Locals

As always, it depends on how the locals run.  Decide how the locals run, then have the through freights take cars to where the locals originate.  Locals are sized by how much work they have, to a certain extent.

Every time you stop a through freight, you block the main track.  Plus you have a limit on how many times a freight can pick up and set out.  If you have a freight set out, they will have to pick up also.  Then you have to worry about both directions, cars from both the north and the south, cars going to both the north and the south.

Don't worry about how to get the cars there, figure out how much work an operator will have and/or how big a train you want, then figure out where you need locals to cover that work.  Locals are typically based out of one spot, run to someplace else and come back (either same or next day.)  Having a local based out of the middle is PIA if its running on a schedule.

Most cases they aren't going to be scattering cars over the subdivision.  If the local originates on line, you take the cars to origination point.

You can find just about any scenario you want, its been done in about every combination possible.

Generally the best solution is the one that has the fewest trains handling the car.  You can have the freight haul the cars out to a station and then run the power out light to switch it, real railroads have done that.  But why delay a through freight if the switcher is going there?  Why have to make two connections?  Why run engines light, have them haul something?  Why make the through freight crew spend the time on an air test on the pick up?  There may be answers for all those questions.

It depends.

What if the Local can only handle...

...1/3 of the Towns/Cities in a Division?  Just focusing on this Division (though the Yard is not at Franklin, it's 6 scale miles from Franklin, so I will call it Franklin Yard for the time being) from Franklin to Pittsburgh.  It's only 109 miles, so breaking that up into subdivisions, seems ridiculous.  One Local can't do the job.  Even two locals (one out of Franklin and one out of Pittsburgh, both arriving at a small yard for just the locals and the locals turn back to Franklin and Pittsburgh, couldn't do the job (too many cars for the local to handle).  So the question becomes, just from a modeling aspect since as you said railroads did any number of ways to get cars delivered/picked up to customers.  Would it be best to somehow fit two small yards each with a small turntable, coal tower, water and sand facility, to service the Local's locomotives?  The Through Freight's pick up and drop off cars at these actual yards.  Not sure if there would be enough work to justify having a Yard Crew for each yard to classify and block cars.   These two yards wouldn't be based on distance but on balance of work on the Division for the locals.  

Does that make operational sense?  Again don't need to ask would it be plausible since you already said yes, pretty much any combination of moves would work.  Since Verona, Oakmont, and Plum Creek are so close to Pittsburgh, having a local that runs out of Pittsburgh just for those customers makes sense.  The other local out of Pittsburgh will work on the southwest part of the division starting with the next town.  


Ken L.

Local traffic length of run

Usually it's not a problem as industry tends to cluster around larger cities so the railroad builds their yards there and the locals have most of the business in reach. Somewhere down the line there's another city with enough business so they build another yard, etc.  In between the big towns there might be small towns but they'd have less industry so can still be served by locals running the distance or by way freights making a stop or two. If it's a continual string of industries from town to town there will be switching jobs spaced as needed but that would usually be in a place like LA or other sprawling towns. 
                       In central Ca. the SP had coast line yards at San Jose, Watsonville, Salinas, and SLO. SanHo to Watsnvle was about 50 miles so locals could cover quite a few industries working from both ends. Watsnvle to Salns was only about 15 miles but Salns had lots of seasonal reefer traffic so it rated a yard. Salns to SLO was longer, maybe 100 miles but was a straight flat run with little industry in between so longer distance trains could handle that stretch.                                                                                                                                                                          Keep in mind also the seasonal variations in traffic if there were any in your modeled area, here in Ca. the traffic pattern and volume varied a lot over a full year. .....DaveB

If one train can not handle

If one train can not handle all of the cars why not run a second section of the same train, or add a complete new train and split up the work? That seems like a plausible way to handle traffic that exceeds the capacity of a single train and crew.

Split it up

On my railroad I had a town "Uniontown" .  Since the railroad was N/S I broke it up into two jobs, the East Uniontown job and West Uniontown job. Each was limited to 10 cars max.  Because it was worked only on one side of the mainline it minimized the fowling of the main.  There were too many industries for one train to handle.

David now in Charleston

Southwestern Pennsylvania Railroad 1955

The Issue

Ken, 

The big issue is you will find it hard to replicate the amount of cars being moved by the railroad requiring the number of yard jobs, locals, and way freights the PRR was running in the early to mid 1900s. Also distance between customer, towns and yards will play a factor. For your railroad do not base the operations off the PRR but more build your operations to fit your needs and layout ability, then base those jobs off PRR terms and practices. 

The problem we all face is compression, and we all have to do it. In compression we do not need as many trains running etc. Do you have a rough diagram of what you plan to model on the AGH Branch? I think for me at least any insight I can help with would be based off what you plan to model and to what scale....

 You could possible identify key "zones" for your operators to work, and have a way freight connecting the zones. If you plan to take on the produce yard and terminal that can easily be for a single operator, then you could have another operator working the rest of the "Strip Zone" and again a way freight bringing cars to and from staging to 43rd st..... 

Really fun stuff to dig into, and area that I too am into researching 

Blind

Figuring this all up blind with virtually no information is tough.

Once again break up the territory into what each local will handle.  Then figure out where they will run from.  Don't overlap the WORKING area of each local.  Each station is only worked by one local in each direction.

You don't need a gazillion roundhouses.  You only need a wye or a turntable at place a train terminates or originates.  You only need a roundhouse and a coal tower at a location where and engine stays over night.  You don't really need and shop facilities on line (they'll take the engine to the "big shop" on either end.)

Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.

I started to list some options, but there are so many hypothetical scenarios, I stopped because there are too many options.

Modelers tend to over estimate railroad business.  The reality is generally way less than modelers think there is.

Figure that only half of industry spots will be filled and only half of those will be switched in a day (and that's being generous).  With 2 locals, 1 north and one south, each at 40 cars, that's 80 cars of business, working backwards, that implies 160 cars on spot at 320 local spots.  Seriously, 320 local spots in a 100 miles in rural western Pennsylvania? 

Brute force method.  Go to Historic Aerials, look up some of the towns in an aerial phot as close to your time frame as you can get and see how many cars you can find on spot.  

I model a 70 mile branch line in SE PA.  There was one local each way daily.  The major city in the middle, Coatesville, had its own switchers and there was one branch near one end that was served by a local out of that end of the railroad.  I have a traffic study from March 1936.  In a two week period the locals averaged between 13 and 16 cars in each direction.  That works out to handling one load for every 4 miles of main track.  This is in an area bounded by Reading, Philadelphia and Wilmington.  Way less rural and way less mountainous than the area between Pittsburgh and Erie.

This goes to what kind of feel do you want YOUR railroad to have.  Do you want the operators to feel like they are switching a line in downtown Pittsburgh or do you want them to feel like they are out in the woods in a rural area?  If you want a really busy feel, that's fine.  If you want a rural feel, that's fine.  Just be aware of the "feel" you are creating and manage the work to support the feel.

One problem you have is the NYC didn't list locals (3rd or 4th class trains) in the timetable so you don't have a ready reference to how many trains they actually operated.

How often would a branch with 20 Customers be served then?

So using the math equation, if there were 20 spots, only 10 cars on any one day would be at those industries, and up to 5 cars would be picked up and up to 5 cars delivered among those 20 spots.  The prototype would rather wait when there were more cars to pick up and drop off for a crew.  So would they schedule that job say twice a week (il.e. Monday and Thursday)?

On the Layout there will be two branches that will requires switching on the layout.  The Oil City Branch (From Franklin to Oil City) and the Plum Creek Branch (From Verona to the end of the Branch; On the PRR it was Renton Jct, still doing research on the branch to see where it originally ended).  I would most likely schedule the Plum Creek Branch Job on Monday and Thursday, and the Oil City Job Wednesday and Friday.  

Thanks once again! 

Ken L. 

I am going to go out on a

I am going to go out on a limb here and say if the railroad wanted to keep the business on rails and not in a truck they would pick up the freight as soon as possible after the customer called. From the amount of traffic that shifted to trucks I suspect most railroad operations did not do a good job of this. I also believe that the time period will have a big impact on the level of service.

One of the best indicators of the level of service can be seen by looking at the retail industry in a given time period. One of the advantages of being older is having firsthand experience with the time periods. In the 1950s the clerk in a store might have been wearing a suit and tie. The attendant at a gas station would have been in a uniform. Compare that to the lack of service from retail in today’s market.

How much were Trucks competing with Railroads before 1956?

As I recall, the Interstate Highway system wasn't begun until 1956.  Yes there were roads and highways, but not as efficient as the Interstate Highway system made it.  So for 1953 (the year I'm modeling) was there sufficient competition that year?  

Ken L

Service

An industry gets served when the local runs.

The local runs on a schedule.  The crew is "bulletined" by labor agreements to run on a certain "schedule", doesn't matter whether  its run as a regular train (timetable schedule) or an extra.  The crew is paid to run the train every day its bulletined.  We have discussed the patterns of how locals are scheduled before.  If the local is scheduled to operate, it operates because its being paid.

The cars are spotted or pulled when the local gets there.  If the local arrives at Delta at 4 pm and departs at 5 pm, and the industry releases a car at 7pm, its not picked up until 4 pm the next day when the local gets there.  If the local runs as a tri-weekly local and only services an industry on M-W-F, if the industry releases a car at 7 pm Monday, its not pulled until 4 pm Wednesday.  If its released at 7 pm on Friday, then its not pulled until 4 pm on Monday.  If its a branch that only gets switched one a week, on Thursday and the car is released on Thursday at 7pm, then it sits there until next Thursday at 4 pm when the next local gets there.

Back in the day, the most expensive part of running a train was the crew cost.  Extra locals were discouraged.  If a local runs and the railroad sends it back out for a second trip, it gets paid a second day's wages.

Also back then "overnight" and "just in time" deliveries were not the expectation.  If you read ads from back then, mail order stuff would say right in the ad to allow for delivery in 30 days.  And that's part of the equation.  If the industry KNOWS its switched M-W-F its going to expect it to be switched M-W-F.    And the industry will load, unload, release and bill cars accordingly.  Its also possible the industry will use that to its advantage, billing or releasing a car before  its ready, to get the car off demurrage, knowing that by the time the railroad gets there 12-24 hours later, the car will be ready.

Aerial photos are handy.  Look at the number of rail served industries and the number of cars on spot.  There will be a lot more cars on spot than today, but there will be waaaaaaaaaay more spots.  Historic Aerials has a 1962 photo of Oil City, PA.  Between all the railroads in the city, I count about 40 cars on spot between both railroads in the whole city (excludes cars in yards or on trains).  Warren, PA is similar.  Disclaimer : your count may vary because its a low res image and seeing individual tracks without cars is difficult and I can't see cars inside buildings.

Also you can set whatever traffic level you want.  If you have 20 spots at a station and want to work every spot 3 times a session, go for the gusto.    The 20-10-5 numbers were an illustration.  Some industries get switched every shift, some industries get switched once a day, some industries get switched once a week, some industries get switched once a year.  Really big industries can get switched more than smaller industries.  If you look at today's traffic levels, industries will tend to get switched more overall and that's because the railroads have ripped out tracks and abandoned lines to industries that didn't have traffic.   For example, in the previous paragraph, when I was looking at the aerials of the general area, the 1940's and 1950's topo maps showed a NYC  line in that area, so i was going to count cars on that line, but by the 1966 aerial, the earliest for that area, the NYC line had been ripped up.  If a line is completely gone, that's a pretty good indicator they didn't ship much. 

The reason I mentioned the 20-10-5 thing was you were concerned about the size of the locals and I was pointing out that just because your railroad SERVES 200 spots, it doesn't have to SWITCH 200 spots every session.

Traffic level

Railroads run locals over a territory, the local serves a large area, it switches whatever is in its territory whenever it runs.  Its not how many customers, its how many cars and what the local agreements are.  There were territories that we ran a "local" over that we didn't switch a single car, but by agreement we had to operate a local, so one through freight was designated the "local" and the crew was the "local " crew and paid local rate.  There were other branches where the local only handled a few cars a day, but by agreement the least we could run the local is 6 days a week. and since we had active customers the public service commissions wouldn't let us abandon the line.  So we spent $6000 a week to generate a couple dozen carloads.

The number of customers isn't important, its the number of cars.  A branch might have a 100 customers, but a only handle a couple dozen revenue cars a week.   In the 1950's probably half the railroad's customers didn't even have their own track, they used the team track (but on an infrequent basis).  A grain elevator or a packing shed might only ship stuff one or two months a year and then be dormant for the remaining 10-11 months.

That's the tension, the railroad in that era might not have an option except to run a train less frequently because of labor agreements or what the public service commission requires.

Having said all that, back to the model railroad world.  As modelers we really don't care about a lot of that.  Its not fun to not switch industries.  We switch industries more frequently than they need to be because our goal is not to make a product or to maintain a budget, ours is to have fun switching cars.

Bottom line is, how many cars do you want to want the local to handle, how often do you want your operators to switch the branch, how many operators can you support, how many cars can the yards support.  For example I will have way more opportunities to run locals than I want to have operators.  Some of my locals will run every other or every third session (depending on whether a session represents 8 or 12 hours) just because I only want a limited number of people in the room.  I want the locals to be in the 6-8 car range because that's a good compromise between train size, workload and engine pulling power.  So I only bill 6-8 cars per session the local runs.

On a real railroad they have to set the operation to match the traffic, on  model railroad we have the luxury to be able to set the traffic to match the level of operation.  I have about 80-85 cars max of staging into my layout.  The max number of cars I can spot or pull per session is about 80-85 cars.  Doesn't matter how many cars my industries need, 80-85 is the upper ceiling.  My job as a MODEL railroad manager is to figure out how to distribute them.  I distribute them based on what I want the operators to do.  I could send all 85 cars to Coatesville, but that means the other 6-7 guys in the op session wouldn't have anything to do and the yard at Coatesville would be jammed up and the guy switching Coatesville would have a terrible experience.  So I don't do that.  I want the switcher at Coatesville  to spot and pull about 10-15 cars per session, build and yard one train and take set outs or fill two or three other trains.  That makes for a busy but not overwhelming session.

So the question comes back to not what the prototype would do, its what do YOU want your MODEL railroad to do and can your MODEL railroad support it.

Prototype Info

Hi All,

Here is some present day experience that can also translate to the earlier time periods you are talking about. My current bid in assignment as a locomotive engineer for NS is on a local or what we ca Road Switcher.

I handle traffic from a local serving yard and deliver it to the assigned customers on our route. All outbound cars from the customers sidings are returned to the serving yard.

As a bid in assignment I go on duty the same time five days a week. The maximum time I can work is 12 hours. Our work load is based on an 8 hour day. Although we constantly make overtime due to the delays associated with the job.

On my district we have three serving yards and locals are based out of each. One easy way to describe how this works is similar to the USMail.

Large classification yards located at the end of a district will originate through freights. Some of these freights will handle traffic for the serving yards on the district.

They will drop off a block of cars at the serving yard and pick up another block destined to the class yard the through freight is headed too.

Here is a link to one of my videos describing operations of particular train types you might find useful.

Tim Garland

Part of the answer to your ? depends on the railroad.

The Santa Fe had fewer small yards and most frieght cars went to main classification yards where they were blocked for locals here in So Cal.  The S.P. had small yards all over So Cal.  When the U.P. took over the S.P. they thought that those small yards all over were a waste, so they tried to consolodate everything into their main yards.  They found out the hard way that they choked the main yards so badly that they had to reopen S.P.'s small yards so that they could actually move the freight.

Of course, So. Cal. is different than many other places in the U.S. because the only west bound traffic out of Los Angeles is to the port to be transferred to ships.  Still I think different railroads did things differently than other railroads, so you probably need to see how your railroad did things.  In your specific case, since you are biulding a railroad under a fictitious history, it is more up to you how you want it to operate.  

You might look at how the different railroad that served Pittsburg did things.  Then decide how you want your railroad to do freight car distribution for locals. 

I have been doing my best...

...paying less attention to such minutiae:

< < <

But once the railroad becomes operational (post COVID-19 goal is no 2024 as who knows how much more delay  there is going to be as I can't even reach the local health Department evaluate the footprint of the new building and the location of the new Septic System to get their approval!), I'm hoping persons who worked on the prototype will see the overall system to be within "norms" of the prototype.  So i'm not concerning myself as much with such things as local labor agreements, etc, but making a serious effort to just look at things from a much broader perspective and determine if it's "Good Enough".  How often the Local Runs is still something I should make sure are within those norms.  Or do you consider that to be too much in the weeds so to speak?  

BTW, I don't know if it was here on one of these MRR Discussion forum's or  if it was in person at a Convention, but I recall a former Railroad Employee tell me some businesses routinely cheated the system, by "releasing" the car before it was actually ready, as it had something to do with how much the railroad charged the company when the car was at the customer.  By releasing it early it cost less, until one time, the railroad happened to run the local on a different day one week, and the car wasn't actually ready.  I forgot what the railroad did, but obviously the business was committing fraud.  

The Oil City Job actually most likely will not serve Oil City itself.  The P&A line will end at "BRIDGE" where the PRR's Salamanca Branch begins.  There are several industries in South Oil City, but the NYCS served Oil City on the north side of the Allegheny River via the former LS&MS line.  In addition to the customers in South Oil City the line was kept operational after the NYCS acquired the P&A in the 1930s, because of the trackage rights agreement with the PRR from Kiski Junction to Oil City.  That works out anyways as I don't think I would have the space to do it well.  Any Wolf Head's Oil tank cars that need to head north to Buffalo, or East to Philly will be interchanged with the NYC at Franklin.  

Thanks for all the information.

Ken L. 

I know that the Pennsylvania

I know that the Pennsylvania Railroad started the trailer train stuff in 1957 with 75 foot flat cars to try and capture some of the business that was leaving the trains for trucks. I believe trucks began competing in the late 1920s and continued to gain ground since then.

  "the Pennsylvania Railroad

The SP started promoting piggy back service on the west coast in the mid 1950's The first one's I recall seeing were 40 foot or so flat cars with the trucks tied down with chains and binders instead of 5th wheel type hitches. . ...DaveB

Trucks

Around WW2 and certainly after, trucks were widely used for local deliveries and gained ground on the shorter haul  business.  That did in a lot of branch lines where trucks could compete on less than 200 mile trips.

In 1919 Lt Col D Eisenhower led a truck convoy from Washington DC to San Francisco.  It took 62 days.

It wasn't until the late 1950's and early 1960's after the Interstate system started to open that trucks really threatened the long haul business (a highway system created by Pres. D Eisenhower). 

If you have ever watched the Daniel Craig movie "Defiance" ( a good flick), after WW2 the brothers emigrated to the US and started a trucking company.