Grand Forks – Spokane & BC Railway Circa 1955

Second go at the new ops scheme

Posted on August 3, 2019November 30, 2019

Hoping that the new operating scheme’s success last week was not a fluke, we decided to do it all over again on August 3rd, just to be sure, with VanRail only one month away.

If I may say so, I think it was one of the best operating sessions we have ever had on the layout. Lots of cars were in motion, even with 10 extra cars on the layout than before, but with no real tie-ups or confusion. The Grand Forks yard did what it was supposed to do, namely be a place to organize cars when a train is in town, and not be a big storage bucket all of the time. There was even space for two trains to meet and pass, because the siding was not clogged with cars.

Grand Forks yard working as expected and not clogged.

John switching Grand Forks – notice that the yard is not full.

First operations under a new scheme

Posted on July 27, 2019November 28, 2019

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.

Who Should Switch Grand Forks Industries?

Posted on July 23, 2019November 28, 2019

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:

Every railroad switches all industries.
Each railroad only switches some of the industries exclusively.
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.

Too Much Yard Switching Busy Work

Posted on July 23, 2019November 28, 2019

The original scheme for handling cars through the Grand Forks yard was to classify all arriving cars using a local switcher, including those cars destined for the local industries at Grand Forks. A separate switching operation would then deliver them. This seemed to work well when there were only a few trains through the town each day, but with the recent additions of Carson and Curlew and their extra industries wanting more cars, this approach has broken down. More details of the first attempt at operating using that scheme can be found in the post “That Fateful Friday”. Suffice it to say that it did not go well due to the extra traffic to be handled through the Grand Forks yard. So, what to do instead? Time for some serious rethinking of the process, and a bit of detailed analysis.

Operating Grand Forks as a Classification Yard is a Mistake

Posted on July 22, 2019November 28, 2019

At the start of operations on the S&BC, there was very little main line track to other towns. The entire layout pretty much was the Grand Forks town, plus the upper and lower staging yards. This resulted in some traffic to and from the local industries in Grand Forks, but most of it simply was interchanged between the CPR and the S&BC and went to and from the staging yards. Consequently, it made sense to operate the yard as a classification point in order to best handle the interchange traffic.

Now, with the addition of the new towns of Carson and Curlew that have in combination more industry spots than the entire layout had before, continuing to operate Grand Forks as a classification yard is proving to be a big mistake.

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

Posted on July 20, 2019November 27, 2019

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.