Model Railroad Club
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Garden State Central Model Railroad Club |
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| More Yard Switching (2 of 2) In the meantime, you may begin spotting cars at your local industries. Many of these moves will require that you get permission to use the main line track(s) west of RU, and maybe into the JC passenger terminal as a switching lead. The operator at JC (theoretically inside Tower A at the Terminal) will connect your walk-around to his tracks by throwing toggles UP. Naturally in this case of you replacing his Green throttle, he is restricted to only using the Blue one, or the On-Board. When the departing through freight has gotten its road engine coupled up, the air is pumped up and the necessary brake (we test the couplers instead) test made, JC can throw the departure track and other toggles DOWN to let the train leave without affecting what you are doing. Periodically, while you are enjoying all of this ecstasy, a through freight will arrive to enter your yard. You can tell the JC Operator what track you want it to pull in on. usually one of the Orange tracks on the E'port panel, and he can throw the necessary toggles DOWN as he did before for the departures. Since you expected this to happen, of course you made sure that there was an empty track for it. You can use either of the 2 front tracks for arriving trains, even though the front track is also a switching lead for Communipaw, since you will be emptying it right away, first sending the engine(s) to the engine terminal, and spotting the caboose to the caboose track, which is second to the rear most yard track (your thorofare). Now you begin to see why certain tracks are colored orange, and certain are white on your panel. Orange ones are those that you normally (at least TRY to) keep keep cleared, and the white ones are those that you use to classify cars on. There will be times when the yard becomes too crowded with cars. You can then use an engine to transfer a cut of cars (preferable without tacks), WITHOUT a caboose to one of our connecting interchanges, bu pushing them eastwards onto one of the other hidden loops. You can only do this a maximum of 3 times without losing your switching lead at Brill. Remember, you may not get permission to occupy the main line west or RU! Incidentally, you can only occupy the main line west or RU up to the first switch at Phillipsburg without a Train Order; everything east of there is within Yard Limits. When spotting cars to local industries, I like to make up a cut of cars with the engine east of hoppers with GREEN #2's, and west of GREEN #1-3's only. I may take GREEN 4-16's along, depending on the number of cars; too many cars may cramp you in switching those industries, as you first must pull out any cars already at these industries, unless they have car-tacks corresponding to the industries they are located at. It is better to work with fewer cars until you get more experience. Whey you can, shove west onto the Green mainline, and pull east onto the JC freight lead. Take the engine and the odd cars, leave them at the ramp at industry 14, and run up the ramp and pull any empties out of the coal dock (2). Then pull any necessary cars out of industries 1 and 3; you will usually have to leave them momentarily in the passenger terminal while you spot tacked cars back into industries 1 and 3. Then pick them up again from the passenger terminal and spot any 2's onto the coal dock for unloading. You want to do the 2's alone up there, to save your brakeman from having to walk around other cars on the trestle, while coupling and uncoupling; also you don't want your engineer to miss a hand signal and shove a car through the bumper and down onto Harrison Avenue! This is why the coal dock is numbered "2" instead of "16." You can now spot any even-numbered cars on 4-16. Note that you normally will not go into industry 22; these are usually handled by the passenger switcher. But if you do get one for the dairy, don't forget to stop and raise that overhead roller door FIRST! (Turn the water tank...) And close the door whey you're finished, we don't want any flies in our milk. The LAST thing we will do tonight is to remove the tacks from the cars inbound to our industries, and return them to the tack box according to car types. This allows the industries time to load or unload their cars. However, I like to remove the tacks from cars I am spotting inside structures right away; otherwise I might overlook them, or forget to, and then "tomorrow" the next yardman may find tacks on those cars, and not have room to spot new ones. So take a moment to borrow the tack box from Bethlehem, and maybe get a cup of coffee. The cars you picked up, if they have no green tacks, may be spotted directly onto a departure track, or you may wish to classify them, or perhaps send them on a transfer run into the Maternity Ward. You can then continue to make up another westbound through freight, or you may have time to drill Communipaw. To do that, spot the cars with Green odd numbers higher than 11 on an empty track, pull out the cars from industries 13 and up, except for the car-float, which is done separately. Then spot the Communipaw cars, using the front track as a switching lead. Similarly, you can switch industry 22. The car-float is done differently. Firstly, no car longer than 50' is allowed onto the floats without special permission. Assuming that an empty float has been placed by one of our fleet of tugs, you first spot up to 3 cars onto its center track. Then you place 1 car on one side, 2 on the other, 2 more on the first side, 2 more on the second side and 1 last car on the first side. You use the two "reachers" to allow you to do so without running the switch engine onto the apron. This keeps the barge from capsizing, which is not how we wash down our motive power! You would remove any cars from a loaded float in the reverse order, and spot them to a departure track. Almost lastly, we can fire up the coal dumper, and push loaded hoppers over the hump across the "barney" pit and dump the loads of coal into a "barge." The dumper itself will normally handle Athearn 32' 2-bay hoppers easily. Other make cars may cause problems, or may not even fit. Make sure to unplug the power-pack for the dumper when you are finished, and line the switches so that a careless person (other than yourself, of course,) cannot damage either the dumper nor the float-bridge. Don't think it cannot happen, I've done both! You will have by now realized that by leaving the Green tacks in the cars as you spot them properly, you are reminded that portions of your work are completed. You may find that you have more cars than can "fit" onto a particular siding; simply leave them for "tomorrow's" work. But before signing off, please remove the tacks from the cars you worked, and return them to their proper places in the tack-box, so another operator can have as much fun as you did tonight. Then run the switcher back down to the engine terminal, and knock off. If you want to learn more about how a prototype yard is operated, borrow a copy of "Track Planning for Realistic Operation," by John Armstrong, published by Kalmbach; there is a chapter on making cars into trains which describes what the prototype does, and how we can simulate it. "How To Operate Your Model Railroad," by Bruce Chubb, also published by Kalmbach has a chapter on Switching of cars, as well as another about the duties of the people who run the railroad, including Yardmasters. You'll find both of these books enjoyable, and I re-read them periodically. |
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