Rod's Thank You

Thank you very much for a learning two years. After 20 years in boxes in the basement I set up and am running a train around the Christmas tree. Many thanks for your tips, patience and shared knowledge about model railroading. Rod Blonde

Special Card Card examples

Example one.  The left card ROAD NAME  S.R.L.  (SWIFT)
                                             CAR NO.  1861 
                                              TYPE         R 

The left waybill (Deliver side)  CAR TYPE  R
                                                    CITY          LINCOLN
                                                    IND.            HILLCREST PACKERS
                                                    VIA            UNION ICE 
So with the left card set, a Refer. is to be delivered to Lincoln's Hillcrest Packers. But because it is an old type it needs to be iced, therefore it will be first delivered to Union Ice.  The card set will be held at Union Ice on a hook until the next freight can deliver it to Hillcrest Packers.  That freight will take the card set to their destination yard and flip over the waybill to PICKUP and put the card set into the yard card rack, at the back.

The right hand card set is different.  ROAD NAME  B&O
                                                           CAR NO.          829039
                                                           TYPE               HM        
                                                                HIGH CUBE SAWDUST
.




The right hand waybill (Pickup side)  CAR TYPE   HM
                                                             CITY             HERONS LANDING
                                                             IND.              WOOD MOSAIC
                                                                 HIGH CUBE SAWDUST

In the right hand example a special car, a high cube sawdust hopper is to be picked  up at Wood Mosaic in Herons Landing.  When arriving at the destination yard the waybill will be removed and put into the R (refer) slot, and the car card will be put into the yard card rack, at the back.

You will also notice that pink is to highlight that the waybill is for a pick up.  The blue is for special routing.  And the yellow is for special cars, and the car type is followed with a M. for miscellaneous.  In this way you should always have a car card with blue, and a waybill with blue, or a card car with yellow and a waybill with yellow.

Most car cards and waybills will not have blue or yellow on them. Also, the pick up and deliver sides, of the waybills,  will have the same information.

Sunday Dec. 18 th update

With the system down, we had a chance to catch up with some wiring and landscaping. Also cleaned up for the open house on Jan 4th. We added some missing feeder wires and isolated one lead to the turntable to allow people to add engines by turning off this section of track and then turning it back on after it is on the rails, this will prevent shorts to the rest of the system.

Bill and Jim prepare feeder wires

The wye sub-roadbed is in place

A new lumber truck arrived

A whole lot of trees added in this corner

more tree in this corner

some trees to break up the rock wall

Some of the fascia being painted

New power for the ore train.

First Tuesday of the month

Just a reminder that on the first Tuesday of each month we will have a meeting starting at 8 pm.  If you have any questions/comments/ideas this is the time to talk about  them.  We have two big projects on the go, re switching the cement plant area (which requires the DCC be shut off as feeders are attached) and building the wye.  The turntable also needs to be programmed and new tracks and industries will replace the old Miller turntable.  The 2 car float aprons will be replaced in the near future, 1 with a coal dock, probably the one in Miller as it has a long approach track.  The other one needs an ocean side type of industry, maybe a fish cannery, any ideas?   The layout needs other details such as a couple of city water towers, vehicles and lumber piles to name a couple.
With a new year starting I would reflect on our progress, congratulating everyone on the great job so far.  The scenery looks great, the facia and curtains, when finished will give our layout a professional look.  The track work continues to be improved, and many new structures have been added.  A great job by all.  Looking forward, we will soon be operating using a card car system, any ideas on this are always welcome.
I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Tuesday Night at the Huff and Puff

A card card system is being worked so Glen asked if he could make up a rack to hold the cards, OK he was volunteered to make one up, thanks Glen. A few new buildings have been added to the landscape along with some track modifications. The base for the wye was made up which will replace the two car float docks. One will be a coal dock and the other maybe a cannery.

OL King Coal dealer at Miller

Coastal Oil at Herons Landing

door side of the lift up wye

Harbour extension and junction to left side of the wye

another view of the wye

card racks, great job

Welcome to Wellington Airport

Airport hanger and office

Tuesday night at the Huff & Puff

 

New airport at Wellington

Turner's Christmas train

elevator add to coaling tower

wire coil loads being cast

Beside the above additions, we are working on a car card system and adding a wye at the end of Miller, to turn trains and connect the Island to the mainland.  This wye will hinged for the fire exit. This wye also meant we could remove the small turntable at Miller and replace it with a couple of small industries. We may also rework the car float area at Miller into a coal dock.
Another upgrade will be to add a off on switch to the front turntable track in Wellington. Then when locomotives are placed on the layout at either Wellington or Elsewhere, it can be done on a dead track and no short out the layout.

Dec. 5, 2014 update

grass strip airport being added

changing switch locations in Lincoln

reworking switches at Zorra cement plant

The turnout to the branch line at Miller has been causing us problems so we decided to move it so that there would not be 3 switches in a row. Another problem are the turnouts for the cement plant. They are too high to reach for many of use so they will be converted to remote control. We are also planning to add a manual turntable on top of a swing bridge connecting to a new track to the island part of the branch line. This is still in the planning stage so more on that later, but the small turntable will be removed from Miller and replaced by at least one industry. A car card routing system is almost complete, almost 200 car cards made up with as many waybills to fill them. Glen is building a card rack to hold the cards and the cards need to be checked against the rolling stock to verify the information and add any cards that have been missed. There have been some changes to the railroad to make the car card system work. One example is the elimination of the yard in Herons Landing as the system will not allow for yards between Elsewhere and Wellington. This yard has been converted to one track for storage of a passenger train and 2 tracks for Coastal Oil.

Ore train

The branch line yard at Lincoln which holds about 24 cars, is the limiting factor for the total number of cars on the ore train.  Therefore we should have 24 ore cars loaded and 24 empty, someday. The yard at the ore mine has the capacity to hold at least 24 ore cars. The ore train will be assembled at Lincoln and run east bound to Elsewhere where the empties will be picked up and run west bound to the Lincoln yard.
The Lincoln yard is for ore car storage until there are 24 cars sent over the car float. 
Like the coal drag this train will be run with a train order only.

Note! This has now changed due to the new track joining the island to Miller. This train will now be run from Ortona to Elsewhere and not held at the Interchange, freeing up needed space for the increased traffic the new industries on the branch will create.
When the Ore Train, Train Order Card is selected, the operator will use the 2 Ore Train RS3

Ore Train leaving Ortona

Ore Train east bound to Elsewhere

 engines in the Ortona Yard.  The full Ore Train will leave the Ore Yard at Ortona, and enter the mainline at Lincoln, heading east to Elsewhere. At Elsewhere, the engines and caboose will be run around the train for its return trip.  The Train Order Card is returned to the back of the deck.  Later, when the return Train Order Card is picked, the Ore Train will be run from Elsewhere back to Ortona, where the engines and caboose will be run around the unit train.  The Train Order Card is returned to the back of the deck, in time sequence.  As this is a unit train, no car cards are needed.

Coal drag

coal train departing coal mine

coal delivered to power plant

picking up empty coal train at power plant

If you pick the coal drag train from the train order box you will run your engine to the mine heading west bound. No car cards or waybills are needed as cars are run as a unit.
The coal mine and power plant are connected through the hill.  Loaded cars are picked up from the rear track of the mine as a unit of say 12 cars. When this east bound train arrives at Heron,s Landing it is backed into the rear track of the power plant, pushing most of the cars through the hill so that they are ready to pickup from the coal mine.
Empties are then picked up from the front track of the power plant as a unit of 12 cars. The train will head east bound through Heron's Landing, proceeding through the reversing loop and then head west bound arriving at Valleyview. The engine is run around the train and the cars are then shunted onto the front track of the coal mine, pushing them through the mountain until a few cars are in front of the power plant.
 The engine is then taken to the round house for servicing.
The short siding at the power plant is for special deliveries only. The short siding at the mine is for deliveries and individual coal hoppers that are subject to the normal card system routing.
At no time is a locomotive run through the hill!

Card system

Card system for the Huff & Puff
 Divisions; CP main, Elsewhere to Wellington. CN Sunset to Tuck (Springbank). Branch would include the Island, Miller and the yard at Lincoln (behind the Iceing plant). The 1 extra track in Lincoln by the meat  Packing plant would hold the Branch passenger train which runs from Lincoln to Northdale.
 Train order cards would be used to decide in what order trains would be run, eg.  8:00 am freight, Elsewhere  To Wellington.  This card would be kept with the train until it is completed, and then it is returned to the Back of the Train order deck of cards. That person would then take the next train order. trains I can think of are, freights from Elsewhere to Wellington and visa versa, passenger trains from Herons Landing and Wellington, coal unit train, ore unit train (from Ortuna to Elsewhere and back) passenger and freight, from Lincoln to Northdale, and back, Work Train, Unit Trains to Tuck and Sunset, and a Log Train.
 Waybills have a set out half  and a pickup half.  Both contain Town, Industry, Via and car type info.  Via is used for branch lines or special information  like icing of refers. I have counted the car capacity for all siding and yards and listed what type of car each industry would  Receive. This information will be helpful for making up waybills and what car types are needed. One thought about way bills, what if car movements were driven by the waybills, eg. For each Freight train you pick a set number of cards, say 16. The first 8 would be pickups, that is 8 car cards with  Pickup waybills in them, and then 8 waybills for set outs, for which you find a car in the yard for them. If no car is available for a  waybill, it is put back at the front of the other cards and the next one is selected. This way the industries are driving the car requests instead of the car types. When a trip is completed, eg. Arrived at Wellington, you should have 8 set out cards, and you will flip the  Waybills to the pickup side and place them in the back of the pickup car box.  If you started with 1 or more  Via cards Your count will vary. You will have 8 pieces of rolling stock and 8 car cars with pickup waybills.   You first Verify the cards to the rolling stock and then remove the waybills and Place them in the back of the waybill box. When placing them in the waybill box they are first flipped so the set out side is up. More thoughts on waybills. If an industry siding holds 3 cars do we just make up 3 waybills, so the siding  Will never be over loaded, and this way cars will always be able to be set out, no confusion on what to do. Do we make waybills for freight to stations like Jutland that have no freight siding, leave the car on the  Passing siding for the next train to pickup, and what about Warwick which has no passing siding? Any thought and ideas welcome.

Nov 7th update

We found the road up to Warwick was too close to the track and was interfering with some engines so Glen woved it over a half an inch. A crossing shanty was added at Lincoln and a few houses were test fit on an outside corner of town. Whitelaw Machine and details at Bill's garage were also added.

fence around cemetary

crossing shanty

moving the road

lamps and junk piles add to the scene

test fiting houses

peeling a log

Tuesday Oct. 21, update

Back to the Tuesday night schedule, that is to say Sunday mornings will sporadic until May. We had a junior come back (he was at our open house) with a CN snowplow. I hooked up my engine to it and let him run around the layout. We were asked if we plowed any snow, to which I replied, "Do you see any snow on the tracks? I guess he did a good job", lol. We temporarily put up our new curtains for the show, like the green colour, good job Ralph. Bill has been the focus of a lot of good hearted ribbing about his collection of B&O equipment the best one was when a lost exacto knife was located and something was said about doing something about the B&O decals, hmmm, I can see some sort of payback in the future, all in good fun!

Hot dogs, hot dogs, fried onions please

curtains will look better when hung with care

Taylor runs a train

see I told you no snow on the rails

now that one pile of s--------!

just in time for Halloween

a meet on the bridge

new shanty, humm, blue and yellow?

nice old time passenger train

chemical train

Sunday Oct. 19th Open House

After taking in another great Woodstock train show, we headed up to the layout to prepare for the open house. The table skirting had arrived si we scrambled to attach it before any guests arrived. We had about thirty guests in all and they all seemed pleased. As expected, we did have a few glitches and derrailments, but all in all it was a success. Thanks to all who came and thoes that helped.

Green skirt looks good

a few guests

more guests

WMRC Oct. 17, 2014 update

We have added new structres and scenery for the open house on Sunday.

factory at the port

welding shop

houses in Lincoln

Lincoln street corner

Crafty Beaver

small wedding at the little white church

sand tower

water tower

B&O, what?

water tower at Jutland

barge docked at Heron's Landing