My latest book purchase is one written by Thomas Klimoski, a well known HO scale modeller from America. The book is titled 'Building The Right-Sized Layout' Designing and Operating a Small Switching Layout. This book is published by Model Railroader under their Layout Design & Planning banner. Thomas acknowledges all the contributing modellers who provided photographs and information. The book is 112 pages, full colour and is well written. It covers the aspects of building a small layout. What I mean by small is large compared to British layouts as Thomas refers to 'small' as being a spare bedroom layout in the vicinity of 10' x 10'. There is mention of smaller shelf layouts throughout the book. Right from the introduction Thomas questions 'What is a right sized layout ?'. His description is excellent. There are 8 chapters in this book from discussing the Right-Sized Layout (Chapter 1) to Conducting Operating Sessions (Chapter 8). Now some of you who know me, know that I already build small shelf style layouts and you may want to know why I bought this book ? Simple answer is within the Chapter headings... 'Prototype Operations', 'Detailing Operations', 'Operating Paperwork' and 'Conducting Operating Sessions'. To me running a model railway like the 12" :1' railway, is something I need to brush my skills up on ! This book will help me discover how to use switch lists and more to make operating that much more prototypical. If you are in the planning stages of designing or building a North American layout, this is well worth a read. I'm sure it would even help any other modeller that does not model North American. Cheers, Gary.
There is still some difference between operating a real railway/road to a model one. One of the most obvious bits being time frame, but not just on how many trains per hour as you may first think, but the time spent by the shunter crawling under a coupling to connect/disconnect brake pipes or just unhooking (ok so some modern couplings on the real railways do this in one go now with Delner? Couplings..) then with some stock there is the time to fill the res tanks for the air brakes. (Vacuum work much quicker). not sure for US or Auz prototype but one thing with UK diesels is some of the larger locos have two cabs, so there is also a delay as the driver changes ends so he has visibility with his guard/ground shunter… of course, these are things we can’t actually model, and if we tried to capture them time wise folk would just say what you playing at? another one to consider (Uk I guess) is coming to the older gated crossings. Some branch lines may not have had a crossing keeper, so would rely on the guard/conductor to get off the train when the loco stops, the guard to walk down the length of his train, open the gates, allow the train to cross and stop on the other side before the gates were closed and then realight. Without having working miniature people, something else again that happened in reality but can’t really be modelled sadly to portray the event. The Denby branch (Near little Eaton Derby) was one such where I believe there were 8 crossings in succession. (Interesting story with loose coupled trains where the vehicles would roll back as the couplings stretched after the loco stopped and end up taking out a gate the guard had closed as the driver hadn’t moved far enough up the line) and even the sound fitted diesels that go through a start up procedure can’t be driven that quick. You could be looking at 4-5 mins if the engine is cold from starting to being ready to go due to the air tanks again filling to take off the brakes.. And how many folk stop a loco short of their stock (approx 6ft) as they should do before moving on to their train? All good fun! And don’t we all love it!
Firstly you must remember this is a book written as a guide to the US modellers specifically (for operations), but then a fair amount of the book talks about starting off and understanding what you want, design of layout (track plan or prototyp inspired track plans) and then building your layout, understanding the operational principles if you wish to operate the layout like the prototype. Quite a lot of what you discuss is mentioned in the book and how to use your layout with these 'delays' in operation. There will always be differences between the model and the real railway. As for time, there are a few things you can do to drag out an operating session. Scale speed is one thing that can be applied to your dcc controller by programming your decoders so that top speed is limited to 15mph, depending on the layout and how you operate it. For me it is switching so the speeds are low. One thing I do during operation and not to go over speed step 15 in the forward direction (pulling) and speed step 10 in reverse (pushing or shoving). I also pull up short and stop the locomotive about 15 scale feet (2") from the car (wagon) to be coupled, then roll forward at about speed step 3 or 4 to couple. Once coupled, I change to reverse, sound horn and then roll a few scale feet to make sure the coupling is secure and to take up 'the slack'. A double blow of the horn prior to departure is next, then move on at the recommended speeds I mentioned previously. Using car cards or switch list is another way of slowing the ops session, as you need to read the instructions, locate the car that needs either dropping off or picking up, break your train and leave on the mainline whilst the switch takes place. You may have to remove several cars from a siding to pick up a car that is located in a different 'spot' on that siding. This means pulling those cars out, including the car your after and spotting the required car on your train then re-spotting the other cars where they came from. This is something I do as I have 5 car spots on one siding (2 x spots for corn syrup or airslides, 2 x spots for reefers and a single spot for a box car). Coupling is the easy bit, although uncoupling is done by hand and no use of under track or between the rails magnets. I do all my uncoupling manually with a Kadee coupler stick or a skewer. I have used this method for several years whilst exhibiting too. When people ask "what are you doing ?" I tell them I'm uncoupling the car just like what would happen in the real world ! I do know some modellers who have small padlocks on the side of their layouts that need to be unlocked before proceeding through points (switching layouts), derails on sidings and mechanical gates to private sidings which all need to be opened manually. As for small crossing or gated and generally ungated crossings, in the US, especially on branch lines or short lines, the driver will stop his train short of a road crossing (grade crossing) and the conductor will walk out onto the road with a red flag in hand to control the road traffic and allow the train to pass in safety. Start up and shut down times don't really matter unless you are building a TMD... If you use DC, it doesn't matter either. I don't know anyone who runs DC to pretend their locomotive is going through a start up procedure ! Generally on a small layout, you wouldn't necessarily have a locomotive depot where your locomotives depart from. Most small layouts have staging yards, which could be either the railway yards (classification yard), engine depot or the rest of the world. I totally agree though, it is all about having fun and operating your layout like a real railway or as close as practically possible ! Oh yes, we here in Oz have plenty of double ended engines. The only times the drivers swap ends is at the end of the line. When switching, they only operate from one end and use two way radios to the ground crew/shunters. Cheers, Gary.
