Yep, here we go with the, "Ops is the thing" argument... again.

Yep.  You got it.  That's exactly what this thread is about.

The premise of the article and the thread is, "Most people don't want formal operations, how do we increase interest in operations?".

Given that premise, yes, you can pretty well figure that the people discussing it will think that operations is "the thing".  If they didn't think operations was "the thing", then they would fall into the majority that is "Meh?" about operations and the premise of the thread would be, "How do we keep things the same and not change?"

I use a similar analogy all the time; ops when you're treating like a real job is like going to a civil war re-enactment and being told you're going to peel potatoes and dig ditches all weekend. Sure, such things were needed in real life and it is accurate, but what the [bleep] fun is that?

Just be glad you weren't the guy they chose to die of dysentery.  8-)

I always say there are two different questions:  What did the prototype do?  What can I do on my layout? 

They are not the same question and do not have same answers.

If somebody asks me a question on what the prototype does I can tell them in great detail.  Does that mean I am saying they should do it that way?  No.  Does that mean I do it that way?  No.  But that's the way the railroad did it and if you understand that you understand other things that they might do that tie into that.

There are a lot of people who think telling somebody what the prototype does obligates them to do that or that it is a criticism of the person's layout.  No.  Its stating history or a fact.

"So maybe MRH instead of trying to sell choices 3-5 should focus more on choices 1 and 2.  Develop some track plans and operations for those choices.  Leave choices 3-5 for the hardcore guys in the OPSIG.."

You need to separate toy train thinking from scale modeling thinking. A layout designed for operations will be perfectly suitable for casual running, it would have all the tracks that a prototype needed for operation but that doesn't mean they won't also work fine when one just wants to run scale trains thru realistic scenery. A layout designed for toy trains however would likely not be a two way player, it would have tracks designed for a different purpose( caricature,fantasy,whimsy, etc.). MRH is a scale oriented magazine so I doubt that toy train style designs would be very popular here, but there are some excellent toy train magazines to cover that aspect of the hobby.....DaveB

...I regularly operate on Steve Davis' KCS 3rd Sub Layout in Coweata OK. It is run with switchlists which tell you what cars to drop and pick at each location and what order they need to be in. The op sessions are videoed regularly and are all available on YouTube. Just search for KCS 3rd Sub.

one example is me running the Westville Dodger. A dodger is KCSspeak for a local pick up train. it runs for about an hour. The videos are very professional and a credit to camera crew and editor.

https://youtu.be/7LyoGOCF9TQ

Don't be shocked when you see my ugly mug!

You need to separate toy train thinking from scale modeling thinking. A layout designed for operations will be perfectly suitable for casual running, it would have all the tracks that a prototype needed for operation but that doesn't mean they won't also work fine when one just wants to run scale trains thru realistic scenery. A layout designed for toy trains however would likely not be a two way player, it would have tracks designed for a different purpose( caricature,fantasy,whimsy, etc.). MRH is a scale oriented magazine so I doubt that toy train style designs would be very popular here, but there are some excellent toy train magazines to cover that aspect of the hobby

And so this is the problem.  If you don't do it the "right" way it's toy like.  And again we use derogatory terms - caricature, fantasy, whimsy. 

Actually, casual running was not what I described earlier.  I said a layout designed for railfanning, not casual running.  The two are not the same.  A layout designed for "prototype operation" will not necessarily be (and usually is not) suitable for railfanning.

If MRH wants to be a successful scale oriented magazine with operations features, it needs to feature operations that the vast majority like to do.  Otherwise it should just skip operations in it's articles.

Paul

HI all,

I'll take an even more contrary view. - The railroad exists solely to serve the industries along the line.

No industries = No revenue = No railroad.  It's as simple as that in both 1:1 and model scales

By getting to know your lineside industries, their idiosyncrasies and traffic flows from incoming raw materials to outbound finished goods you can devise a set of wagon requirements that:

• can vary over days of the week - for example, 2 gons on Monday/3 gons on Tuesday/Nothing Wednesday (planned maintenance)/3 boxcars Thursday, 2 gons on Friday/2 tankers on Saturday etc
• can simulate breakdowns in the industry where different car types other than the planned cars in the previous point are needed because the stuff being made for Tuesday can't be made, but stuff that needs 2 boxcars can be made See my Randomness of Industry posting
• can simulate changes in priority at the industry where customer demands requires something else gets shipped "first"  (Rush Order/ Critical Delivery etc) 
• can allow for the staging of "contingency wagons" (just in case...) nearby that are not immediately required, but, could be at very short notice
• When the requirements are aggregated for multiple industries with their own scheduled requirements at a given location, the the required consist of the train for a given location will probably vary considerably on a day-by-day basis.  

As far as your model lineside industries are concerned, they don't give a (insert large body of water) about what scheme you use to move your model railroad cars. Just so long as the right cars arrive at the right industry at the right time. 

Having been on the other non-railroad end of things in industry, we don't care what you have to do as a railroad to get us the wagons we need when we need them. If you can't supply us a particular wagon type, WHAT'S YOUR PLAN B??? And how long before they arrive??  

MRH is a scale oriented magazine so I doubt that toy train style designs would be very popular here

Have you seen some of the layouts posted in this forum? Layouts here run the full gamut. Some of the top posters here have layouts that are NOT like Mike Confalone's, Jim Six's, or Tom Johnson's. 

HO - Western New York - 1987 era
"When your memories are greater than your dreams, joy will begin to fade."

It's the number of cars and the frequency that's random, not where the car is spotted, the reporting marks of the car, or the process used in spotting a car at a particular customer. We might have a difference in definition of the word "random".

On that I agree completely.  Its still not random, but that variation is what the modeler needs to focus on to keep operations interesting, because those types of variations are what makes a difference.

I always say there are two different questions:  What did the prototype do?  What can I do on my layout? 

They are not the same question and do not have same answers.

By getting to know your lineside industries, their idiosyncrasies and traffic flows from incoming raw materials to outbound finished goods you can devise a set of wagon requirements

Definitely to all of this. Of course in reality, it's not actually random and the number of cars that show up is driven by customer demand/sales, and variations can be introduced in shipping by transit delays, missed connections, etc. Our best way of simulating this variation though is to fake it with a little bit of statistical randomness as to the number of cars and the days they're delivered. Having a collection of different waybills to swap out also varies where the outbound cars from the industry will go (but there's still a realistically finite number of destinations on those waybills).

I wrote a bit on my blog about using a spreadsheet to drive some of this "random" customer demand generation when using manual routing systems like car cards, tab-on-car etc.: Using a Spreadsheet to Simulate Customer Demand

Model Railroad operations are supposed to give purpose..but I think JoeF's point may be " How do Op's people dispel the idea that Model Railroad Operations is a dark n deep rabbit hole " ? How does one attach the excitement that drew someone to model railroading to also include " Operations " without turning them away from the hobby as a whole ?

Let's look at what JoeF used for a definition of operations: " By Ops I mean having a specific process for moving cars and trains from place to place ".  The fact is operations is just pushing and shoving cars and trains on track. End Period Dot. Beginners do this in the loop of track they get with the train set..they just don't realize it. Their " specific process " is unknown to them and in all like random as all get out or simply referred to as " the imagination". The simple inclusion of a switch/siding to that loop of track and them using that siding to drop off a car just included them into the " Operations Group " of railroad modelers but again they don't realize it. 

The fly in the ointment so to speak is when folks start talking prototypical or realistic and here is when the first trail to the " rabbit hole " starts. Most of those asking questions or directed to " op's " are now greeted with a maze in the briar patch of each and every person being asked for advice delivering differing ideas and concepts, needs and requirements in a mind numbing swarm. They go to a club and ask the 20 members about " Op's " and get 25 different ways, means, and personal likes/dislikes/grudges/fails/opinions.

I posted almost a year ago about some operations and I got some great answers. However I found one thing on the internet that saved me from my own personal " rabbit hole " when it came to operations. The funny part...its an OPSIG article about BASIC OPERATIONS written by Bill Kirchmeyer. Scary right..they guys writing the " Tome of Train Operations " have a simple way of directing model train operations...This article is so good in my honest opinion it really needs to be passed around or included in every model train shop sale/order.

We are always quoting the " Rule #1 " thing but a lot of times people forget that not everyone has a level of commitment or enthusiasm that translates easily to a comprehension level equaling those attempting to explain/expand " Train Operations". One hopes that as railroad modelers level of experience rises, so would their commitment to other aspects of the craft so to speak, but sadly this is not the case. Some modelers can quote the GCOR from front to back..and some don't even care the book exists. Just as there are so many different modelers having opinions/ideas on locomotives, track, switches, cars, DCC vs DC and so many other subjects...the same needs to be applied to all the differing levels concerning " Op's". Trying to take people on a journey that they soon learn to hate or fear is a sure shot trip down into the rabbit hole and the unfortunate thing is those leading never look back until it's way too late and in reality lost their protoge' long ago.

I think the problem people have with the OpSig book might be that they are expecting a "how to."

It's not that at all. It's a reference book. Each chapter is on a different topic and there isn't really anything connecting them or showing how they relate.

It's a good book, but definitely not a how-to for the beginner.  One of the Lance Mindheim books is much more accessible for basic industrial switching.  The early chapters of one of Tony Koester's books aren't bad, but he goes down the rat hole in the later chapters.

I think the old "Track Planning for Realistic Operations" by John Armstrong or Bruce Chubb's book on the Sunset Valley may still be the best introductory books for someone that wants to get started in ops without being mired in detail.

gs

I did research on the RR I model and used a lot of their operating concepts on my own layout. The one thing that surprised me was they didn't actually have a rule book that was specific for operations of their line. They used another RR's rule book (the Clinchfield's) for the general stuff, but even then it didn't fully apply to them as they used a standard gauge line's rule book for a narrow gauge RR. Certain trains had priority as did directions and such, along with speed limits. For the most part, the line I model operated very informally by the time I model.

I truly doubt how I run isn't too lax compared to how they really did it.

If MRH wants to be a successful scale oriented magazine with operations features, it needs to feature operations that the vast majority like to do.  Otherwise it should just skip operations in it's articles.

The problem here is that many people travel in small circles and they think what their small group does is also what the majority of others do, as well.

I once hung around a group of guys who were the more anal and aggravating group of people you'd ever hope to meet when it came to ops. Real RR engineers who'd run with them would leave in disgust. I'll never forget one saying, "Man, this is more a pain than real life, I don't need this. How can you guys think this is fun?"

I've met people with great layouts that ran from a perfect simulation of real RR operations, to ones that were a tongue in cheek parody of them (one of the latter, from a MMR who's an amazing modeler). I've seen several that fit into roughly to how I run; with car cards or switch lists, guidance and little else.

The larger the layout, usually, the more complex it'd get. Much like in real life, I imagine. A short line with one train a day wouldn't get too deep into dispatching, signaling and the like, for example.

But the thing here is, we all have to accept that not every RR did things the same way back in the day, just like not every layout does. What's normal for you and your pals, might not be so for everyone else.

You can never have too much detail or too many trees on a layout.

If MRH wants to be a successful scale oriented magazine with operations features, it needs to feature operations that the vast majority like to do.

Although it has not popped up in a while I think MRH has an Imagineering column with many examples of whimsical layouts. Many of these caricature,fantasy,whimsy, etc. layouts can and do operate very prototypically. You may not like these layouts or the locations or industries portrayed, but you should not be demeaning the layouts or operators or their dedication to the hobby.

Just because I pulled out of the WetBar (manufacturer) siding to deliver goods (snacks and drinks) to Pool (table), Picnic (table) or Nickelodeoa (game / TV area) does not mean that I was not thinking operations. I had to understand and deliver what, when and where customers wanted and make sure that empties were returned to the siding for cleanup prior to the next round - er I mean run.

You need to separate toy train thinking from scale modeling thinking. A layout designed for operations will be perfectly suitable for casual running, it would have all the tracks that a prototype needed for operation but that doesn't mean they won't also work fine when one just wants to run scale trains thru realistic scenery. A layout designed for toy trains however would likely not be a two way player, it would have tracks designed for a different purpose( caricature,fantasy,whimsy, etc.). MRH is a scale oriented magazine so I doubt that toy train style designs would be very popular here, but there are some excellent toy train magazines to cover that aspect of the hobby.

The assumption here is that if we are not "operating" we are playing with toy trains. I think Ken Patterson is a very well respected modeler here in MRH world and his layout is meant for running trains with no thought to operation. He has stated this in his videos. He also has stated he leaves some of his DCC locos at address 3. SHOCKING! So is Ken Patterson thinking toy trains or is he thinking scale modelling?  

The assumption here is that if we are not "operating" we are playing with toy trains.

Reality check, we are all playing with toy trains.  I've worked with the real ones, these are all toys.

It used to be said the difference between men and boys was the price of their toys. Have you bought any Lego lately? You are right, Dave, we are all just playing with toys. My point is why do we tell each other we're playing with them wrong? If I want to push my brass locos by hand through the sand that's my prerogative. Someone though, will tell me I'm not a model railroader and that's where we make a mistake. Who are we to say who is what? To the average person there isn't much difference. People in my life know i like trains but they don't see a difference between what I do and the Lionel set they had as a kid. But here we are debating if running trains for the sake of watching them go around is toy trains and operating realistically is model railroading. 

The fact is operations is just pushing and shoving cars and trains on track.

In the sense of the gross overall movements, yes.   At that level of simplicity, a parking lot attendant is the same as a NASCAR driver, they both move cars around. But from a practical standpoint, no. 

The difference is that with "operations" there is reason or goal in mind that in some way relates to what a railroad does.  The is a "why" that more than "just for amusement".

 Have you bought any Lego lately?

Actually, yes.  My son likes Lego and I built him a Lego table to set up and display his collection.  They have a way cool battery operated, radio controlled railroad set.  He likes to take the sets and modify the cars and engines.  He took the hood unit and made it into an F40 type engine.

Although expensive, I think Lego is well worth the price. Gets kids doing something that links their brains and hands. I have nothing against digital screens but there is something about building with your hands that is special. 

My wife refers to anything I do that she doesn't deem important as 'Playing.' I remind her that:

• I'm not a kid
• In most cases, it's not a sport with a score

So therefore, it ain't playing. That said, I don't wrap myself in a thick blanket of self-importance.I don't take myself seriously in my hobby and I've never understood the types who take themselves way too seriously.

My point is why do we tell each other we're playing with them wrong? If I want to push my brass locos by hand through the sand that's my prerogative. Someone though, will tell me I'm not a model railroader and that's where we make a mistake. Who are we to say who is what? To the average person there isn't much difference. People in my life know i like trains but they don't see a difference between what I do and the Lionel set they had as a kid. But here we are debating if running trains for the sake of watching them go around is toy trains and operating realistically is model railroading. 

I'm reminded of something a friend told me years ago about another hobby, but it relates to any of them:

• Anyone into [the hobby] less than you isn't doing it right and is a joke.
• Anyone into [the hobby] more than you needs to get a life and is also a joke.

You can never have too much detail or too many trees on a layout.

"And so this is the problem.  If you don't do it the "right" way it's toy like.  And again we use derogatory terms - caricature, fantasy, whimsy." 

 

 Those terms are not derogatory unless you think they are. They are merely a name for a style of appearance or goal. They are  no better or no worse than realism or plausibility.

"Actually, casual running was not what I described earlier.  I said a layout designed for railfanning, not casual running.  The two are not the same.  A layout designed for "prototype operation" will not necessarily be (and usually is not) suitable for railfanning."

  Railfanning is watching operations, so a layout designed for operations is perfectly suited to railfanning. We just don't know all the behind the scenes operational details of the trains we railfan but they'd look exactly the same if we did.  What exactly do you think a railfanning layout needs that an operations suitable layout would lack? Do you think railfanning layouts need to be less realistic? or what??  I railfan just as much as I operate my layouts and I don't see any conflict in the designs.......DaveB

The irony I see is that on the "Ops for the rest of us" thread there are a lot of people saying that being prototypical is too restricting and limits fun, while on the "Restricting speed to grow your layout" thread people are saying that being more restrictive than the prototype increases fun.

Ya' gotta love this hobby.

Well I know I am not saying anything about being prototypical is restrictive..what I AM saying is that those that are beating the horse about " Operations " and having to subscribe to a ever changing prototypical standard set forth by the " gatekeepers " are the same ones that lose people at the door of trying to explain to draw modelers into operations. I will say it again..not everyone in model railroading is looking to turn their hobby into work. The mentality as I see it is again if you do not subscribe to a particular modeling standard then you are just dabbling in the hobby and should never be taken seriously..aka their input doesn't matter anymore. Simply put its a mind over matter thing...the serious " operation " minded people don't mind because the uninitiated or amatuer doesn't matter, they just " don't get it " and are cast aside when it is deemed they no longer matter or cannot be brought into the " fold " of serious operations.

What puzzles me is people who come to our club, are eager to join, have the program explained to them, take part for six or seven or nine months, and then come up with suggestions that are pretty much 180 degrees from everything that has gone before.

We don't have secrets, no arcane handshake, but are very upfront about what we do -- which is a railroad in a particular time and place, with monthly sessions involving a line-up, track warrant dispatching, and car forwarding by car card and waybill. Pretty simple and not really out of the mainstream.

With a revolving cast of characters, it has all evolved over 30 years and works pretty well. 80% of our people are actively working on one club project or another -- it's not a couple of guys pushing an agenda.

Then the questions start about passenger trains, coal mines, steam engines, GEVOs, logging camps and Shays, etc. etc.  There are other groups in the area more into what these people want -- what's the question?

I like the train cards. Concise information delivered in a simple fashion.

With TWC, we give the conductor a 6x9 clipboard with warrant forms on top, and a magnetic train card on the bottom. By the third revision or so, we generally have information similar to Dave H's that crews can work from.

Many of us spend so much time thinking about our railroads that it's hard for us to understand that other people don't have the same depth of understanding. A lot of connections and procedures aren't apparent to the first-timer but have a lot of effect on how work is done.

What puzzles me is people who come to our club, are eager to join, have the program explained to them, take part for six or seven or nine months, and then come up with suggestions that are pretty much 180 degrees from everything that has gone before.

We don't have secrets, no arcane handshake, but are very upfront about what we do -- which is a railroad in a particular time and place, with monthly sessions involving a line-up, track warrant dispatching, and car forwarding by car card and waybill. Pretty simple and not really out of the mainstream.

With a revolving cast of characters, it has all evolved over 30 years and works pretty well. 80% of our people are actively working on one club project or another -- it's not a couple of guys pushing an agenda.

Then the questions start about passenger trains, coal mines, steam engines, GEVOs, logging camps and Shays, etc. etc.  There are other groups in the area more into what these people want -- what's the question?

"That's the way we've always done it."

- famous last words for a club

If this keeps happening, you might want to consider what they're asking to do as opposed to what you're doing now. You didn't give specifics, but how nutty (or consistent) are these "180" views from the new members?

I've seen my fair share of model train clubs go under for exactly this reason. One wanted to run in a massive loop, all the time, and some of the spur tracks weren't even powered (one had a dummy locomotive and train sitting in a station, with a thick coat of dust on it). The members kept running off the new people because they questioned the status quo and a few years later, when only the core 8-10 guys were still around, they genuinely couldn't understand why they didn't have more people, even when it was pointed out to them. A few months later, they were busting up the layout to toss the remains into dumpsters after they couldn't pay the rent anymore. I talked to one of them a few months ago and he still didn't get why it'd happened.

You can never have too much detail or too many trees on a layout.

I look at OPs as chess with trains – we run TT & TO with a dispatcher on small short line railroads. No two sessions are the same even though the same trains run every time to the same places. The extra wrinkle of having the train crews make decisions based on their orders and the schedule is lots of fun and creates a different session each time.

Sure there is a learning curve and the layout must run well. The host has to have thought out the OPs plan and have a good grasp on all of the possibilities. Our sessions are fun and very relaxed despite the formality imposed by the rules of the game.

To some this might sound too much like work, so be it. I think the best way to get people into operations, is to have them operate at some well thought out layouts/sessions with friendly hosts. Our operations guru is always patiently explaining how things work. No one gets bent out of shape when things go awry, in fact those are often the sessions that everyone remembers fondly later. If a newbie doesn't enjoy the session, then you can say at least they gave it a good shot. Not everyone will enjoy OPs.

The question of whether people need to operate to have fun with trains is, of course, another discussion.

My two cents,

Guy

The more I worked with it, the more I came to understand that TWC is more akin to CTC than TT&TO, especially in the concepts of how authority is granted.  And "Mother may I" is more or less TWC without the paper or CTC without the signals.  (DTC (Direct Traffic Control) operates just like an old school conventional "rotary switch" DC layout.)

I wonder if a layout did "Mother may I" and operators were told that because people tend to forget what the dispatcher told them, they would be given a form they could "fill in the blanks" to help them remember, and removed all references to "track warrants" or line numbers, if people would do it and not realize they were actually running TWC?   Sometimes I think people get hung up on the process names or assume something because of the process name and get turned off before there actually is a problem.

Another aspect is that I wonder if people operating with some "formal" form of authority, really understand how it works.  I have been to 2 operating session in the past year or two that were supposed to be TT&TO, but the timetable and train orders were a bit sketchy.  And nobody in the session questioned it.  Following Rule #1? Just being polite?  Not knowing the difference?  Dunno.

(By the way, back to the MRH survey and the comments that options 1 and 2 didn't need a dispatcher, that's may not be the case, "mother may I" has the equivalent of a dispatcher, because the trains are talking to somebody (mother?) to get instructions on where to go, so option 2 also has a "dispatcher".)

Hi all,

there are many different ways that railroads get their wagons from Point A to Point B. In simple terms, this is called Operations. So far Operations (with a capital O)  as discussed on here has been almost totally focussed on the US railroad experience. But there are ways to achieve the same object that were used in different parts of the world. 

So - How about it rest of World?? What's your experience? Or is the Operations topic restricted solely to North American prototype model railroads??  

I like Mr, Fugate's commentary. I think he is right about needing to explain things to those not "in the know."

As a lifelong model railroader, running in circles got boring fast, talked my folks into a handful of turnouts for my Lionel stuff before my 6th birthday and the ops thing was on.  Now I find myself wishing there was a resource to help learn a bit more about ops in general, something more fun to read than a calculus text book perhaps?  I'm looking to hook up with a local modeler who has a bit of patience, and sort of help me progress from my basics into something more realistic. I think I've found that and am thankful for the consideration. SP Inyo Sub, here I come.

Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of railroad ride alongs, mostly switch jobs, and have learned a lot and even some of the terminology, and am at home there. I do read ETT's and Rule books for the info they possess and actually like the things. My HO model railroad interchanges with SP, ATSF and NdeM in southern Arizona, and has since the 1980's when it was started.  ETT's or paperwork from all railroads concerned help keep things real, that and a bit of modelers license make things better. Learning trains is just as much fun as playing trains. Peace.