Oregon Joint Line N Scale

[jagged ben]

Man, I was watching that video in order to relax and take my mind off of entitled, annoying customers!

[basementcalling]

This railroad has put the Idaho/Oregon Belt out of business.

Superb. Simply superb.

[sirenwerks]

This railroad has put the Idaho/Oregon Belt out of business.

Superb. Simply superb.

I'm just the opposite, it has me chaffing at getting all of my remodeling done so I can get into the garage to start my Palouse - Klamath Midland.

[Nick Lorusso]

@coldriver I just found your youtube channel a couple of months back, I've been enjoying all the videos.

[nkalanaga]

Sirenwerks:  Your line runs N-S, the OJL runs E-W, are the two of you going to plan, and model, your own interchange?

[reinhardtjh]

I loved running the Monument Tramp. I wish I hadn't missed the last two op sessions. 

[Blazeman]

As one of those customers, wish it worked that way. I understand the realities of situations and sometimes heroic measures can be employed, but that's a rare sometime. Problem is with the people in my company who think it's as simple as sending an engine to grab the car and running it up the track twenty miles to the plant in the next hour.

I guess they look at all our layouts with dozens of idle engines sitting at the round houses and project that to the real world.

[coldriver]

As one of those customers, wish it worked that way. I understand the realities of situations and sometimes heroic measures can be employed, but that's a rare sometime. Problem is with the people in my company who think it's as simple as sending an engine to grab the car and running it up the track twenty miles to the plant in the next hour.

I guess they look at all our layouts with dozens of idle engines sitting at the round houses and project that to the real world.

That sums it up well - there were plenty of times as a yardmaster where I pulled a rabbit out of a hat to get a car to a customer who was truly in dire straits.  But some customers expected expedited handling for almost every car (which certainly wasn't what they were paying for).  And in the worst cases we sometimes had customer traffic people demanding a car immediately, and after we dropped everything to get the car to the customer ASAP the actual workers at the plant refused to accept the car for some reason.  People talk about railroads not wanting to serve single car customers but what it comes down to is when under the gun and faced with a choice, it's far better to have a switch engine spend the next two hours switching out an inbound train which allows 100 carloads to make connections for multiple customers rather than spending the next two hours taking a single car on an emergent basis to an out of the way customer who didn't plan ahead or build sufficient warehousing capacity to allow himself the safety stock to withstand a day or two delay on an arriving boxcar.  Yes, in a perfect world every car would arrive on time - but in the real world there are derailments, blizzards, grade crossing accidents, power outages, broken rails, massive crew layoffs on Super Bowl Sunday, mechanical failures, floods, etc, etc, etc. 

[wazzou]

I remember listening to my Uncle who is now nearly 90, a former agent at Winlock, Raymond and a Hostler's helper at NP's Centralia Roundhouse, all in Washington State.
He's repeatedly told stories of customers who implored train crews to spot cars after hours, but he'd typically do it himself, only because of his sense of responsibility to his community.  It was a different era.

[shark_jj]

Dean, I notice that you are using car tabs.  Can you share the nature of the operation, creation of the tabs, and whether operators prefer them to car cards or switchlists.  Thanks for any insight.

John

[sirenwerks]

Sirenwerks:  Your line runs N-S, the OJL runs E-W, are the two of you going to plan, and model, your own interchange?

Interesting idea but it might create a singularity. Not having a map of the OJL, my line would erase part of the SP&S and all of the GN from the Inside Gateway and extend further into California than the GN did, and its northern terminus would be situated to take on run through from the MILW. So it might erase some of the parts of the OJL in the process.

[nkalanaga]

Yeah, that could be a problem.  Can't interchange with a railroad that doesn't exist in your universe...

[sirenwerks]

Yeah, that could be a problem.  Can't interchange with a railroad that doesn't exist in your universe...

You probably can, I'm just not Eisntein.

[nkalanaga]

I'm not sure even Einstein could do THAT.  He was a genius about space-time, but as far as I know, all of his work dealt with one universe.  We need a new genius to figure out how to run trains between universes.

[Rossford Yard]

Dean, I notice that you are using car tabs.  Can you share the nature of the operation, creation of the tabs, and whether operators prefer them to car cards or switchlists.  Thanks for any insight.

John

Since Dean hasn't answered, and as someone who has been in operating sessions there, maybe I can answer.  I love the system, and think most operators there do, as well.  As to creating the tabs, Dean I think has a You Tube video of that.  I know he started with colored dots from any business supply store, switching to tabs made of H or I beam styrene plastic.  His era's freight cars all have roofwalks and he sizes for perfect fit.  Other car types sit loose somewhere, but oddly, with so few derailments, they never fall off.

It has obvious advantages in N over car number reading, and eliminates the "oh, any box car there will do" factor in other simplified switching systems.  Having run his Monument Yard many times, it is a neat feeling to see the same color tabs lined up on various tracks, and knowing your work (for now) is done.  He has the "playbook" posted above the yard so you know which inbounds to switch for.  If you get ahead of schedule, or trains run late, you can just tick off the next one on the list to keep busy.

I starting to fit my cars (modern era, no roofwalk) with the dots, using round with different colors to indicate which general zone they go to, and sometimes additional number or letter to ID a particular track for delivery.  I have north (white), south (red) east (blue) and west zones (yellow/orange). My outbound loads can go two directions, and I use a white sqare tab for north (suggesting snow) and none for south, although I was considering blue and gray.  Not sure my ideas on color associations would work for everyone, but I like them!

At any rate, between Dean (congenial and fun) the layout (large and spectacular, with no derailments of the track caused type) the operations scheme (lots of different trains) and the ops system (tabs) his sessions are the most fun of any in DFW.  Yes, I know some folks prefer more prototypical systems with lots of paperwork, etc. and Rail Ops and a few others seem to work very well, I prefer less stress and more ease of operations, so it feels perfect to me.  After a while, you don't even notice the tabs as a distraction, which some would assume would be another drawback to the system.