I believe I have stumbled upon a satisfactory way to organize a little switching ops to keep me entertained.
After spending a few enjoyable sessions with the Newport and Rock Falls, where I have the capacity to bump about 6 to 8 cars into 3 industries, plus a house track, I decided it was time to come up with a system that allows me to serve the industries I've included on this layout. (which as
@OldEastRR has pointed out, are in the habit of switching themselves!) In order to keep things mixed up rolling stock wise, I'm calling the three sidings at Cornersville, clockwise from the top, The Co-Op, the House Track, and the Team Track. I reckon I'll need to add a ramp to the Team Track, and perhaps an overhead crane, and a bit more detail around the freight house, to justify flat cars and gondolas being loaded and unloaded there. The Co-op will be receiving boxcars and covered hoppers mostly.
Down at Jerome, the truck dump tipple will provide some coal hopper traffic.
Since I don't have a yard in which to block cars and send them off into the wider world, we'll rely on a way freight to deliver the goods, which will then be switched locally by that most retro of retro locomotives, the erstwhile Fairbanks Morse Switcher from Minitrix. Note that for the purposes of this essay, everything is equipped with truck mounted Rapidos, because I am at heart a nonconformist. Also, I find that on my ridiculous 7-1/2" radius industrial tracks, these work just fine. I do all uncoupling digitally, usually with my forefinger and thumb.
In this view, we see the way freight coming across the bridge, and preparing to swap the cut of cars on the branch line for a pre-determined set of cars in its own consist. Our road power today is a couple of Atlas Roco classics, a factory painted FA-2 paired with a GP9 that I painted with a roller. Based on the available track between the upper main and the industrial switch, It's possible to shift as many as 6 cars in a cut.
The road train has a total of 18 cars in its consist, so I can identify which of them will be in play for this day's switching, then switch them out. I'm using my old switch list paperwork to keep track of what goes where.
The first move is to fetch the outbound cars off the branch line, and then pull the setouts from the train and drop them off for the local. The train gets reassembled, and the road freight gets underway.
Thanks to the miracle of Peco power routing turnouts, the local switcher can park on the industrial track until the swap has been made, then it emerges, couples up to the newly arrived cars, and then it too can go on about its work, complete with a caboose in tow.
So, using this system, I can have a whopping 30 cars in circulation up on the upper loops! (6 cars at the industries, 6 cars in the Arr/Dep track, 6 cars to be swapped in from the road freight, and 12 cars to be dragged around until it's their turn. And the best part is, I can run the road freight around the loop continuously without it getting in the way of the switching, and I can run "pretend" mileage with switcher by running laps between switching each industry. This allows me to drag out an ops session to last long enough to enjoy several cocktails!
The next thing I need to work out is to determine which cars in the road freight are due to be switched. It could be as simple as having three established blocks of 6, but that seems like no fun after a minute. I probably want to come with some sort of randomizer that makes me have to occasionally switch the road freight to set it up for the next go round. Maybe some sort of roll the dice scenario, or a system that relies on the daily lottery numbers. I dunno.
Maybe one day I'll build and extension that lets me switch trains from the upper to the lower levels, but until then, this scheme will let me enjoy watching a variety of vintage rolling stock do its thing, and still scratch the old switching itch. More news as it happens.
Lee
