The Mill Loop

[Tad_T]

My Daddy’s in a bad way. I’ll be back later.

[Tad_T]

Before I take the track off of the layout, I need to do some other stuff.

When we start defining the layout in Operations Pro, we need to know some critical information.

One of the things we need to know is exactly how long that our Tracks are at our various Locations on the layout. We also need to know how many Cars each track can hold.

The reason that those terms are bolded is that they will become important as we go.

Let's take the tissue mill, for instance. The left hand track, we'll call Tissue Trk 1. This track is 12 inches of straight. It's pretty easy to figure out how many scale feet that is. it is 160 N scale feet long.

When you define your cars in Ops Pro, one of the attributes that you will define is length. Say you define a 50' boxcar. When Ops Pro is figuring space for the car, it will automatically add four feet to the length of each car to account for the couplers.

This means that your 50' boxcar needs 54' of track space, It also means that three 50' boxcars take 162 feet of space.

When we put cars on the layout, we can see how many cars will actually fit.



We are looking to the East on the layout.

In the foreground is "Tissue Trk 1." We can see that three boxcars will actually fit on the straight section. We'll have to do further testing to see if we can reliably couple and uncouple there.

The next track is "Tissue Trk 2." Three boxcars also fit on that spur. That track has a longer straight section. Coupling shouldn't be an issue.

The third track with three boxcars is the "New Mill."

The "Bag Plant" can hold three boxcars.




The "Old Mill" can hold four boxcars.



What that tells us is that we have spots for up to 16 50' boxcars on five tracks at four locations. That would be the maximum number of boxcars that fit at all of our industries that require boxcars.

[Tad_T]

Don't know how much it matters for roadbed track. But when I did a layout on 2" foam I leveled it all out first. After I had my track outline I would take a 24" straight edge along the center line. You see hills and dips. I sanded down the hills and filled the dips. Then did cork and code 55.

I don't know if it matters with Unitrack, either. I guess we will find out. I'll look at it.

Thanks!

If you are actually planning on using Kato switches, particularly the 4's, you want to look at the 'fix' for the inset of the points in the stock rail before anything goes permanent.

It's not that hard and if fixes a rather miserable design flaw, a movement into the diverging side is very derailment prone.

I do plan on using the Kato switches.  The main layout has all #6's. I will be using #4's in the yard. I built that as a proof of concept with what I had. Once I built tit and drew it up, I realized that is backwards from how it needs to be. The ladder needs to be on the other side. I was one LH #4 short to build it the way it needs to be built. I need to put in an order.

I plan on working over all over the turnouts and crossovers before I reinstall them, Ala John Sing.

https://www.pbase.com/atsf_arizona/kato_4_turnout_tuning&page=all

Thanks!

[Tad_T]

Boxcars are not the only cars that we will be moving on the Mill Loop.

The two tracks between the Tissue Mill and the New Mill are chemical tracks.




Those two tracks are representing all that was between the two mills as shown below.




There’s no way that we can fit anything resembling that in the space we have available.

What can do is have dedicated spots that have to be switched. The two tracks at the very end were for chlorine. I am unsure what specific commodities were unloaded at the other tracks.

You can go as far down the rabbit hole as you want with chemicals at a paper mill. I decided that I am not going to do that. I have no idea exactly what mix and proportion of what chemicals were actually used. I really don’t think that we need to get that far in the weeds.

A lot of chlorine was used. I have several Atlas tank cars that are chlorine tank cars and are so marked. We know that there were dedicated tracks to offload chlorine. That is one specific chemical that we will have.  The other chemical tank cars will simply be loaded with Chemical. The covered hopper cars will be load with Dry Chem.




The left hand Chem Trk will hold three cars. A chlorine tank car, a chemical tank car, and a dry chem covered hopper.




The right hand Chem Trk will hold four cars. A chlorine tank car, a chemical tank car, a dry chem covered hopper, and a “fillers” tank car. Fillers are susbstances such as kaolin clay and titanium dioxide.

The chemical tracks at the Old Mill and the Kraft Mill are cramped right now. When I get to the next module in the peninsula, the tracks on the entire right side will be reworked. We have to work with what we have for right now.




At the Old Mill Chem Track we can’t fit three cars even if we use a two bay covered hopper.






This will work.



As will this.



I know how we can handle this. The spot at the end of the track will also be a dedicated chlorine spot. The second spot we will split between chemical tank cars and dry chem covered hoppers.

We only have a short spur with one spot at the Kraft Mill.




A 50’ tank car will barely fit.

[Tad_T]

A four bay covered hopper will not fit.




A two bay covered hopper will fit.

At the Tissue Mill, Old Mill, and New Mill we have three spots for chlorine tank cars, 2.5 spots for chemical tank cars, 2.5 spots for dry chem covered hoppers, and one spot for filler tank cars.

At the Kraft Mill we will also split the spot. I’ll show you how to do that when we set up the locations.

That gives a total of ten spots on the layout for chemical cars.

Along with the 16 boxcar spots that we identified before, we have a total of 26 spots on the Mill Loop.

[OldEastRR]

This is coming along really well. I like how you condensed the prototype trackage yet kept the overall look and operation of the real thing. I'll be watching to see if you try to duplicate the prototype buildings.

[Tad_T]

This is coming along really well. I like how you condensed the prototype trackage yet kept the overall look and operation of the real thing. I'll be watching to see if you try to duplicate the prototype buildings.

Thank you, sir.

[Tad_T]

Another thing that I have done in preparation for removing the track is go around the layout and makes some additional markings/notes to help me position where I am going to poke holes in my foam.



Using a Sharpie, blue marks are for power connections, red are for turnout/switch control, black is for insulated joiners.

I also took some preliminary measurements for building mock-ups.

[Tad_T]

We're almost ready to start setting up Operations Pro to run traffic on the Mill Loop.

Before we do that, I would like to point those who are following along and are interested in Operations Pro to some resources. There are lots more resources about JMRI that can be found, including videos if you like those. I tend to not. I don't like to listen to a whole bunch of rambling to find out just a thing or two.

JMRI Operations Pro is a very flexible program. It is actually a suite of programs. Later we will be delving into different parts of JMRI, including some that I have never fooled with.

For now we are just going to work with Operations Pro.

Below are a few resources for Operations Pro that I have found helpful.

If you do not have JMRI and would like to download it for free: JMRI Download.

The JMRI Operations Manual. Guaranteed to fry brain cells.

The JMRI Users group.io page.

You can get very responsive help from many nice people including Mr. Dan Boudreau, the Operations Pro developer. He even added a feature that I requested.

As I mentioned before, Mr. Dennis Haynes wrote an excellent tutorial for Ops Pro:

Using JMRI Operations, A Worked Example

Mr. Pete Johnson wrote some excellent How To's. These are bite/byte sized outlines of how to do specific tasks in Operations Pro.

JMRI Operations How To Files

Pete is a very knowledgeable guy and is very helpful. He is very active helping anyone who asks on the JMRI Users group.io page.


From one of the multiple versions of the JMRI Manual that can be found online, but still useful:

Using JMRI to Operate Trains, A Trip Through Operations.

Maybe some of y'all might find those resources useful. Maybe you have some different or possibly better resources.  If you do, feel free to post them.

[Tad_T]

Another resource that I forgot to add:

JMRI Operations Pro Wiki

[Tad_T]

 I removed all of the track from the layout in preparation for painting, hole poking, and wiring.




A quick and dirty coat from a $2.00 can of “oops” paint from Home Depot.

[OldEastRR]

You are really charging ahead on this, congrats! There was a long gap there after you put up the plan variations and asked for input. Kinda interesting that it's happening in the summer, when usually model RR activity levels bottom out. All other TRW postings have been very sparse, for instance. Keep on going!!

Probably not on your radar now, but do you have ideas on how to expand the layout to replicate even more of the AD&N?

[Tad_T]

You are really charging ahead on this, congrats! There was a long gap there after you put up the plan variations and asked for input. Kinda interesting that it's happening in the summer, when usually model RR activity levels bottom out. All other TRW postings have been very sparse, for instance. Keep on going!!

Probably not on your radar now, but do you have ideas on how to expand the layout to replicate even more of the AD&N?

Thank you, sir.

There was a whole lot of life stuff and house remodeling, etc. associated with the move and all. That all kind of got in the way of railroading for a while.

The main reason that I am making progress in the summer is because it is pretty damned hot. I’m usually running a bush hog or a dozer in the morning. I am working on clearing 10 acres of land. I try to get off of the machine by about 1:00 PM. Since it’s my land and my machines, my boss doesn’t have a problem with that. Then I usually take a shower and work on something railroad related for two or three hours in the afternoon before my wife and stepson get home. When it cools off some, I will probably slow down a little because I‘ll probably work longer. Then it will start raining and I’ll have some more inside time. Cyclical, you know.

If things work as I would like, this will be the first “module” of the All Day & Night. I plan on building to the right on the map. The next module would contain the Chemical Plant. Then keep adding to the right, the Stud Mill and the Plywood Mills. Hopefully this is the start of what will wind up as the central peninsula of my “big” layout.

[Tad_T]

I got to looking at my initial design for my Yard & Staging.



I found a few problems.

Since Pond Pass Yard needs to be worked from this side, the ladder is backwards. It should be on this side for ease of access. That would also place the longer yard tracks further away from the operator. This makes the cars on the further tracks more visible. With the yard above, the cars on the far tracks would be obscured.

Another thing is there are no dedicated staging tracks, just a yard body. That’s just not going to work. Cars need some place to come from and go to.

I have been sorting through all of the railroad stuff that I have the last few weeks. I found a box of painted Unitrack that I picked up in the past. It had a couple of more #4L turnouts in it. I sat down at the kitchen table and came up with this.


 

Sorry for the poor phone photo, but I think that you can get the idea. I’ll get it drawn up and added to the layout in a few days.

If you notice, in addition to flipping the yard ladder, I also inserted a #4L turnout prior to the start of the ladder. This gives us two tracks separated from the yard body that are the same length as the two longest tracks in the yard. These two tracks will be designated as staging tracks.

The idea is to have enough capacity in this module that we can move it down the peninsula a couple of times as we build additional modules.  It still has to fit into a workable footprint. With all eight tracks, the width from outside edge to outside edge of the roadbed is 10 1/2”. This will all fit onto a 6’ long x 14-15” wide module. I think that would be workable.




In this picture we have nine nominally 50’ boxcars of mixed brand and type.

This is our longest track and will be designated as PPY-1

When we measure and check each of our yard racks we come up with:

PPY-1 = 38” = 506’ = 9 50’ XM.
PPY-2 = 34” = 453’ = 8 50’ XM.
PPY-3 = 29” = 386’ = 7 50’ XM.
PPY-4 = 24” = 320’ = 5 50’ XM.
PPY-5 = 19” = 253’ = 4 50’ XM.
PPY-6 = 17” = 226’ = 4 50’ XM.

I’ll imagine that I will round those down to the nearest five feet.

Using our nominal 50’ boxcar as our average car, this gives us a capacity of 37 cars in the yard. I could squeeze a few more cars, one per track if I took the rerailer out from between the wye and the approach to the yard ladder.

I’m not going to do that because of Murphy.  When the module is actually built, I may be able to squeeze a little more length into the yard, but we will have to see.

The addition of the two staging tracks is cool. Those two tracks are the same length as PPY 1&2. When we designate them as staging, we’ll probably just call them both 450’. That will give us two staging tracks that will hold eight cars apiece.

[Tad_T]

I have been working with JMRI, both Operations Pro and Decoder Pro, but I have always done it on a Mac.  A couple of years ago I bought a Windows laptop for work.  There have been some railroad related programs that I wanted to use that were only available on Windows.  I thought since I had this pretty good laptop I didn't use anymore, I should make it a dedicated railroad laptop.

I installed JMRI and migrated my Decoder Pro files. That went really well. I had no problem getting my Sprog3 hooked up and reading and programming locomotives.

I wanted to do a new/clean setup for Operations Pro on this computer. So, here we go.

Remember the resources above, such as:

How To: Add a Profile



Then you need to select an Active Profile.





Then you will see this:



I have to go and set all of this up.  I don't know if anyone would be interested in seeing all of that.