What a great post!

I really enjoyed reading this.  Very well written.  I'm far from an expert but what you have done seems like a great solution.

barging in

I don't understand your problem but probably it's because all I know about railroad barges is that you don't want to capsize them by getting the load too far off-center.

Is it necessary to off-load all the cars before you on-load the out-going cars?  If not, why can't you just off-load the left barge track (should I say port track) and then load the same track with outbound cars.  Then unload the middle track and fill it up with out-bound - then the right track.

If you can do this your yard in photo 1 is big enough?

Art

--

Hi Art-

Barging in?  Really Art?  You should be ashamed In short I could operate the carfloat in the manner you describe and it had crossed my mind but there are two reasons I didn't do it:

I'm not aware of a float operation in the NYC area that did this on a regular basis.  They were all off/all on operations based on what I know.  I'm sure there may be a one off exception to this somewhere that someone can dig up but in my quest to stick relatively close to proto-plausibility this wouldn't be something I would want to do on a regular basis.

Secondly, and this is more personal preference than anything, that type of operation is VERY boring to me.  To load/unload the carfloat would take a TON of moves by my count just to swap out the cars on the float...that is a bit too Timesaver-ish for me!  Using the traditional method moves are closer to what a prototype would do and give me more of a "real" feel to my operations.

Thanks to you both for reading (I appreciate the positive comments Blue) and I appreciate the feedback!

~rb

With what little I know

With what little I know based on watching Tim's Videos, and hium running the layout at shows, I'm kinda thinking along the lines of what Art said.

Are you considering holding any cars when you switch the floats? 

And if so, you could reduce the yard by one track, and give yourself a little bit of elbow room for more scenery.

Can you also show again the yard lead  in a different picture? Is there room for another turnout up there (curved, maybe?)

I know, questions, questions! 

Nope, that works

Nope, that picture works fine.

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear. Watching Tim, I was struck at how he holds cars on his layout for switching (it's a skill that I'm gradually becoming less and less nervous about). It's this observation, not his physical layout, that was my point.

Along the lines as Art mentioned, you could easily switch the float with your original yard by pulling an outbound string, holding that, than pull an inbound string. Put the inbound away, than put the outbound on the float.

I have no idea of that's how they did it, or did they empty the entire float before refilling? And if it's the latter, than just one more AD/track than your original yard would allow you to pull one float track, hold it, pull another, hold it, and than the last before parking it all on the AD/sorting track.

To that effect, I could easily see expanding your yard a track (or maybe even two) to suficent size to hold the outgoing in two or three tracks, and the inbound in one or two. A curved turnout, to the extreme left (leading to the yard)  in your above picture would make the flow smoother, gain you some space, and align the increased yard to a more visually appealing layout. And, would allow you a bit more room for scenery than the full compound you have now.

I hope that makes sense, and be sure to rely on your own judgement here! 

it's the open space here between the yard and the float tracks

that bugs me from a scanic standpoint, but than again it would be a perfect spot for yard office/harbor master office like the B&O one in last months' RMC.

I'm surprised that they did completely unload the barge

Before reloading.  When I worked in the harbor, the usual method for crane operators on the container ships was to unload the deck, then a hatch would be removed and they would start unloading below deck.  As soon as theyhad unloaded one stack to the bottom, the operator would begin to "double up," that is put an outgoing load in the empty hold, then grab a loaded inbound can to put on the truck for the container stack in the yard.  The trucks would bring up an outgoing load and bring back an inbound until the hold was unloaded. 

Car Float loading and unloading

One had to be extremely careful on how carfloats were loaded and unloaded because of the dynamics of maintaining balance on the carfloat. One of those considerations is that unloading a complete track without some compensating unloading on the other side of the car float would create a serious list on one side which could lead to serious consquences for the carfloat and it's remaining freight cars. And if you don't do this carefully you could easily have individual cars topple off the carfloat and ruin not only your entire day but also upset the schedules for the delivery of the cargos on other carfloats as well.

Let us assume the car float is loaded with 17 cars on its three tracks. This would mean you have 6 cars on each of the outer tracks and 5 on the center track. That would mean that 5/17 of the total weight would be on the center track whch would also mean that we can disregard this weight snce its removal will not create an imbalance. In effect anything on the center of the car flaot will not affect its list. But removal of 6 cars from either side while leaving the 6 cars on the other side of the car foat will create a serious list. Also consider the fact that center track is the last one to be emptied and the first to be loaded because of the configuration of the track (i.e you can't access the center track until one of the side tracks is emptied).

I am pretty sure the solution was found by trial and error at some point in the distant past since car float service already existed in the late 19th Century. The solution to this problem is quite simple. Pick a side track and pull 3 cars of the 6 off the carfloat and leave the other 3 on the float itself. Then pull the 6 cars in the other side completely off the carfloat. Then remove the remaining 3 cars on the first side track off the float. After the side tracks are emptied, pull the 5 cars off the center track. To load the car float you reverse the process.

It is pretty easy for model railroaders to forget this as we don't have carfloats that have realistic operating characteristics to deal with. However if you ever get a chance to watch carfloats in action you'll note that loading and unloading really affect the way the carfloat supported on water lists. That is also why locomotives rarely ran onto the carfloats unless they were compartively light and that really wasn't possible until diesels came along. Locomotives usually used idler cars to load and unload car floats for that reason.

Container ships can unload their cargos differently because you can pretty much access any stack you want without seriously affecting the balance of the ship. Car floats can't be accessed the same way.

Irv

Russ, Scarpia, Art - Rich is

Russ, Scarpia, Art -

Rich is right, in NY harbor the "modus operandi" was empty the float first, load it second. Of course, in the world of rail-marine, nothing is ever an absolute, so say for instance in the wilds of Saskatchewan, they did it differently. Also, float bridges were built (overbuilt, some might say) to handle the extreme loads (mostly roll and pitch) placed upon them, and thus simple wooden pontoon float bridges have advantages over electrically operated steel ones, but I digress.....This thread isn't about loading/unloading a carfloat.

Rich, your new yard and it's lead lead looks good, and you were right to make the change (regardless of weather it was precipitated by the "10 Comandments"!) - As a general rule in float yard design, your longest unobstructed track should hold one track's worth of cars. In the real world, it was actually one track per entire carfloat, but none of us, unless it's a club or you're a millionaire, has that kind of room. My yard, which is about 10 feet long, just about has enough room to do the job correctly (I'll find out in about a week when we run the first shakedown). I can hold 15 cars per track, but only 10 cars will fit without fouling each end. If I had built my yard with that in "design tennant" in mind, MAYBE I could have done it "right", but I built my yard based off of a Val map for the yard, and all the turnouts I ended up installing (about 45 just in a 12 foot long/2 foot wide yard area) eat up a lot of room! Oh, did I mention that most (notice I did not say all) railroads in the Harbor used idler cars ahead of the engine as a reacher? (and not because the engine was so heavy that it couldn't operate over the float bridge, that is a myth).

Good job, keep up the progress,

RAH

Good design in . . . .

Design that is functional in YOUR situation.  By going with the compound yard ladder you gave yourself more track, more switching possibilities, and the ability to divid your yard easily into incoming and outgoing sections.  I'd say that it worked, and worked well, so sit back, relax, and enjoy.  Of course, those staggered track ends might give you some trouble, but i expect they are going to be corrected at some point. 

As Irv has outlined above

As Irv has outlined above there is a prototypical basis for the all on/all off method of loading and unloading carfloats so I do need to work around that limitation. 

Scarpia, some responses to your points:

Working off the all on/all off principle I could have a single, long unloading spur to clear the carfloat as suggested but my thinking was the additional capacity will give me the flexibility to have a small section of the end of one spur as a team track.  The thinking behind that comes from this series of images on Philip Goldstein's excellent BEDT webpage. 

With a little realignment, I could create a space between the 3rd and 4th yard track by aligning the 3 leftmost yard tracks closely to the water's edge and the other 3 running parallel to the stone retaining wall along the backdrop.  This should allow the tracks to diverge enough to put in a dirt or cobblestone driveway allowing truck access to the end of the spur.  So not only would I my yard capacity increase, I would be able to get an additional industry to serve.  I thought it was a pretty good bonus!

On scenery, it's funny you mention the RMC cover; I was thinking that had a neat look for my layout as well, but I already have a structure in mind as a yard office.  In Hartford last July I purchased the Martins Creek Station structure from Stella Scale Models that is going to be my yard/marine office.  I was planning on putting it between the layout edge and the carfloat lead as the two yard tracks in my 2nd picture will probably be in asphalt as the foundation directly to the left of it will be for a freight house with truck access on the near side of the building. 

Vehicles will need to use that area to back up to the freight house, turn their trucks around etc so I thought company offices would be best served closer to the carfloat itself.  But that could all change, I'm looking to nail down the last of the track plan and bulletproof the wiring.  None of the scenic elements are firm in my mind at this point.

Lastly, the yard will use a lot of the same scenic elements that your CV yard on Chainsaw II employs.  While we are modeling completely different locales, I will be stealing a lot of  the elements of how you broke up your scene.  Where your yard has a road running along the edge of the backdrop, I will be installing a retaining wall (you can see it in one of my original images) and building a 3-4" deep back alley scene along it to give the scene some depth and the viewer something else to look at besides yard cinders. 

In the foreground where you have your pond/freight house vignette my scene will be of a sludgy industrial canal complete with a small yard office and tool shed.  Again, the scene will provide for a break from the monotony that the scenic elements of the yard might create.

Well, somehow this post got VERY long but thanks for bringing up some good points!

~rb

Good Grief

Good grief, I wouldn't use mine as an example for anything other than what not to do! There's been no rhyme or reason on mine other than to practice building techinques, the "design" has been off the cuff.

Overall, it sounds like you've got a solid idea of what you want, and what you want to acheive here, and that's the important part. I say put down your track, and switch it out a few times just to see how it will "play" out for you before gluing the track down solid.

I like the looks of that building you chose, and in the location you've noted, the single story building should work fine. The stonework on it looks appropiate for a harbor area.

I'm looking forward to more updates - I do think the whole car float thing is fascinating!

Idler cars

Kind of a digression, but I operated a guys layout ( Carl Senftleben's Atlantic Shoals Railway (HO) who used specially made idler cars.. looked kind of like a skeleton log car. It was a nice operating wrinkle to have to use them to put cars on the float. The picture is of the small yard with the float that I operated during my first of two times visiting the layout. Its an older pic I think.. it predates some expansion he did and the special cars are not present in the yard.

btw- layout was featured in the may 2005 model railroader.

Chris

Yard layout taht used to be at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

This is an area you might want to look as there used to be 4 float bridges at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn up until late 1950s/early 1960's. The bridges were torn down by 1968 and replaced by two new ones in 1999. The yards looked like this:

Currently there are two yards that can handle the two current float bridges. This yard was serviced by the New Haven back in the days when 1,000 cars were handl;ed each day.

You'' note each yard track could handle 10-12 cars and could easily handle a complete load off a carfloat and another set of cars to be sent out on the carfloat.

Irv

Actual Cost V Model cost

something to think about when "we" modellers get of on the tangent of we have extra bench work so lets put down some extra track is the true cost and would a railroad do it. Below is some pricing taken from another web site (I am not going to re-invent the wheel here) of a true cost per mile. Obviously this is not going to translate exactly to your situation, but I guess what I am saying here is while it may be easier with the extra track would the prototype lay in three extra tracks that will be empty 100% of the time?

Average cost of a mile of American Railroad (193?)

From a 1930's edition of William G. Raymond's Elements of Railroad Engineering. (I copied the data but didn't think to record the book's publication date.)

This estimate is for essentially the same line as the one in 1908, but the total cost comes out more than double. The figures and costs for grading are identical in both estimates, but changing prices plus the addition of tie plates doubled the cost of the track. The allowance for stations and engine facilities is much increased, while the allotment for equipment has been raised from $3,000 a mile to no less than $17,000, 21% of the total cost.

Right of way                                              $ 3,600.00

Terminal Stations, land, etc.                             7,000.00

Grading: 20,000 yds earth at 30 cents                     6,000.00

          2,000 yds rock at $1.25                         2,500.00

Bridges and Culverts                                      6,000.00

Track: 3000 ties at $1.25 delivered        $ 3,750.00

       Rails, 126 tons @ $40 delivered       5,040.00

       Joint bars. 20,500 pounds at

          3 cents per pound delivered          615.00

       Tie plates, 66,000 lbs at

          2.5 cents delivered                1,650.00

       Bolts and locks, 2,560 pounds at 

          4 cents per pound delivered          100.00

       Spikes, 7,300 pounds at 2.75 cents

          per pound delivered                  200.00

       Track laying                          1,730.00

       Total track                                       13,085.00


Sidings and yards, distributed portion                    4,450.00

Ballast, gravel, 2,000 cubic yards at 25 cents(??)        2,850.00

Fencing                                                     750.00

Telegraph                                                   800.00

Water supply                                                650.00

Stations, ordinary, and section houses                    4,250.00

Roundhouses and terminal buildings, shops, etc.           2,300.00

Equipment                                                17,000.00

Engineering                                               1,745.00

Legal and general                                           680.00

Interest                                                  4,415.00


Total cost                                              $78,075.00

In the case of car float operations, they would.

I was under the mistaken notion that a cut of cars could be pulled off one side of a float without upsetting the barge.  Aparantly from this discussion, it can't be done that way on the prototype.  It is essential for the prototype to completely unload the barge before they can begin to reload it to avoid the danger of capsizing.  The value of the freight that would simply not go to that particular railroad if they did not build a yard that is seemingly bigger than necessary gives them a simple choice.  Do they want the business or not?

Track Usage

Hi Neil-

Thanks for your post.  To further elaborate upon what Russ' point, these tracks would not be empty.  To your point, they would not be a place that cars would be stored on actively but they would be used regularly.  In my case it would be every time the railroad loaded/unloaded the carfloat which in my tentative operating plan would be twice a day (once per session).

I did however have some time in the past 36 hours to fiddle with my track layout a bit.  I have temporarily secured my track in place with paper clips cut in half and with the track realigned to allow for a small team track space.  Here is what it looks like now:

I played around with it a bit and the new arrangement definitely has merit.  I now have the flexibility to unload (what will be) a 12-15 car carfloat without issue.  I do however have one last issue:  I really dislike the way the 3rd and 4th yard tracks (counting from the track just to the right of the 4 boxcars) come off the turnouts.  Something about the track arrangement just looks non-prototypical in a way that I can't put my finger on.  I think as an alternative I may change the ladder of tracks 4-6 with a left handed turnount coming off the diverging route of the 1st turnout giving my ladder a little smoother look.  Once done I will try realigning the 4th track to run parallel to the 3rd, shifting the team track area (where the truck is parked) to between tracks 4 and 5.  I think that might give it a little less of a gimmicky look and feel.

Finally  I took a quick track level shot to make sure things seemed spaced appropriately and were in proportion.  I think when compared with the picture of the prototype the arrangement compares favorably (prototype photo courtesy of J. Held via the Brooklyn Easter District Terminal Railroad section of http://www.freightrrofnyc.org)

I've been a bit lax on making progress lately and the past few days have been energizing.  Thanks for following along!

~rb

I just have one question.

Would the prototype have put the team track in the center of the ladder?  It seems to me that for safety reasons, they would have had the team track over against the rock wall, and possibly put a fence between it and the rest of the ladder to keep truckers from wandering in front of a switch crew.

Compound ladders used in staging yard design

Thank you for the comments back. I by no means meant that there would not be a reason to do it. I truly do not know anything about barge operations.

below is a copy of my own compound ladder"s" to allow more storage in my staging yard.

Guessing

Rich,

here's a roughed up idea for you. I don't think it's to the same size as your area, as I was just guessing. 12" grid.

Only thing I would do there..

Only thing I would do there is to flip the turnout in the middle.. that is (counting from the top) have track 5 diverge from track 4 rather then vice-versa. This will avoid a S curve. Probably not a big deal but it looks like it would be easy enough to do.

Unloading and Ladders

Russ -

No it was not a "rule" that they couldn't unload a float like you thought (one complete track at a time) and worry about capsizing, it was just good (read; smart) practice. The floatbridges, as I said earlier, we meant to deal with EXTREME stresses, but it just made life easier for everyone if they "bridged" the carfloat and the float bridge with the cars on the port side, then went back and pulled the middle, used it as a handle for pulling the starboard side, then pulled the rest of the cars of the port side. And as I also mentioned, every railroad and location did things just a little differently that the other guy......Luckily, we modelers do not have to follow these rules unless we want to. I'm one of those guys!

Rich -

I don't see the track ladder as looking funny, but I agree with the others, you do want to try to avoid any nasty   s-curves on a ladder if you can. Of course, sometimes the prototype really had them, but you are luckily since you aren't following a strict prototype plan! Space is your only enemy! My only concern is that the width of the team track isn't realistically wide enough, but you also don't have enough room from what I can tell to make it any wider. What I mean by that is that, while you can get a truck inbetween the tracks with room to spare, it doesn't appear that it could execute a k-turn to get out without backing straight out.  I know you know what a real "NYC-style" team track looked like, so I say just try to follow by example. You are on the right track (no pun intended, btw), and it's a good addition to the plan. Things are looking great!

Thanks for the replies guys. 

Thanks for the replies guys.  My thoughts in no particular order:

Neil - I used a similar ladder design in constructing my staging yard.  It was amazing to me how much trackwork you could fit into a small space using a creative ladder design.  When I build my "real" layout (the D&H between Mecanicsville and Oneonta in the mid-70's) I know some creative trackwork will be needed for my staging yards.

Scarpia - Your design is esthetically (spellcheck don't fail me now!) more pleasing, more elegant, and is probably closer to what the prototype would do in the same situation.  However, with a little tweaking I can get a "good enough" result using what's on hand.  Had I the time/resources to hand lay some turnouts I would be pulling up track and doing just that.  However given my time restraints the time needed to do that can be better allocated elsewhere given the fact that I can get acceptable if cruder results with what I have.

Chris - I was thinking the same thing in my post here:

You just articulated it better.  I guess great minds think alike but the greater mind can share his thoughts in a coherent way .

Russ/Ralph - You both make a valid point.  Adding a team track was not a given in this redesign of my yard, it was more of a "oh look what I found, space for a team track" but to your points it's almost like I'm putting in one of those industries that doesn't have a driveway that you see on some layouts.  I'm going to drop it all together as I already have plenty of traffic generated from my other industries on the layout and the freight house/transload area that can be seen in the background of these shots (you can just make out the foundation of the building) will have space set aside for the same types of operations so it's not a great loss in my mind.

I haven't figured it out yet but I'm going to put a scenic element of some kind (a floodlight tower, electric box etc.) to break up the monotony of the "cinder prairie" that the rest of the yard will have without a little character added.

Thanks again for the replies.

~rb

LOL.. thanks but I was

LOL.. thanks but I was referring to Scarp's plan..

Chris

Follow Up

Hi All-

I think a lot of us are guilty of posting our problems but then never showing how we resolve things so I thought it a good time to share a follow up shot of the work I did to my carfloat yard.  Progress on the layout has been a bit slow lately however I was able to finish up the track on this corner of the layout.  I've evened up the ends of the yard tracks and I'm amazed at the increased yard capacity I've been able to come up with.  Here is a look at before and after shots:

BEFORE

AFTER

The learning experience for me was quite dramatic.  In the same square footage I was able to GREATLY increase my yard capacity.  My traditional yard could hold approximately 15 or so cars before every track was chocked to the gills whereas my me arrangement can hold the same number of cars on just one side of the ladder.  If you are out there and working with limited space (and who isn't really) looking at alternatives to the traditional yard ladder should be considered. 

Thanks for reading!

~rb