The Blue Train (Prototype)

Although not “model” train related, this post is “prototype” train related.

Earlier this month on the 4th, 5th and 6th December, Lindsay (my wife) and I got to spent two nights on the South African Blue Train and an awesome day at the Nedbank golf challenge at Sun City.

On the Wednesday, we all met up at the Sheraton Hotel in Pretoria at 15h00 for refreshments and snacks before being bussed down to Pretoria station at 16h30. The train left at 18h00 sharp and arrived at the Sun City Halt the next morning at 09h00. From there, we were bussed to Sun City 3km’s away for a wonderful day and being spoiled absolutely rotten.

At 16h30 we returned to our chariot with the train again departing at 18h00 and arriving back at Pretoria station on Friday morning at 09h00. Then back to the Sheraton to pick up our cars and the end of an absolutely amazing experience. 

Below is some additional commentary with photos. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Here was our arrival at Pretoria Station

Lindsay before entering the tunnel.

Red carpet nogal

It was then into the Blue Train waiting lounge. Again, snacks and drinks were waiting

Just before boarding the train.

This was our room for the next two nights. Also to the left, an on-suite toilet and shower which I unfortunately did not take a photo of :-(

Below is the Lounge car where we would congregate for drinks and much talking. First photo at night, the next one's during the day.

Next was the dining car. Again, one photo in the morning and the 2nd at night. Full 5 course dinner with all the china and cutlery. Like going back to the 50's!

Dinner was a formal affair with strict instructions to attend with Tie and Jacket! It was actualy quite something to dress up like this again. Can not remember the last time I wore a tie and Jacket.

Lindsay at breakfast ready for a day of Golf.

Here the blue train was departing Rustenburg station. Next stop, Sun City Halt.

This is Sun City Halt. It is about 3 km's East of Sun City and is literally a platform on the side of the main line. From here we hopped onto a Bus that took us along to Sun City. Unfortunately, due to cameras and cell phone restrictions at the golf, I was unable to take any photos there.

Below, we have just hopped off the train and getting on the bus.

Lindsay, ready for a day in the sun.

We left the train down a small dirt road before getting on the tar road. On the tar road, we back tracked and had to go over the train. Below, the train was directly in front of us. These photos just don't do justice to the actual scene. The sun was behind us lighting up the train.

After a long lovely day at the Golf, we arrived back at the train to glasses of refreshing ice cold Champagne. No Lindsay is not greedy LOL, she picked one up for me :-)

This was our beds made up, chocolates each evening and all the bells and whistles.

Each night after dinner, everyone would retire to the lounge car for Cognac and cigars. Lindsay and I would go the the "Non smoking' lounge. There were two on the train. 

And that was the end to an absolutely awesome 2 nights and one day. Lindsay says this is one more item deleted from her bucket list. What more can I say.

For those wondering, the trip from Pretoria Station to Sun City is very short, however, throughout the night we were constantly moving. On the return trip, I activated a tracking device on my phone to see what was happening. Well, they took us around and around Pretoria, Via the North, then East, and in particular, even going around Centrarand just East of Kempton park. Below is a image of our track. Please excuse the two straight lines which are data errors.

Progress update

OK, It has again been a while since I have done an update. Honestly, other life happenings just took over. Not to say nothing has been happening on the layout though. I have still been doing little things here and there, and mainly operating as well as the odd show layout with the club and the Bend-Track modules we built.

Anyway, I have finally started to concentrate on the layout and East Glacier Park in this instalment. Looking at the photo below, this is a view down the town. This is just for an overview. Further below I go into more details on the specific industries.

In the foreground of the above image is a short spur for the RDC town commuter. I decided to incorporate this to add some more operations. Theoretical, the RDC will transport townsfolk to Whitefish from the various towns along the way. Once in Whitefish, holiday makers will return to East Glacier Park to head to the various ski slopes. Returning later in the day and then bringing the townsfolk home in the evening.

Below is a better photo from the side on. There still will be an Amtrak train, but that will be just once per day and also does not stop at all the towns along the way.

Still in East Glacier Park here are some of the industries. Below is AGM grain and seed on the left and Heinz Dried Fruit on the right.

Down below we have a further two industries. In the far distance is an oil distributor I decided to put in at the last minute. It can be seen that I have not even put the track down yet.

In the foreground, is a wood industry of some kind. I am still in a quandary with this one and am not happy with the layout or kit at this time. It just does not seem correct. So, currently I am mulling this industry over.

Below are two closer views of these industries. The Oil dealer I still need to name, and the timber section will be called Lumbar Logistics.

Well, that is it for now. I will keep you updated on developments as they happen... Or as soon after as is possible :-)

Classifying the freights Part 1

From recent posts previously, you will see that I have been doing more and more operations, in particular, by myself. This has proven both rewarding and challenging and has caused the grey matter to work a bit of overtime.

This "Part 1" covers the arrival and switching in and out of the two mainline freights. Part two will go more into detail about actually classifying the loads that have just come in ready to go to the respective local towns.

You see, my yard basically has 2 mainlines with an arrivals / departure track, and then 5 classification tracks and 1 run around track. The problem I have is that there are 6 towns to classify for as well as the Chicago and Seattle towns and thus, far too few yard tracks unless I do some doubling up.

To start with I made the two classification tracks next to the arrivals / departure track available for blocking the Chicago and Seattle outbound loads. Irrespective of which side a local comes in from, cars destined for Chi or Sea could be classified. The remaining 3 classification tracks were then for the remaining 6 towns!

The next problem I had was where to put wagons coming in from a Chi or Sea train once it arrived on the arrivals / departure track? My yard leads were simply not long enough to pull off the incoming loads, then couple at the same time to the outgoing loads and then place them onto the back of the train. After some thinking, I came up with a marvellous plan which is probably standard operations on most other peoples layouts :-).

Instead of a track for Chi and another for Sea, I made the two tracks on the left "Sea Inbound" and "Sea Outbound" and the two tracks on the right, "Chi Inbound" and "Chi outbound".

Now, say a Sea - Chi freight arrived. It would enter from the left to right. A switcher sitting to the left would then remove the "from Sea" and place them on the same line as the To Chi wagons would be, but they would be to the right of the yard as the Chi - Sea train is working the other way. The switcher would then hook onto the "To Sea" wagons and push them onto the waiting train. As simple as that.

Does this not interfere with the classification of the Chi and Sea trains you may ask. Well, both "To" trains are sitting on their respective tracks from the previous ops session if the yard master has done his job correctly. If anything, the yard master is actually waiting for the two freights to arrive before even moving one car on the layout.

So, there you have it. Hopefully I will have a pictorial story in the not too distant future.

Enjoy

A constructive weekend

I am sure I am like many other modellers with a number of projects in various forms of completion or actions to be done. Well, this weekend was one where I tackled a number of them and cleared them off my desk, so to speak.

Firstly, I have 3 Kato Santa Fe C44-9W War-Bonnets. They have been absolutely awesome runners, however, I think they have done one too many shows and were getting a bit jerky and not running at all OK. I opened them up to lubricate the worm bushes as well as the motor bushes. Once complete and semi re-assembled, they went on the programming track. I have 3 Kato Amtrak Genesis locos that programming wise are perfect. I downloaded the CV's from the Genesis and then uploaded them to the C44-9W's. Instantly, they were already running 100% better. All I needed to do next was set the V Start, V Mid and V Max and they were running perfectly.

Next, I have a box with a couple of wagons that needed work done to them in one way or another. One of the wagons is a Bethgon coal hopper that I wanted to fit a body mounted Microtrains coupler. The reason for this is that on the coal train, one of the moves is to push the string into the coal mine. The problem though is that the fixed coupler on the loco pushes the coupler in thus the truck to one side often resulting in pesky derailments. Hopefully, a body mount pushing against a body mount would solve the problem. The truck on the other side of the wagon would remain unchanged  The fix involved removing the truck and cutting a suitable piece of styrene that I glued to the under part of the wagon. I then glued the body-mount coupler to styrene shim that I had glued in place. Then I refitted a truck that did not have a coupler pocket attached to it. Once completed, it was back on the track for a test run. To say everything went well is an understatement. Problem is I now have one more to do on the other rake of cars :-(

Lastly, I have a number of Atlas wagons with the Atlas version of the Microtrains coupler. Problem is, some of them can be a problem coupling, so much so that one of them had been cast into the project bin. Well, I still had some Microtrain replacement couplers from a 10 pack I purchased a while ago. What better time then to look around the layout for any other wagons with the Atlas  "Microtrain" couplers and replace them. 5 were done in total :-)

Then, there was some good old running and switching to end off the day.

Life is good

A typical day

I have spent a lot of time visualising a typical day of operations on my sub-division. I have had to consider when to have trains arrive and the reasons for that. An example was how to structure my arriving freights together with local freights. If the freights arrive late in the session, are they then blocked and delivered the next session or, do they arrive early, get blocked and delivered in the current session.

I also wanted to be able to portray to operators how the day looks in order that they have some idea on how the operation session flows with what trains arriving and departing and when.

To this end, I have created a document entitled "A typical day on the Whitefish Sub-Division" which will form part of the operations pack. Hopefully operators will now have some idea on how the "play" transpires on the Whitefish sub-division. The document is below: -

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A typical day on the Whitefish sub-division

This paper gives a basic overview of a typical day on the “Whitefish Subdivision” and what to expect, as well as do, during a typical operating session.

Whitefish is situated in Montana with trains travelling between Seattle on the United States North West coast through to Chicago in the central north of the United States transporting goods from the West (China, Japan, India etc) to the US and vice versa.

A typical day starts at 06h00 in the morning with the following occurring during the various hours of the day.

Passenger local.

During the day, an RDC runs between East Glacier Park and Whitefish transporting townsfolk from their homes in the countryside to their workplaces at Whitefish and back. The first run departs East Glacier Park at 06h00 for Whitefish. Then at 12h00 the local returns with passengers who have finished work for the day and again returns later with any passengers that are going to Whitefish for the afternoon to do some shopping or watch a movie. Finally at 17h00, the local returns to East Glacier Park with tired workers or shoppers and ties up for the night ready to do the same the next day.

Through freights.

During the early part of the morning, both the westbound CHI-SEA (Chicago Seattle) and eastbound SEA-CHI (Seattle Chicago) manifest trains arrive and loads are switched out and in.

The outgoing loads were prepared for departure the day before, after the local freights had returned from their daily chores and are coupled onto the freights before continuing on their way.

Local freights.

After the arrival of the morning freights, the loads received from the two through freights are switched and blocked accordingly for the local towns by the yard switchers. Once complete the local freights head out to the various towns and switch the industries there. Heading east, there are 4 towns to be switched. Due to distance and time needed, the tasks are split into two locals: -

• One local switches Columbia Falls and the Kalispel branch line, and then West Glacier, further along the Line.
• The second local travels further and starts at Essex which is a small town, however, it then goes to East Glacier Park which has a lot more work to do.

There is a third local that makes a short run to Stryker to deliver interchange traffic for Eureka which is in an opposite direction (West) to the other two locals which head East.

Once complete, the locals return to Whitefish later in the day arriving on the arrivals/departure track. The wagons they return are subsequently blocked into the Chicago and Seattle classification tracks to prepare them for their collection the next day by the Through freights, as happened earlier in the day.

Amtrak

During the day, there are two Amtrak passenger trains stopping at West Glaier and East Glacier Park, Whitefish and a flag stop at Essex if necessary. How the flag stop is decided is by the throw of a dice located at Essex. If it lands on "6", a flag stop is required. Any other number and the Amtrak runs straight through. 

Intermodal

There are two intermodals, one in each direction. However, these are switched directly into the intermodal yard at Whitefish.

Coal Train.

Lastly, there is a coal train. The motive power leaves Whitefish running light to Columbia Fall and then reversing to the power station on the secondary mainline between Columbia Falls and Whitefish. Here the train collects the empties and then runs east across the division to Browning and the Coal mine located north of there. The empties are reversed into the Coal mine and the loaded train is then connected and the Unit train returns to the power station between Whitefish and Columbia Falls. Once complete, the motive power returns to Diesel servicing.

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And that is a basic day in the life on the Whitefish Sub-division.

Progress to date 04-01-13

Oh wow,

I popped into my blog yesterday knowing I have been lazy in posting, but I am sure you can imagine my amazement when I see my last post was just short of a year ago which was February 2012!!! What have I been doing :-(

Well I can say I have not been sitting on my posterior. There has been quite a bit of progress on the layout, not just in operations but also scenery and track-work. The siding at West Glacier has been put in together with 1 industry spur, as well as a couple of industry spurs at East Glacier Park. This has added tremendously to my operations.

In October last year, I had a layout visit from members of the club I belong to called EMRIG (East Rand model rail-road interest group). I must say there was a burst of energy to get the layout prepared for that visit LOL.

I have also started small scale operations. It took me quite some time to design my Car Cards and Weigh-bills  Also deciding on industry names and the like which is still being developed. Suffice to say, I am now having tremendous fun switching and my brother and I had a semi formal operating session last Sunday operating just the through freights and resultant local freights.

So... I will hopefully start making more regular posts again and hopefully not leave it for a year. I will be sending a second post after this one giving an overview of the trains on my "Whitefish Subdivision". So, stay tuned for further updates.