Adding operations

About 3 weeks ago, my brother and I held a small operating session. Due to the current lack of industries and the necessary sidings, we literally ran one train after the other with myself running the westbound trains and Kevin running the eastbound. Although we had a great time, there was something missing and we knew what it was. Operational switching.

To this end, I have been pondering this for the last couple of weeks.

I began thinking about industries on the modelled area. Problem is, I would need to put sidings in which is something I am just not ready to do at the moment. This lead me to an idea to put strings of waggons out for a branch line type operation. The idea here was that a string of cars could be put out somewhere on the layout as though a branchline railroad would come and pick them up and switch them in the "off stage" modeled area.

I started looking on the internet and very soon found the Mission Mountain Railroad. They operate two branchines off of the BNSF mainline in the area I was modeling. What a bonus.

The one branchline runs from Columbia Falls south to Kalispell. The other branch line runs from Stryker up to Eureka, which is just south of the Canadian boarder. Now this was beginning to look very promising.


In the next article, I will go into more detail on these branchlines and what I found out.

Stay tuned.