Tank Cars

See Weekly Photo Fun 3-18-2017.

Bob

Big layouts

The bottom line is that the most problems I've ever seen on layout in op sessions have always been proportionate to their size.

In short, the bigger the layout, the more chances something's gonna screw up.

I once ran on one of those old-school mezzanine layouts that used to be poplar, and I didn't see the train at all for over 15 minutes. Had the train break in two on a grade and  heard it rolling. Someone grabbed the back end and hooked it all together. I never saw what happened, who fixed it or anything.

Seriously, where's the fun in that? I've never been a fan or overly large club layouts for that reason.

At the time of this event I

At the time of this event I had no layout. I had just joined a model railroad club. I initially thought there must be something wrong with these guys because they were interested in having me as a member. This was the first time I would be able to run trains on a big layout. The club had 3 layouts, the largest was in my scale and era, but it was dcc, at that time I had never done anything dcc. I unboxed a pair of brand new H24-66 units and packed up about 50 of my recently built freight cars. The cars had never put wheels to track they were built according to the instructions had no extra weight and couplers were just put into the coupler boxes. Nothing had ever been tested.

The engines fought with each other and the train, the cars approximately 50 began to derail for no aparant reason at various locations around the layout. I thought I was an abject failure. I was very disappointed in the performance to say the least.

Next stop test track. Cars were tuned and weighed. Couplers were positioned at the correct height and adjusted so they moved freely. Trucks were examined and tuned. Next the locomotives were disassembled and tuned. I have never believed the words ready to run since. Now the same locomotives run well together and easily pull trains of more than 100 cars as long as you want to run them.

Funny thing no one laughed at me. Everyone was encouraging and offered helpful tips. To this day I consider myself fortunate to count those folks as my friends.

Well, there was the time . . .

. . . in March 2002 when I was operating on Bill Darnaby's Maumee Route layout. Everything that could go wrong that day seemed to go wrong . . . 

. . .  first, I entered the train room from the outside still wearng my winter coat, which I found out immediately was a big no-no, although no one had apprised me of that beforehand.

. . .  I missed a few pickups and setouts with the local I was assigned to operate.

. . . I blew into yardmaster Any Sperandeo's yard prior to contacting said yardmaster.

. . . the caboose on my local persistently derailed due to a faulty truck until Bill took it off the train.

. . . and I banged my forehead hard on a low-hanging iron or steel pipe. 

Dinner with Andy and Tony Koester put a better shine on the day, however.

Murphy's...

I was running a tourist train with a nice little B&M 2-6-0 with a combine, 3 coaches, and an observation car...all fine.  (People sometimes joke about my little loco when I run it--all in good fun, though.)  We weren't doing ops, just people could run their trains and watch for others, and keep a safe distance.

Well, the train ahead of me, with two massive diesels and a long consist, stalled on the hill, blocking the westbound main.  Before bringing in the 0-5-0 to remove cars, I said, "Let me give you a shove."

The operator figured that we might as well try it, so I sent a flagman back, unhooked the consist, and hooked on.  Old steam loco saves the bacon of fancy diesel freight.

Sadly, the little people in my consist were significantly delayed.

Nice story, reminds me of the

Nice story, reminds me of the almost cornfield meet, I was coming around the peninsula with my ATSF freight where mr. express passenger with a tether throttle came around almost hitting me. Thankfully I was wireless so I slammed it in reverse and escaped. Though a few cars came off at a turnout and that took a bit of time.

All the others stories are pretty good to.

Helper service?

I have never seen helper service done correctly in any scale smaller than O. You need the cars to provide enough resistance on the rails to not go flying to one side from being squeezed between a pushing locomotive and the other on the head end which is either going too slow or not moving at all (and therefore being as effective as a rock for the resistance against the kinetic force of the cars shoving it from behind.

Helper service

In my case, the helper service was necessary and sufficient; the train was unable to make it up the hill, but my ad-hoc helper service was enough to get the stalled freight moving, and up the (curved) hill.  He set out some cars before making another loop around the layout.  It worked beautifully.  I was very cautious about applying the throttle when I hooked on behind the last car.

Helper service? Mon,

How about this one Lee. HO scale and two 2-6-6-6 locomotives and 105 cars.

I suspect many do not work out because the locomotives do not have enough train to push and pull. Also I suspect the cars are not heavy enough. It also helps if the locomotives are also runnung at the same speed. Neither locomotive could pull this grade and train unassisted. The slack runs in and out of this train depending on the load change due to grades.

How about 150 cars, and 9

How about 150 cars, and 9 locomotives, in N scale? One of the guys in the N-Trak group I used to belong to did this all the time. IIRC he ran 4 locomotives in front, 3 in the middle, and 2 near the end. All grain hoppers in the train, most of them Microtrains.

Looks vs necessity

I think that, if you're running helper service for looks, but it's not necessary, you can easily have problems.  If you really need it, then it should be OK.  In my case, the locos weren't consisted; I was running mine separately...and carefully!

Bad Orders From Hell

Train assigned when running a club layout had one car problem after another.  My conductor and Me wondered if we would end up walking back to the yard because the entire train would eventually be bad ordered! 

Joe