Pertubations

I have managed all of the situations described in the article (and many, many more) on real railroads.  The one caution I would have is that most of these situations involve way more delay than the modeler realizes.  Call out the wrecker?  You are talking about a 6-12 hour outage.  Minimum.  A POTUS train?  Hours of planning sessions months in advance.  There is a book on FDR's funeral train, for a modeler the best part is the description of all the stuff that was going on behind the scenes at the railroad to get the train arranged and over the road.

I wrote a 3 part article in the OPSIG Dispatchers Office magazine titled "Things That Go Bump in the Night" that delves into more detail on a wide array of disasters large and small that befall a railroad.

Two of the pieces of advice I gave in the article was to choose the events that add trains to the situation or slow things down aand avoid the things that stop trains.  The second big one was the "Not on My Railroad" approach.  If you want to model a derailment, don't have it on your railroad, have it on an adjoining unmodeled railroad or subdivision.  You get to run the wrecker (but it doesn't block YOUR main track).  You get to run detours and reroutes (instead of stopping trains on your railroad).  Big derailment?  Make it happen in the session previous, that way you don't have anything stopped, but you have a traffic surge to clean off the traffic backed up from the derailment, you have to run the wrecker back to its home terminal and there will still be a slow order at the derailment site.

Don't have a railroad big enough to operate a passenger special?  You can still have a POTUS interaction.  When POTUS travels by highway the Secret Service will "request' that the railroads do not operate trains over the crossings he will pass during certain times, creating a 'window" or "curfew" which can last 30 min to an hour.

Alternatively if POTUS will be at a venue very close to the tracks the trains may have to reroute, or avoid that track or there may be restrictions on hazmat on the train.  A hotel in Little Rock Arkansas had a main track passing almost directly under it.   For 8 years there were occaisonally curfews on that track.

Nice article and many

Nice article and many excellent points to consider. I'm sure applying them to the different model railroads will involve lots variations. The inclusion of the paper work was a nice touch.

Link to the Real World

Hi Doug,

This was an excellent article and got lots of ideas flowing.  I especially  like the idea of linking the layout operations to the real world, like running the POTUS train during election season and the snow train when it is actually snowing outside!  I operate regularly on a layout called the Stinky Creek and on some occasions it has been snowing in Ohio and made me wonder if I should make the trip to the layout owner's house.  If I thought I'd get to run the snow train, it would be extra incentive!

Real world

A layout I have operated on in St Louis is very near the UP tracks.  On the layout is a gated crossing.  The rule is that your train can open the gate and cross the crossing unless you hear/feel a UP train passing then you have to wait for it to pass before the crossing becomes "unoccupied".

Great article!

Great article which I read twice (I hate getting a work call while reading MRH articles!). I’m involved with a number of guys where we have monthly operating sessions, the last Sunday of every month. While the 3 layouts are more or less freelanced, they all use real railroad engines and rolling stock and freight cars as well as their own private railroad engines for operations. This is probably the main and only link to prototype railroads. Our little group is comprised of some retired railroad engineers, dispatchers, rail enthusiasts and some non-railroaders. We meet once a month for breakfast at the local diner, and the group usually sits as described above. Then we head to the hosting layout. The most enjoyable part of our sessions by far is the comradre and ‘ribbing’ everyone gives and takes. We have one rule and that is when a derailment or short happens, we ALWAYS blame the guy or guys that don’t show up. We have two guys who don’t come that often, so they get the blame. Even when they both show, they get the blame. My layout is not a large layout (20x20 with the lower level strictly staging) works best with a yardmaster, 4-5 operators to run trains and do assignments and myself as dispatcher. What makes our sessions fun (others may not think so) is that trains that run have specific industries to serve or trains taken to the freight yard then sent out on local jobs. There’s NO PAPERWORK involved. For example, if you’re switching out the Steel Plant, you pick up some cars at the freight yard, take whatever you like or given and then switch the industry. You may leave the yard with 6 cars and return with 8. The only train that I have on the layout which they switch out entirely is the Tropicana Juice Train, and there is one guy who usually runs that train. It’s a great time, the stories that go on while running trains make it a fun time. At the end of the session, the host serves chips/dip and drinks. Nice way to spend the day.

Neal

Operating on the Granite Mountain

I have operated on many different model railroads but the Granite Mountain stands above all others I have been to. It is a fun railroad to operate and I feel privileged I was able to operate on it for a few years. It is fun to operate. The people are enjoyable to work with. Serious but having fun at the same time.

Reference the wreck train, it reminds me of an incident one day when an operator put several cars on their side at Totem. Another operator at Nooksack across the aisle observed him putting the cars back on the track instead of reporting a wreck. The Nooksack operator observed that he should be calling the wreck train. The response. "You are 200 miles away. You can't see anything." Like I said. Fun people to operate with.