Coupling on the Baltimore and Ohio L&S Division

The easy way to closed-couple your locomotives and your cars is to use a number 33 coupler instead of a number 5. The shank space is less, considerably less. You don't need the draftier parts from the number 33, you throw that away, you just save the coupler. You can see the difference on the projection of the number 5 versus the 33. On Atherine cars the spring clip that holds the coupler into the pocket has to be trimmed in some cases to allow the coupler to swing full from one side to another.

The layout is single track, but the passing sidings are pretty long. How does that add to the feel of a real railroad? Well it makes you believe that you have a double track mainline which is in reality not here, and it gives you more operating time. What do you mean by that? Well you can run two 50-car trains in either direction on the layout and never have to worry about only one place where they cross each other.

And so you've got sidings that are long enough to hold 50 cars? The sidings, yes, every siding on the layout is long enough to hold a minimum of 50 cars. How many sidings would you suggest you should have? Three. Three sidings.

Three large ones, yes. And so there's never a problem when you got trains running in opposite directions? No, not yet, haha. How many people do you need for an operating section? Ideally, 8 people would be fine but we can work with 6.

And what kind of car routing system do you use? Carcart and Waybill, that I got through Model Railroader, at a sig, S-I-G people at special interest groups. Part of the layout seems to double back on itself and go through the scenes several times to gain running time on multiple levels, how does that work? Well it works, it draws the railroad together; by having the trains cross over each other, they pass each other at least two times during an operating session. And it gives a feeling of reality.

Are you going somewhere or getting out of the town and you're in open countryside, you got, you got a lot of town scenes but then you got a little bit of open countryside and that's where the loops are isn't it? Yes. That the open running and they're going through that scene several times. Right. You like the feel of that?

Yes. Even though it's going through the same scene you still like that? Yes, it works really well. From an operations standpoint? Mhm.

It gives you running time, without a doubt. It takes like 13-15 minutes for the average steam train to make one pass around the layout. Many layouts are not signaled, but you have block signals. Do they really work? No they don't.

They are illusions, I use reflective lenses in the block signals to give the illusion of light.