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: -

____________________________________________________

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.

_______________________________________________________

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.

Eureka branchline

In previous posts, I spoke about operations and adding branchlines and then the Kalispell branchline in particular. In this article, I talk about the Eureke branchline.

The internet and google is an amazing resource. I mentioned in the "Adding Branchlines" article that I had fount that the Mission Mountain Railroad ran (run) two branchlines. The one being Kalispell and then the other, Eureka. So, I then did a search on rail industries in Eureka. First link to pop up was the "Gwynn Lumber and Reload Inc". I was looking for more industries to enable additional and varied cars to be sent to this town. However, again, this Gwynn Lumber and Reload came up trumps. By reading the information in the web page, the following was stated: -

"Gwynn Lumber and Reload Inc, is an international reload facility. Our speciality is transferring dimensional lumber from truck to rail car or truck to truck. We ship lumber all over the continental U.S. and some overseas markets. Our facility is not just subject to lumber products. We have also reloaded wood pellets and wood pulp. Gwynn Lumber has many enquiries about other products coming from and going to Canada. We have the capacity to handle them in most cases. Some of these products include diesel fuel, coal, heavy equipment, and various other products".


By looking at the above, I can have petroleum cars, coal hoppers, flat cars with heavy duty vehicles on board and all this to compliment the normal wood products of the area.

Now, again, how was I going to incorporate this into my existing layout? Initially, I thought about putting a siding on the other side of the peninsular before heading to the visible staging. At the time I was thinking about the return loop for the Kalispell branchline. What about doing something the same on the other side. The visible staging from Whitefish I had called Seattle as this was where my trains were going. But, after looking at the prototype map, the Eureka branchline splits from the BNSF mainline at Stryker. Why not make the visible staging for trains approaching from Whitefish, Stryker. Brilliant!

Locals could enter Stryker from the left on the main line and head all the way to the end. From there, the train could unhook, do a run around and then push the cars onto the interchange track. This was just fantastic. So, without a track plan, lets go to a pictorial again: -

Today, the local heads out of Whitefish heading West to Stryker and Seattle beyond

Here he will be travelling through some scenic areas on the way: -

Stryker at last and entering onto the "Stryker" mainline. On the visible staging there are two tracks that are always empty and are considered mainlines: -

A view of the local heading down the mainline between the two staging yards, Stryker (Back) and Shelby (Front): -

At the end of the yard, the local disconnects, moves forward and then reverses and runs around its load to be able to push the wagons onto the interchange track. The engines use the second mainline to do the run around: -

Lastly, we see the local has pushed the wagons onto the interchange track and is returning to Whitefish empty: -

Now, you may be asking, which cars do you know go here and which cars go elsewhere. For that, I am putting together a 4 card car operating system which I have taken a liking to. If you see this comment, you will know I have yet to post it. I will be putting a link to that post here, once the article is done.

Till next time...

Kalispell branchline

In the previous article about operations I spoke about discovering two branch-lines off of the mainline I am modelling  The one is Kalispell and which I am going to talk about in this article.

Searching the internet, I found that there was a proposal to build a railroad park in the area.

To quote the article: -

"The proposed rail site could end up being a “shovel-ready” solution, either for the existing businesses or new ones. The property would connect to an adjacent spur track running from the mainline in Columbia Falls that is part of a bigger network from Seattle, Wash., to Minneapolis, Minn., and Chicago, Ill".

In addition, looking at train forums, there were other industries in town requiring rail car service. I found this amazing forum posting about rail industries in Kalispel. The scene was set.

Now, how do I incorporate this into the layout. I really need to get a layout drawing. However, the Whitefish town is situated on the peninsular. Heading out to the left, the line swings left and eventually ends up at Columbia Falls directly opposite Whitefish. I initially thought about using one of the dual mainlines as the Branch line drop off. This would however prevent the operation of the passing siding.

Then a light-bulb moment. Just past the siding the line splits with a single mainline heading up the helix to West Glacier. However, the siding line then proceeds under the helix in a return loop. There is sufficient line to park about 6 to 7 rail-cars on the one side of the return loop to simulate a branch-line drop off area. So, what better way to show this than a pictorial: -

We start off below with the Kalispel local waiting in the yard for permission to leave: -

Here our local has been given clearance to leave and is heading East to Columbia Falls on the main line: -

Here the local is entering the siding at Columbia Falls: -

Our local stops here and uncouples the wagons so they can collect the wagons on the interchange track. From there, they then do a run-around in order to push this load onto the same piece of trackage: -

Our train is now picking up the two wagons that were at the exchange and pulls forward in order to now do the run-around: -

After pulling forward, then reversing and pulling forward again onto the mainline, the local is passing the wagons to be set out on the mainline: -

Here the local is passing the wagons that are waiting on the siding: -

The local is now returning to Whitefish after pushing the loads onto the interchange track for the Kalispell branch-line: -

Lastly the Kalispell wagons waiting for the branchline railroad to come pick up the load: -

And, that is how the Kalispell branchline operates on my layout. In a future article, I will go into detail on the Eureka local which runs West out of Whitefish. Stay tuned.

Track replacement and laying

For a long time I have been thinking of how the South African rail lines have slowly either dissappeared or degraded over the years. This is probably due to expensive labour costs and Transnet not having the money. If only Southern Africa could have a rail system like the USA.

Today I recieved a link to a video of a prototype railroad replacing track. It is absolutely awsome. Imagine one of these starting in Johannesburg and slowly winding its way down to Cape Town or Durban? How about not just replacing the track, but making it wider for bigger and faster trains? The possabilities are endless.

To see the video, click here.

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.

All about dirty track

Well, after many years of having issues with dirty track, it seems I may now know the reason why and what to do about it.

There is a Forum post in the Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine by a person who sent a piece of dirty track away and had it analysed. Furthermore, there is some very interesting discussion around the subject in the same post.

I am copying and pasting the post here as sometimes, these posts on Forums have a way of disappearing and the information it provides is lost forever. To get to the post directly, click this link.

Anyway, here is the post and some interesting replies: -

After discussing the track fouling problem with a friend, he sent me a piece of heavily used, poorly cleaned silver nickel track which I then sent to the analytical lab for an analysis of the black crud that was presumed to be from using plastic wheels. The report came back today.

Drum roll please...

It has nothing to do with plastic wheels... sort of. The black crud is near 100% pure nickel oxide. Nickel (III) oxide to be specific. Saw the spectrograph output proving it. It is the natural oxidation of the nickel in the silver nickel plating on the track. Interestingly enough, it is deposited in such a manner as to suggest it was formed during an electrical arc. When viewed under extreme magnification it looks like random dots rather than a continuous film. The metallurgist explained to me it is likely microscopic irregularities on the tread of locomotive wheels and track face and/or common dust on the track is causing momentary loss of electrical contact resulting in nanosecond duration, nanometer long electrical arcs which cause the nickel to oxidize far faster than would naturally occur. One could never see this with the naked eye they would be so small. He is only guessing based on observation of the deposits but who am I to question his analysis? The oxide is also very tightly bound to the track. This explains why a Brite Boy is effective while wet wiping is not.
When asked about plastic wheels he postulates the plastic has nothing to with it. Rather, metal wheels due to their harder surface are far more effective at wearing away the oxide. The wheels aren't responsible for the problem, they are the removers of oxide and plastic is just a very poor remover.

Bill didn't have any specific solutions to the problem but he did give us some suggestions. He believes we would have the best luck if we applied to the rails a very hard, very thin, titanium or magnesium based nickel conversion coating. Say that in English I said. A very specific type of anti-corrosive metal treatment he replied. Not exactly something you will find on the shelves of Wal-Mart. I Googled a bit and sure enough these products exist although they clearly are for industrial use only. Sorry I don't have an easy fix but at least we know exactly what the problem is and it isn't plastic wheels.
Who says lab guys are boring? We talked trains for an hour!

                                          ____________________________

This gives good credence to my observations that bone-dry rail arcs more and the oxide builds up faster.
By making sure the rail is damp with a thin lubricant film, there is less arching and so the build-up is a lot slower.
For this reason, using lacquer thinner or 90% isopropyl alcohol to clean the track is not such a good idea - it leaves the track bone dry when it evaporates.
But cleaning the track (and loco wheels) with mineral spirits works well, and I make no attempt to wipe the track dry or to wipe the loco wheels dry when cleaning in this way.
When observed with the room lights off, there is less visible arching on loco wheels and track cleaned with mineral spirits - and apparently less oxide build-up as a result. Some have swore by Wahl clipper oil for years, I suspect the effect is similar to mineral spirits.

Joe Fugate

                                      ___________________________

Sat, 2010-09-04 10:16 — LKandO

I suspect everyone is right to a point. Consider:

Fact 1: Silver Nickel oxidizes
Fact 2: Silver Nickel oxide less electrically conductive than base alloy
Fact 3: Dust will accumulate on rails
Fact 4: Dust on rails degrades electrical contact
Thus:   Preventing oxidation and minimizing dust is the solution
Fact 5: Oxygen barrier between rail and atmosphere will prevent oxidation
Fact 6: Dust collection is virtually impossible to prevent
Fact 7: Dry barrier will retain less dust than wet layer

Given these facts the logical steps to improving locomotive operations are:

1. Create an environment that generates least amount of dust possible
2. Remove dust from rails as frequently as practical
3. Treat rail with a surface coating having the following characteristics:
a. Dry
b. Electrically conductive
c. Thin film, to minimize dimensional change
d. Hard, to tolerate wear
e. Long lasting, to reduce maintenance
f. Non-hazardous

The picture becomes quite clear why Bill recommended the conversion coating. It fulfills the requirements exactly. Except maybe for the hazardous part, can't have everything!
The oil applications, CRC film, graphite particles, and sanding each check some of the boxes in the ideal list but not all. To me this explains why there are fans of each method yet none are accepted as the total solution.

                                 ___________________________________

 The solution: -

No Ox

Fri, 2011-08-26 11:40 — rfbranch

I tried No-Ox ID A Special after seeing it discussed in this thread.  My results have been similar to Don's.  Since applying it about 18 months ago I've only cleaned my tracks once and that was a "top to bottom" cleaning where cleaned all of the track with isopropyl
The No-Ox definitely helps with locomotive pickup (especially for my small switchers) as I have an obsession for smooth operation on my layout.  My pet peeve is to have to constantly coax locomotives along track.  It takes away from operating sessions.
The track definitely gets dirtier quicker with the no-ox than without it as dust/dirt will stick to it more than dry track however the conductivity of the grease overcomes any conductivity issues that the locomotive would normally have for quite a while (almost a year in my case).
One thought I've had after some experience:  cleaning all of your loco and rolling stock wheels before putting them on the layout might extend the time between reapplication significantly as i think this is where the majority of the gunk that settled onto my track since application has come from.  The more you can do to create a 'sterile environment' for your railroad the less time you will have to spend maintaining it.
As to the price Don mentioned above, I purchased a Chapstick sized tube on eBay through the link Jeff Schultz supplied in the above linked thread for $4.95 which I think will last me for a decade at least as an application on my entire railroad only requires a pea-sized amount at most.  However if you can find a cheaper alternative that works as well definitely take advantage of it!

What is this blog about?

For those that are wondering what is "BNSF modeling in N Scale", read on...

This is all about modeling a model railroad in a 1/160 scale which is known as "N" scale. As for the BNSF? Well this is a prototype railroad that I model. BNSF stands for "Burlington Northern Santa Fe".

When I first started modeling a prototype back in 1995, I zeroed in on the then Burlington Northern (BN). I just enjoyed the livery of the green with the white numbers and noses. However, I also so enjoyed the Santa Fe warbonnets. When these two railroads merged in real life, a match was made in heaven for me. I was now able to continue modeling the BN, but also purchase SF locos and rolling stock. And, a run off of this was I could also buy BNSF painted items.

This is all run on a layout I have at home. One day I will have operating sessions with like minded friends although at the moment, I have operating sessions with just myself.

So there you have it.

Till next time, keep well.