Any dedicated car ideas?


MOWboss said:
Anyone have a daily, no matter what, dedicated car scenario?.
Looking for ideas about that one car that causes headaches for the train crew when they're making their run.
Here's a couple of examples...

My mentor has a logging, milling operation in the mountains - there's NO water! Every day - no matter what - a tank car of water has to go to the site and an empty returned. Sounds simple, but locate that car in your delivery plan and its empty.... Oh, and today there's 2 lumber loads to go out and 2 empty cars to drop off....... Headache....

I have a mine quite a distance from town. Every morning a goose takes workers to the mine and brings them home at night. (Suppose to bring them home at night....) My challenge begins when I need to get the goose to the mine turntable and turn it around for the return trip back to town....
Headache....

I suppose a lot of us have those ash cars, or sand cars, that get swapped out on a "when you get around to it" schedule... And if we're honest with ourselves most of the freight we peddle is on a "when you get around to it schedule."

This could be an opportunity for that "I only have a few minutes so I'll just run that dedicated car to the..."

Me, if I have a few extra minutes I might just send the goose back to the mine to bring the miners back home for the night.
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I think you identified one daily yourself, the mine worker run.
mara plutoni said:
Interesting. Model RR in Holland hardly have a fixed schedule. When I see large layouts from a club they often shout at each other to take the train over. What i read about rr sessions in the States (and Canada) is more the real thing. One has to puzzle to fix the printed schedule for that day.
This is done by carcards. Therefore it's obvious what are empties, going to be loaded or full. Every car has a card (either a physic card or programmed) and every train has a schedule. In real its very important for the traindriver to know the weight of the cars, since it determines the brake distance of the train. Once riding in a car with the head operations, he showed me the yard. Suddenly he stopped, contacted the dispatcher that was about to give a GO to that train. Due to 1 empty flat the whole train was delayed. That empty was not supposed to be right behind the locomotives. It was a heavy train, so the empty was a danger. (could be lifted a little and derail). For me, not a technical girl, it was clear, getting a train together is not just putting some loco's and cars together and move the stuff.
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Good grief. I had not realized until now you are a lady, but at the same time let me also give ground and space to that, if you will allow me, to push out on that. And, morever, as if it is somehow my [assumed] right-it isn't, but for this purpose, I'll assume you will allow me....

Here's the point at which it becomes a bit embarrassing to be a man. :-/

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I will assume you are a person of grace, so let's move on to the actual US railroading practice. An empty flatcar is prone to, due to squeezing, perhaps from both ends...or stretching too, particularly likely to climb up and off the rails. In the territory where my (theoretical) railroad runs, this is real problem. Light flats under compressive train forces tend to climb up and out and over the outside rail, where similar cars placed ahead of other loaded cars (typically long autoracks) will tend to "runaway" quite easily behind a set of locomotives...and, if coupled to the heavier long flats will help "stringline the curve." As you might guess, this means that the heaver cars in a given train are pulled straight across, on a curve, up and over the inside rail due to the tension--not compression--on that given car. The weak link is where the train breaks and comes apart.

This was a real-world problem on the D&RGW, which culminated in an operating rule: Lightly loaded cars, and particularly short cars shall not be directly coupled to long length cars like empty flats or auto-racks. So there was, gradually, and with time and experience a rule: 40' cars shall be coupled only to cars up to 60' in length. And 89' flatcars (loaded with auto-racks or unloaded shall be couple only to cars 60' in length (or longer).
 
As to running against a certain schedule in a fixed length of time: There is a MRR concept known as a "fast clock," which compresses a given amount of time into a much shorter length of (real) time. Thus a fixed, twelve hour shift (the maximum allowed by law on a US railroad) is only a three hour "shift" on a model railroad which runs a 1:4 (or 4:1) fast-clock. An eight hour (real road work-shift) would take only two hours on the model RR, etc.

Schedules in the US are much more fluid, I think, and there are really few actual schedules, but are otherwise mostly designated trains which should or must run over a given section of railroad in a given length of time. For example, a Denver CO to Ogden UT forwarder might be DNOGF, but would not necessarily conform to a shedule, per se. The dispatcher would fit it in as he or her sees fit.

A passenger train like the Rio Grande Zephyr WOULD have schedule to meet, thus number 17 would have priority over OGDNF, etc.

The examples I give pertain to the more fluid western US. Eastern, and more dense railroads would keep things tighter. For those I defer to Ken/D&J, who knows far more than I do.
 
MOWboss said:
Anyone have a daily, no matter what, dedicated car scenario?.
Looking for ideas about that one car that causes headaches for the train crew when they're making their run.
Here's a couple of examples...

My mentor has a logging, milling operation in the mountains - there's NO water! Every day - no matter what - a tank car of water has to go to the site and an empty returned. Sounds simple, but locate that car in your delivery plan and its empty.... Oh, and today there's 2 lumber loads to go out and 2 empty cars to drop off....... Headache....

I have a mine quite a distance from town. Every morning a goose takes workers to the mine and brings them home at night. (Suppose to bring them home at night....) My challenge begins when I need to get the goose to the mine turntable and turn it around for the return trip back to town....
Headache....

I suppose a lot of us have those ash cars, or sand cars, that get swapped out on a "when you get around to it" schedule... And if we're honest with ourselves most of the freight we peddle is on a "when you get around to it schedule."

This could be an opportunity for that "I only have a few minutes so I'll just run that dedicated car to the..."

Me, if I have a few extra minutes I might just send the goose back to the mine to bring the miners back home for the night.
Click to expand...
Taking workers up to the mine: In my own universe my crews do that twice daily. Up a switchback, no less. A run of about twenty miles.
At the top, bunkhouses, and in later years, rather than the 1910's to 1930's. and particularly the war years: '41 to '45, much more flexible. Get them up, and maybe ask for a day or two of hard work, but then get them down again.

Why? Traffic. :D Generate traffic. That keeps the blood and interest running.

In my case this is all mind games, of course. But it's still interesting to factor in such a mine run. More interesting still to factor it in twice. :D
 
Snowman said:
Schedules in the US are much more fluid, I think, and there are really few actual schedules, but are otherwise mostly designated trains which should or must run over a given section of railroad in a given length of time. For example, a Denver CO to Ogden UT forwarder might be DNOGF, but would not necessarily conform to a shedule, per se.
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There are two different types of schedule (maybe three).

The timetable schedule is a schedule printed in a timetable that grants superiority to a train and authorizes it's operation. They mostly ended in the mid 1980's when timetable and train order rules were replaced with the modern rules we use now.

The second type are service schedules. They are schedules that describe how a train should operate, when it should run, what route it takes, what traffic it carries, etc. They have been in use since the early 1900's and are used by railroads today. There are still regular trains, extras and sections, just like with timetable schedule trains but they don't have any authority associated with them. The service schedules are used to plan the traffic movement, sell service and to measure performance against.

There could be a third type of schedule, it's a subset of the service schedules, that is the "unscheduled" schedule. Most bulk trains fall into that category, they have a service schedule, but no set start time. Most regular service schedules have a set start time. With the unscheduled train, the start time is whenever they are loaded or unloaded and then they are measured from that start time.
 
MOWboss said:
Wow - never expected this to be so intense.
dave 1905. Thanks for your tutorial. I'll put you down as a NO for a dedicated car scenario... Not really the direction I was hoping for.
Many don't have a RR empire that can support or justify an order system.
Perhaps looking back I should have titled this something like what do you run if you only have half an hour and why.
My intent was to present this idea for fun and frolic... I (and perhaps others) find it entertaining to have a story or excuse to justify a half hour jaunt ; No permissions, no apologies and no orders.

So what do you run if you only had a half hour and why?
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Just plug the electricity, set the switches and turn the full power. (I told you i'm not a technical girl). Enjoy the layout and the trains running and after half an hour, turn everything down, turn off the light and shut the door. Its whatever you like. It don't have to be a superb layout, a weathered, 100% authentic world you are looking at. Just enjoy your half an hour and escape the real bad dark world.
 
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