Spokane & BC Railway Circa 1955

Modelling what might have been in southeast BC and northwest Wasington

Tag: Op Sessions

Operating sessions on the S&BC

First operations under a new scheme

Following the “Fateful Friday” test operating session debacle, I did some deep thinking about how the layout should be operated now that Carson and Curlew had been added. I wrote a number of posts about the problems and what we should try instead:

After all of that, I designed a simplified train operating scheme without a dedicated switcher at Grand Forks. During the week, I ran numerous simulations to fine tune it until it seemed very workable.

The following Saturday, July 27, 2019, and still smarting from the previous session, my brave crew agreed to try out the new operating scheme. This meant that each train was just a way freight that switched its portion of the layout’s industries, with very little interchange of cars between the trains. I tried hard to keep the trains in different areas of the layout so that we would not have too many people in one place at the same time, and that seemed to work out pretty well.

Afterwards, everyone agreed that it was much more relaxed and enjoyable, even though there was still lots of work to be done switching all of the industries. What a difference from one week earlier where we had to abandon the session because it was just impossible to continue. Same guys, same layout, same number of trains, just a different approach to what the trains did. Thank you for not giving up after the previous week!

Thanks once again to John for capturing the day in photos and for his captions.

(Most of) The brave crew!
Continue reading “First operations under a new scheme”

Who Should Switch Grand Forks Industries?

The town of Grand Forks on the layout is based on the real Grand Forks located in southwest British Columbia. In its railroad heyday, it was served by three railroads, the Canadian Pacific, the Great Northern, and the Spokane & BC, which is the main focus of the layout.

The industries that are modelled on the layout are a mix of prototype ones and some “could have been” fictitious ones that never actually had rail service. The big question then is which railroad or railroads should switch the industries. There are multiple possibilities:

  1. Every railroad switches all industries.
  2. Each railroad only switches some of the industries exclusively.
  3. Only one railroad switches all of the industries.

In all cases cars would get interchanged between all three railroads at Grand Forks as necessary.

So, how to decide on which option to use? Option 1 provides the most “play value” for the operators, as the industries get switched by every train passing through town, however it is not very prototypical for most industries, especially small ones, as they tended to be located on only one railroad and served by that one exclusively. Some large plants had service from multiple railroads but they were the exception.

Options 2 and 3 are both very prototypical, depending on the siting of the industries, so either would be acceptable, so we need to consider other factors to decide in the case of Grand Forks.

On the layout as it currently stands, the towns of Grand Forks and Carson have trains from both railroads pass through them, while the towns of Curlew and Darestof see only S&BC trains. In order to balance the work load between crews, it would make sense to have the S&BC trains focus on Curlew and Darestof, leaving the CPR to service all of Grand Forks and Carson. This is Option 3. Later on, as more experience is gained, some of the Grand Forks industries could easily be changed to be serviced by just the S&BC trains.

That Fateful Friday – or the first attempt at switching Grand Forks after the addition of Carson and Curlew

Following the construction and commissioning of the new towns of Carson and Curlew with their additional industries, a new operating scheme was developed to include service to these new towns. It was a simple extension of the one used to date, whereby trains from all four compass points would exchange cars in Grand Forks as well as service their assigned industries. The local industries at Grand Forks were switched also as part of the classification switcher duties at an appropriate point in time. This proved quite successful, and it was used during VanRail 2017 for two sessions.

With the significant increase in industries wanting cars, the classification role at Grand Forks was expected to become a full time position, leaving the local industries to be switched by a different job.

The Saturday gang bravely agreed to try out these ideas on one Friday evening that will be well remembered for all the wrong reasons. Let’s just say that my ideas didn’t quite work out as planned. If you are interested in the gory details of my analysis, it continues below the following pictures that were taken before everything went wrong.

John happily switching Darestof.
Ken and Colin trying to manage Grand Forks yard.
Continue reading “That Fateful Friday – or the first attempt at switching Grand Forks after the addition of Carson and Curlew”

New operations plan to include Curlew

This is a start of the new crew job descriptions for operating the layout with the addition of the new town of Curlew. The number of operating positions grows to fully four with the added number of industries to be switched at Curlew and at Carson.

A Bit of Philosophy

Grand Forks is a true interchange hub, as the S&BC runs north and south through it, the CPR runs east and west, and the GN comes in and back from the southeast. Lots of cars must be interchanged between trains at Grand Forks, which requires a dedicated switcher job to classify the incoming cars. There are also 6 industries in Grand Forks that need to be switched, plus the new adjacent town of Carson has a few more. As Carson is right on the US border, it did not make sense to switch it with a way freight that crosses the border, due to the paperwork involved. Instead, all deliveries and pickups at Carson are made by a turn out of Grand Forks that never crosses the border. Southbound cars leaving Carson will be brought back to Grand Forks and then sent south on the next scheduled way freight, after their customs papers have been drawn up.

The new town of Curlew is located between Carson and the original temporary end of the line at Darestof. It has only S&BC trains passing through it, and a number of industries that need to be switched. The initial ideas around how to switch Curlew were to parallel Grand Forks with a dedicated switcher that handles blocks of cars from the passing trains. This is really not a good approach as there is not enough work for a full time local switcher because there are no interchanges with other trains.

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