with delicate switches as I’m sure I will push something out of gauge. Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
- Laying the last bit of track that I’ve outlined above. I need to pick up an extra turnout (or reduce my staging ladder by a track, as my layout design has evolved the large amounts of storage back there is no longer necessary) for the flour unloading facility but the rest are dependent upon the placement of buildings, which leads me to the next major project that needs consideration:
- I need to start building structures. The placement of sidings for the scrap yard, power plant, can factory, and printing facility are subject to the final dimensions and positioning of the structures that they serve. In the coming weeks I’m going to start on a modest project to cut my teeth in model building: I’m going to build a large warehouse that will serve as a background building adjacent to the carfloat yard. I have a large number of Walthers Modular pieces that I ordered on sale a few months back so I am going to put them to work as I have them on hand.
- Strategize on how to start on scenery. My first inclination would be to scenic the carfloat yard as this is a fairly simple project: I need to weather and ballast the yard, place the warehouse structure mentioned above along with a building flat or two to create some depth of field. However, if anyone has any rules of thumb about what order to scenic a railaroad I would love to hear them.
This is the first area of my layout am planning on scenicing. The two closest tracks are placeholders until my carfloat and apron are built, as the scrap pieces of cork and foam are where my water will be.
Looking at the yard in the rear , the stock of rolling stock boxes are located where the warehouse flat will go. For dramatic effect, I plan on buliding a larger 6-8 story structure flush against the backdrop. However, any suggestions as to creating the proper depth of scene would be appreciated.
This post ended up being much longer than I ever planned and covered a lot of topics, but thanks to those that read this long and it's nice to post again finally! Please share your thoughts if any, it's good to know someone is reading this besides me 
Best,
Rich
