As I proceed with building the Hudson Bay Railway Flin Flon Subdivision I have been formulating a rough operating scheme for the layout, essentially what to run on the layout to give it a purpose. Running trains “just because” is fine but I am getting more involved with local layouts that are operations based and I find that aspect of the hobby very interesting.
A friend of mine is a locomotive engineer on Canadian National, and as a happy coincidence worked in northern Manitoba in the early to mid 1980’s. He has been very good about answering numerous queries about operations, procedures etc. Things changed somewhat when the HBR took over from CN in 1997 but it offers a very good starting point.
Out of The Pas CN had in the 1980's and 1990's:
The current Hudson Bay Railway / Keewatin Railway (KWR) runs:
In addition there will be 1 or 2 yard jobs at the Flin Flon smelter that are confined to the smelter area. This is a major operation so there will be no shortage of work there.
As this shows, the CN operating scheme has much more activity than the current HBR scheme. This does offer a couple of potential options for operating sessions. If there will be a larger crew we can operate the layout as it would be in the CN era, and if only a few people are attending we can switch to the HBR timeframe with lighter traffic.
I would make the following adjustments to the prototype schedule for added operational interest: extend the Wabowden to Churchill mixed train to start from The Pas. I am undecided about whether it should operate northbound and southbound on the same days as the Lynn Lake Mixed train or on opposite days. They serviced different areas but on the layout they will run into the same staging yard. Opposing mixed trains might be interesting to run, however looking at a potential string diagram of the operations it looks like they work better running the same direction. I have the string diagrams a bit further on.
I also contemplate running a Channing extra for traffic heading there as the prototype only has 1 train running on the Flin Flon subdivision beyond Cranberry Portage. An additional train would add more operations beyond the Flin Flon Junction.
As well I would have both northbound and southbound Thompson wayfreights operating as Thompson is home to a large nickel smelter that can generate a lot of traffic. I am also operating a Tolko switcher which on the prototype was done using the yard engine, adding another train for more operational interest.
With this in mind let’s look at what a potential operating session would look like with:
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
Northbound
VIA 693 (Hudson Bay) Winnipeg (south staging) to Churchill via The Pas
VIA 291 (Lynn Lake Mixed) Lynn Lake to The Pas
VIA 295 (Churchill Mixed) The Pas to Churchill (prototype started in Wabowden, not on the modeled portion of the railway)
Grain Loads to Churchill from south staging
Flin Flon turn- The Pas to Flin Flon smelter
Channing turn – The Pas to Channing yard traffic – non prototype
Thompson wayfreight – The Pas to Thompson traffic
Tolko Switcher turn
CN Canora to The Pas freight – from south staging yard to The Pas
Southbound (from north staging)
VIA 692 (Hudson Bay) Churchill to Winnipeg via The Pas
Thompson wayfreight – Thompson to The Pas traffic
CN The Pas to Canora – The Pas to south staging
Grain Empties
Flin Flon turn – returning Flin Flon to The Pas
Channing Turn – returning Channing to The Pas
Tolko switcher turn – returning Tolko switcher
In addition there will be a The Pas south switcher that serves industries south of the yard, yard switcher in The Pas and 1 or 2 switchers for the HBM&S smelter in Flin Flon. This would be a full session. A smaller group would run a reduced schedule more along the lines of what the HBR currently runs.
The Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule would be much the same except that the Lynn Lake and Churchill mixed trains would run southbound instead of northbound.
The string diagram for the M/W/F operating session looks like this:
Where train lines cross one another represents a meet between opposing trains. This table doesn’t show the Channing turn as I am still working out how it would fit in. TPS, TPY and TPSN are all within yard limits so meets are up to the yardmaster to set up.
As with anything theoretical it remains to be seen if this is workable in the real world. I expect that changes will have to be made as we get underway. My hope is that this would be an interesting and challenging operating session for everyone involved.
