Operations ideas from BC Hydro

My friend, Colin Dover, intimated to me last night that he builds layouts purely so he can have a place to switch. A couple of years ago, he tore out his representation of Vancouver Waterfront to build his “much simpler” Central Park line of BC Hydro. I put “much simpler” in quotes because, well, it […]

Near miss on the Boundary Sub

On Wednesday evening, I had an opportunity to dispatch on my friend Scott Calvert’s layout. His is a timetable and train order operation, just as the real Boundary was. If you’ve never had an opportunity to participate in a TT&TO operation, I encourage you to come to Vancouver for the annual Railway Modellers’ Meet. This […]

Selkirk Express 2016: An Introduction Timetable and Trainorder

I’m up at the Selkirk Express PNR convention in Salmon Arm, where tomorrow I will be presenting my introductory clinic on timetable and train order operations. As promised, here are the slides and handouts. They are offered under the share alike Creative Commons license.

Turntable Video Posted

Okay, you asked for it! Here is the video showing the operation of the Pembroke turntable. I looked for appropriate turn of the century background music, I really did, but this was the best I could find.

Shaking down the Boundary Sub

My friend Scott invited a bunch of us over today for an informal operating session. This was the first session on the new Boundary Sub. I’ve been helping Scott out with construction occasionally for many years, and it was great to finally see trains running. There are some important lessons from Scott’s first session. Perhaps […]

Carload from Baltic

Chris Mears published an excellent post, entitled Carload from Baltic. Here he very eloquently captures some of the inspiration for my own musings about car forwarding, and particularly the relationship of the railroad to local shippers and receivers. It’s well thought out and written; give yourself a treat and take it in.

Canada Atlantic Way-Bills

Actual paper from the Canada Atlantic is about as rare as hen’s teeth. I don’t collect it, but I do keep an eye on eBay lest some show up, and if nobody else looks like they are buying it, I’ll bid on it to ensure it doesn’t get thrown out. However, I don’t have a […]

More Lessons from Brio

The kids were restless this morning after painting our faces, and so we decided to build a Brio layout and play trains some more. This gave me a chance to try out some of the ideas I’ve been working through since the last session. In particular, I tried out some ideas with different states for […]

More Playing with Brio

As I mentioned, I am using an enforced break from construction to think about car forwarding. My leaning has been toward something similar to what Tony Thompson has described with car pockets and realistic-looking waybills, and I have Mike White’s collection of Tony’s blog postings on my must-read pile. Probably, Tony is way ahead of […]

Car Forwarding Design – Givens and Druthers

I have a surprise trip this week, and so, there will be no physical work on the layout. To get my mind off the reason for the trip, I’ve been thinking about operations. Specifically, what mechanisms am I going to use to generate freight traffic on the layout? As mentioned before, on a small layout, […]