Running Model Railroad Switching Operations on a Small Layout

We're going to talk about operating a model railroad. Running a layout as if it was actually carrying freight. I think of this as what a model railroad is for. This is what you do with it, after you build it. Even a small layout like this Turtle Creek Central has lots of operating opportunities. We're going to demonstrate running a local freight out from our little yard, to a mine branch exchanging some empty cars for loaded coal hoppers, and then bringing them back to the terminal. Start with our locomotive. Moving slowly out of the track where it spent the night past the first switch here. The switches are all operated manually, which is typical of layouts to do a lot of switching operation. Also we're running the locomotive very slowly. This is low speed yard track. You don't do things in a big hurry. It stopped before the gray crossing. There's no gates or other protection here, so we want to make sure we're safe to go across. Continue on to get our cars. The deliberate speed is for safety in this kind of service. Take it easy across the road again. Our layout here is set in the 1950s, so we're still using a caboose. As a shelter and office for the train crew. We have two men who ride in the rear, the conductor and the flagman. Modern railroads are not using cabooses, anymore. So you wouldn't see this kind of a car on the train, except in certain circumstances where they have to make long backing moves and things like that. There's still a few cabooses around but they're are a rarity these days. Most model railroaders enjoy having them though. We've got our train ready to proceed out onto our main line, which on this layout is a loop around the table. So we'll pull out of the yard. On a small layout with a loop of track as the main line, like this one, we don't have a very long run for our train, but we can make it longer by running loops around the main line. Call this adding mileage to the run or whatever. And some people would even have a set number of laps that they would make, before they would stop at the next station to do some switching. We'll stop and let our brakeman throw the switch. The track arrangement that we have here with siding with switches at both ends forms what we call a run around track. It lets us run the locomotive from one end of the train to the other, so that we can pull cars when we want to, and push cars when we want to, to get where we need to go. There's an empty car ahead of us at the fuel dealer, and we want to take that back with us, but we have to get it out of the way first. We'll come in and couple to it. Now we need to line the switch, to go in behind the caboose. Come into the siding again, couple to the train. Align the switch to the spur, and now we're ready to go all the way to the mine. The reason for making the long shove is that there is no way to get the engine on the other end of the train out of the mine. So we have to go in here set up to do the moves that we want to make. Then we'll be able to come out in the proper order. Then we push our train across the Turtle Creek bridge. Make a stop here, gray crossing while we get the switch lined. So we shoved these two empties into the mine. Notice that the two loads are positioned with one car loaded out in front and the other loaded car under the tipple. A line like this would only load one car at a time. The car that's under the tipple. So the cars have to be left in the right positions. We leave our empties there just for now. We'll uncouple cars from the engine, and offset the couplers so that they don't close. That's called delayed uncoupling. Meaning we can push the empty hopper and caboose down into the storage track, and then reverse out of there and leave them. That'll be where we build our train, to go home. Now we'll come in on the mine spur again, and pull everything out. We'll take our two loaded cars, put them on top of the empty in the caboose, and that'll be our train for the return trip. Again, I'll set the couplers in that offset or delayed position here. Now, as I spot the two empties for loading at the mine, I'll put them in the reverse position of the way the loads were when we arrived. There'll be one car out behind the mine and one car under the tipple to be loaded. When the mine gets that first car loaded they would use a cable on a winch or maybe a bulldozer to push the two cars down to where they could load the next one, while we were switching back and forth across the road here. We would've left one of our crewman to flag the traffic on the highway to make sure we could go back and forth safely without interrupting our switching. Now we have the train put back together, and many model railroaders would pause at this point. Allow some time when the crew would couple up the air hoses and make an air test to make sure that the air brakes were working through the train and it was safe to proceed home. We'll pull our train out with our two loaded cars and our one empty, and head for home. Running with the engine backwards like this, the cab leading wouldn't be a problem at all. Switch engines like this don't care which way they're going, they really have good visibility in both directions. From this point, after the switches line back to the main line, we'll take our train around and loop as many laps as we'd like to make, and tie up back at the yard where we started out. We use our run-around track to get the engine back around to the other end of the cars. We'll put away the two loads and the empties on that outer track. Which we use as an interchange connection to the Pennsylvania Railroad. Those cars will be taken off to be loads to be delivered, and the empty to be loaded at a mine somewhere else. Then the caboose and the locomotive would be spotted back where they started the day. That would be the end of the day's work on the Turtle Creek.