A Small Addition To The Railroad Operations

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

For those of you who follow my adventure, I've made mention on how the railroad is evolving to run better during both virtual op sessions and live sessions.

One recent addition was to add a number of tracks to the east side of South Staging.

http://atlanticpacificrailroad.blogspot.com/2020/03/track-work-on-aprr.html

These tracks are used to put freight cars that are not part of my virtual op sessions, or as we refer to them as P.C.C.M. (Penn Central Car Movements), or when I have operating sessions I put the older type cars down there for storage. 

Over the past few months I've had some in-person op sessions with 2-3 guys, with safety precautions in place. When I added the engine terminal to the live op sessions, cabooses were on a single track in the yard, and engines came from the terminal. It was suggested to move the cabooses to tracks somewhere near the engine terminal. The closest place at that time was to use some of the tracks that were added in south staging. It works well, despite that I run modern trains for the most part. 

It was brought up by the guys that when working the live sessions, there can be a wait to grab a caboose since there can be trains leaving the staging yards or heading to them. While talking to Sir John of Georgia, one of my virtual op friends whom I've known for many years, told me that he has a caboose track in his engine terminal. A dedicated track. So I started to look at my engine terminal to see if this is at all possible. I came up with 2 possible locations. 

This past Wednesday night after the session was over, I ran it by the guys. First location was within the engine terminal where I currently store engines. Access to this track would require using the tail track. It can be done. However, if I have 2 engines on the consist, the tail track is not long enough to hold both engines and the caboose, so that location is out....

The next location seems to be the best location. Why not add a track alongside the track that leads to the tail track. I placed a turnout over the track to see if it would work. plus an additional turnout for two tracks so one could be a repair shop...

While the idea would work, adding a two story back shop would not work, as I would lose visibility to the entrance to south staging as well as the outbound of north staging. That is not an option, so I scaled it back to one track. I'll add some small offices and low buildings to show maintenance sheds to work on the cabooses...

So, during the late hours of the night, I started to add the turnout...

A small office at the turnout. I've had it for a while, so it may stay right there...

As you can see, some of the APRR cabooses are already at home. 

Last night I spoke to one of the guys who asked me how this works if you have an engine picking up a caboose short hood forward, then head out. How do you run up top, he asked. I gave him some options. One option is to run your engine to the turntable, turn your engine, then pick up the caboose and head out. Now you have to run the entire lower level to go up with the caboose behind the engine. The other option, is to drop the caboose by Morris Plains and do a quick run around and then head up left hand running with the caboose behind the engine. There's a set of crossovers at Morris Plains, and since the interlocking is protected with signals, it can be done. I don't think real railroads would run great distances with the caboose on the head end. Industrial moves on sidings or run around on a main line track for a short distance would not an issue. 

I've put out an RFP (Request For Proposal) to come up with a plan to electrify the turnout for the future. It's within arms reach (even for us height challenged guys, like me), so once I decide on the location for the turnout control, I'll add it!

Until next time...