Preparation for Penn Central Car Movement #74

Greetings everyone! It's time to prepare for another Penn Central Car Movement.

It's going to be a three layout virtual op session with Sir John's N.Y.C.T.L. and PC Ralph's Kings Port Division. 

While John and Ralph have their entire railroad set in the PC era, my railroad runs from the PC era to the present. Since our last P.C.C.M. ran at the end of April, I've run the railroad many times in between. As I posted back in May, it takes some time to set up for an op session. 

To prepare for the upcoming session, the yard needed to be cleared of post-Penn Central freight cars or anything that would have been around after the PC was taken over by Conrail. Here's what it typically looks like.

This upcoming P.C.C.M. was a special one as it was going to have the majority of freight cars heading to the Ford Plant on John's railroad. This was going to be comprised of 86's auto box cars as well as a couple of 60' auto box cars. For good measures, he decided at the last minute to request the ballast cars as the railroad is constantly maintaining its tracks! Also heading out are 7 freight cars to West Mill on the K.P.D. The entire train will head up to Selkirk, drop off the cars for the K.P.D. and the rest of the train will head to Empire City, home of the N.Y.C.T.L.

Ideal Auto Parts has a siding length of approximately 200 feet, and 4 of the 89' auto box cars fit with no overhang or obstruction to other tracks nor does it foul the main. However, there are some KP&W box cars that needed parts from Ideal. Since the the other cars were loaded, they were moved over to Rock Ridge Yard. 

The ballast cars needed to be placed in the yard as they were moved when I was running some trains. 

As you can see, there's still some post PC cars in the yard. Those needed to be moved along with a few others. After an hour and a couple train moves, we cleared out the yard and it's now ready for P.C.C.M. 74. There's 5 classification tracks on the west ladder open for the build up to launch 74 and there will be 4 arrival tracks that will be ready to receive the inbound. 

As a result of the increase of inbound and outbound rail traffic, the management has added a new hire and he'll make his first appearance this weekend.

That's all for now. We're ready to start P.C.C.M. 74 this weekend. Are you ready to watch and enjoy some great model railroading?