Question about operation session


Hawkesburytrain

Hawkesburytrain

Well-Known Member
Hi all,

Didn't know where to post this question about operation sessions, so here we go.

I have 2 buildings one is the cement factory and the other the flour mill. How does one make operations for those buildings?

Flour Mill - I presume box cars pick up bags of flour, but what brings what to the mill? If freights full of grains arrive, how do they unload? In the how to they also mention "Grain Dryer, Grain conveyor, Steel Bin and Ammonia Tanks, are they all part of the building site? How does one incorporate the Flour Mill in an operation?

Cement Factory - It as an unloading shed, so train unload, but where do they come from during an operation session. Is the only output done by trucks?

I guess I could go on with more of the buildings I have, such as the River Mine, Coop Elevators, Vulcan Manufacturing and Inter-Modal, when the cars are loaded, where do you take them during an operation session?

The reason for my questions is to see if I have to eliminate some buildings to put others so that I have a logic operational session.

Thanks for your help.
 
I cannot answer all of the questions, but here goes on some of them. I am assuming more modern type operations, post 1960.
Flour Mill - Grain arrives by covered hopper and usually is stored in grain bins until the mill is ready to use it. Grain bins can be either large concrete storage facilities like the ones used to store the grain that is received from farmers. Or they can be simple metal cylindrical bins. It depends on the size of the mill. Normal unloading is by opening the doors on the bottom of the hopper and letting the grain flow into bins below the tracks. It is moved by a grain conveyor to the storage bins. Here are pictures of bins and conveyors from a farm, not a mill, but you see what they are.
Alicel_grain_elevator.jpgdouble-run-grain-pump.jpg
I call the thing in the center of the first picture a grain elevator and it is what I usually see at these places.
Grain dryers are just what it sounds like. They dry grain, although this is usually done at the original storage facility. I actually don't know about Ammonia Tanks. Around here in Texas, there usually are Propane tanks which look similar to ammonia tanks, but store propane used to heat and dry the grain. Again I have only seen them at the original storage facilities. All of these can be at the flour milling site, or just the mill, bins and conveyor.
Flour can be shipped out in bags in boxcars as you said, or if it is going to a major bakery, it is usually loaded into an Airslide Covered Hopper.
Cement - You are correct that it is an unloading shed only. It is shipped out by truck.

I assume that your structures are the Walthers ones, both of which I have. My grain can come from any of my seven grain elevators but normally their output goes in unit trains to staging first. Then individual covered hoppers are delivered to the mill. My cement hoppers also come from staging as I don't model a cement plant. I do not do any industry to industry movements on my layout. Everything either originates or terminates in staging. This is usually the case on the prototype, except that instead of staging, they use classification yards. Most layouts that I have seen operate this way, there are exceptions such as mine/power plant load in-empty out operations.
In reference to your question regarding Inter-Modal, those usually travel in unit trains from one intermodal facility to another. Most industries don't have the ability to unload them.
Hope this information helps.

Willie
 
Thanks Willie, you've been a great help

It does answer my questions and even the next one which I was going to ask about staging. Now I see the importance of a staging area for operations.

Again many thanks
 
Don't underestimate the importance of off layout industries. You can ship finished goods from on layout industries to off layout destinations...and vice versa.

I once had the privilege of operating on a fairly large private layout. It was a blast.

I picked up my loco, picked up the consist, moved to an intermediate destination, dropped off some of my consist, moved to the final destination and then spend the next hour or so switching to the 3 (or 4) industries. The destination are wasn't very big but was a blast. I ended by returning to the origination point by picking up a consist on the way.

Pack your layout full of small destinations for operations. They don't have to be huge, just enough track for 2 or 3 cars.
 
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Hawkesburytrain said:
when the cars are loaded, where do you take them during an operation session?
Click to expand...
In real life, from the vendor they would go to a local classification yard to be put into trains headed toward the customer's location. So if the model railroad has a yard they would be headed there first. Usually from a model yard they would be put into trains headed to "other" yards or staging in the direction of the final customer.

On an out-and-back type layout they would depart as "full" go out and come back as "empty."
 
Generally speaking, most goods won't be shipped by rail between two industries in the same town..trucks will handle that..so your goods are going to generate at industries off layout or the will generate on your layout and be shipped to another location across the state or country. I use a staging yard on my layout as a "rest of the world" location..loaded and empty cars show up in staging and get delivered to my industries, then they get sorted and shipped to the rest of the world. I have a three railroad switching layout so my cars will sometimes make extra moves as yard transfers between roads, this way they go to the railroad who will send them to their final destination.
 
Hi Lloyd,

I was involved in rail operations in a couple mostly rural settings. They were a lot simpler than the big city operations but very easy to understand.

1) Marvin Windows of Warroad, MN. Our shop lumber came in on rail 2 days per week. The boards were loaded in box cars. They would usually drop off anywhere from 2 to 5 cars during the middle of the night, and pick up the emptys. If we didn't like where they left the cars, we would hitch a chain somewhere, loosen the brake wheel and pull them to a convenient spot with an all terrain fork lift. The large storage warehouse was located about 75' off the track and we would maneuver the lumber stacks onto the fork lift and drive them into the warehouse for storage. This was a dead end track.

2) Pulp operations in Williams, MN. There were multiple tracks sidings, the outside track was used for loading empties. Not sure what the other tracks were used for but over the years industries came and went.

When the logger got a contract for pulpwood, he would order the cars by calling Zenith 7000 on the telephone and give the landing location and number of cars. We never new what type of gondola would come in but they were usually 40' lengths. Later on, when St. Regis (1984) was buying lots of wood they were the longer flat cars with stakes on the sides and bulkheads, and the wood was piled parallel to the tracks.

Again, if the logger was not satisfied with the staging of the car, he wrapped a chain somewhere and pulled it to a convenient location with the pulp truck. When the cars were loaded the railroad was notified, and we were responsible for keeping track of the car #. These were tracks that ran through, alongside the mainline, but a special train would again come during the middle of the night and whisk away the loaded cars.

AS far as unloading the wheat or corn, I believe the conveyor was under the tracks and a door opened allowing the grain to fall and enter the milling facility. Milled grains could be bagged or bulk.

Cleaning was very important in handling bulk grains and there must have been a place where hopper cars were prepped for loading.
 
Grain is a major product on my layout Lloyd. It generates a lot of rail traffic for me. I am modeling the transition era as you probably know. I have three grain elevators on my layout. In the transition era, grain was shipped in box cars. A grain door would be installed in the box car and grain loaded into them. When they arrived at a flour mill, i was unloaded by had. Quite labor intensive. Hrain could also be loaded into covered hoppers. From the mill, flour could be loaded in bulk into covered hoppers ot bagged, loaded into box cars.

I changed one of my industries into a brewery in order to have another customer on the layout to receive grain also. This generates additional traffic from grain elevators to the brewery. Flour from the mill is shipped to industries "off stage" beyond the layout.
 
Changing the subject slightly:

Here in Wisconsin, I watched a contractor build silos like in santafewillie's photo post above. The silos are actually constructed with the top section first and then the sections below the top constructed on the ground below and the silo sections are slowly raised using jacks as each section is competed.

This process eliminated the need for a crane on the construction site. The entire building time is fairly rapid.

I watched corn silos being build near Redgranite, Wisconsin at the intersection of Highways 49 and 21 in case you want to Google the site. The Google site maybe dated and not show the new silos.

At harvest time the corn is brought in via trucks and dried using natural gas heaters. Once dried the corn is milled and then shipped again by truck since no rail service is available.

Greg
 
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I model several industries on my 14' x 14' folded dogbone layout. I have a coal mine and a coal-fired electric plant. A string (usually 7 cars, as any more would extend too far on the layout) of loaded hoppers is taken from the mine area to the main yard where it is picked up by a road engine (either a pair of GP7's or a 2-10-4, and taken to the electric plant. The empties are either picked up for return, or pushed down a semi-hidden track back to the mine.

Another industry is a small sugar beet processing setup. Sugar beets are dropped off by farmers to a siding (not far from the coal mine, as it happens), where they are loaded into a couple of open 40' hoppers. They are picked up by a way freight and taken to the main yard, where they are attached to whatever train I happen to have running. They are then taken to the other side of the layout to a processing plant. Processed sugar is loaded into boxcars or tank cars, depending on whether they are bulk or bagged sugar or molasses. Those cars are shipped back to the main yard for transfer to an off-layout distribution system, etc.

I don't do "operation" against a clock, as I am pretty much a one-man deal, unless I have visitors, especially a grandchild and the kid's friends, in which case I am mostly demonstrating what railroads do.
 
The way I look at it is the idea of a Staging track is the cars are all setup as per the car cards , Staging meaning like a theatre , the train leaves the staging area and starts its route dropping off and picking up , sometimes picking up full cars , some times picking up empty cars, idea is to follow the along and do the railway job and return the train to the staging track.
 
Staging represents the part of the railroad/network/trip that isn't modeled. The idea of a railroad is to haul stuff hundreds or thousands of miles. We can't fit hundreds of miles in our basements, so we model only a portion of it and the rest of the trip is what staging is. On my layout I model a branch, so the layout is from the junction to the end of the line. Staging at the one end is the junction tracks and at the other end staging is interchanges with the B&O and PRR. since I model 1900, I have more "local" shipments, but on most railroads shipments went more than a hundred miles so the majority of shipments should start or end in staging.
 
Most prototype railroads that were unfortunate enough to have a traffic base that was almost entirely local went out of business between 1900-1930. Unless the parent industry stayed profitable.
Staging helps us replicate the processes as seen from our limited viewpoint at xyz.
It 'extends' the visible portion of track. That simple track arrangement can now take an hour to switch.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
 
RBMNfan said:
Most prototype railroads that were unfortunate enough to have a traffic base that was almost entirely local went out of business between 1900-1930.
Click to expand...
Related to this, for those who are interested in railroad history a study of the Granger Laws would be appropriate. The Granger Laws were passed in the last part of the 19th century. These laws forced the railroads to lower the rates for local farmers making them similar to rates charged for long distance hauls, and thus removing all profitablity.
 
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