Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since I made a post regarding the layout, Penn Central Car Movements notwithstanding. This one is a different post from any other post I’ve made.
A few weeks ago, during one of my live operating sessions, I was thinking about the upcoming PCCM (scheduled to launch mid-October). Unlike the other two participants, their railroads model a specific era. My railroad is more modern. However, when I need to participate in our virtual PCCM op sessions, I must move all freight cars and engines that are not suitable for that era. It’s a major undertaking! This takes me a good 2 hours to move them and ‘hide’ them on the layout where they can’t be seen during the time I take my photos and videos.
Once those cars are moved out of the way, I need to add the freight cars needed for my PCCM virtual ops. This takes a couple of hours as well as some freight cars need to go where they were dropped off in the previous session. These are outbound cars. Also, I need to pull the cars needed for the ‘inbound’ part of our PCCM sessions. Another hour, maybe more since I must stage them on a track with engines to bring into the scene.
That brings me back to my last live op session, September 3rd. I usually have 5 guys running various jobs on the layout, from Yardmaster, Engine hostler and Engineer. Three of these guys are always here and two of them rotate between the yardmaster duties and engineer duties. I asked them what they thought if I decided to ‘roll back’ the railroad to an earlier era. All of them agreed that it sounded like a good idea. So, we begin….
The railroad is going to be set in the Penn Central / Conrail era using motive power and freight cars from the PC, B&O, EL, CR and some other roads that I have. The cutoff time is the late 80’s, even though CSX was in existence at that time. Everyone associates CSX with modern times including yours truly.
The buildings on the railroad all fit that period, including Tropicana. No need to remove any of them from the layout.
Tropicana will get an entire new string of reefers composing a mix of 50' and 57' reefers.
A couple of vehicles will come off the layout. The intermodal terminal will get a major makeover from large well cars to a small presence. 53’ flat cars with trucks and 89’ flat cars with trucks will make up the new (old) look.
The auto rack terminal will now have Bi-level and Tri-level open auto racks. Mike’s Lumber will have both 53’ and 60’ bulkhead flat cars. C&P Restaurant Supply will have 50’ & 57’ reefers as well as some 40’/50’/60’ box cars. Shapeless Steel will have the same type of cars as in the past; nothing over 53’. Marcal and Freihofers will have the same type of freight cars as in the past. Ideal Auto Parts remain with both 60’ & 86’ auto parts cars.
Three Amigos Warehouse will still have box cars. The Tank Terminal will get a makeover with different types of tank cars. Cargill will get some of the shorter 17,600 corn syrup tank cars as well as covered hoppers. R.M.O. Electric remains the same with coal hoppers moving the ones with the CSX logos off the layout.
I started to make the moves on a Friday night, packing up a whopping 47 freight cars including 37 Trinity 64’ reefers of which 28 were Tropicana! The next day I did another 24 cars, and on Sunday more cars were packed up. I stepped back and said to myself ‘What did I get myself into!’ There’s no turning back and within a week I packed up and put away over 120 freight cars. As of September 12th, I had about 20 freight cars left to put away. What was the biggest hurdle? Finding the boxes for these freight cars! I have over 40 rolling carts of which many of them are in the basement and the rest in the train room. Those last 20 cars are the boxes I need to find to put everything away. There's still a good 40-60 freight cars on the layout that fit both time periods. Freight cars were usually built to last about 40-50 years. No need to remove them.
Some images of what was involved in the changes...
Staging never looked so empty!!
Rock Ridge Yard is getting changed as well...
28 reefers were packed up that serviced Tropicana. No worries, I have plenty of earlier reefers to fill Tropicana and more!!
The nice thing about making this change will be taking all PCCM and non-PCCM cars that I use for my virtual op sessions and adding them to the layout. They’re all in carts under the layout. We’re talking over 100 cars, plus the new ones that were not featured in my PCCM’s that will be visible for the first time!
Now, what will that do to my in person operating sessions? Absolutely nothing. The moves will be the same, just not with modern freight cars and large modern engines. All of the large SD70/SD80/ES44/ET44 will be mothballed. SD45 engines will be the largest as of now. All of my Geeps, RS units and SW/MP switchers will be used. I do have a nice fleet of Penn Central and Conrail engines as well as other engines for that time period. We’re going to add some thru trains that will travel along the railroad. I have an NYC Pacemaker box car train that will be added as well as a B&O Sentinel box car train. I’ll have a new Juice Train and an intermodal/auto rack train to take the place of the previous ones.
One area that can’t be changed is my Amtrak Station. While Amtrak started May 1, 1971 I can still run some Penn Central passenger trains as well as some NJ Transit, and some early Amtrak. These may run during my live sessions as I have a couple of guys that like to run passenger trains. When company comes over, I run mostly passenger trains and the Juice train as Tropicana is the largest industry on the railroad.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the guys think at my next operating session, which is tentatively scheduled for September 24th. It's going to be a fun time and I'm hoping everyone enjoys my session.
That’s all for now. Isn’t that enough? I think so…
