P.C.C.M. #72 Part One On The A.P.R.R.

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog! 

The A.P.R.R.management is back in the 'Northern Command' and participating in a 3 layout Penn Central Car Movement (P.C.C.M.) with Sir John's N.Y.C.T.L. and PC Ralph's Kings Port Division 

We're going to kick off P.C.C.M. #72 with the outbound portion of our virtual op session. There's a lot of freight that's going out, more than usual, as you will soon find out!

It's a nice day at Rock Ridge Yard as the crew assembles for the orders of the day. 1/87 NJ John is giving out the assignment to the engineers of the day consisting of 1/87th Norman, 1/87th Steve and 1/87th Stuart. Norman will be assigned to AP RS-1 #200, Steve will handle RS-1 #201 and Stuart, who despite a successful run the last time, will head over to R.M.O. Electric to handle GE 44 Tonner #900. Stuart is still unaware that he's on double secret probation from earlier assignments and management wants to keep it that way!

The first assignment is to pick up 5 box cars at Marcal Paper. 

A quick stop at CP South and 1/87th Rich tells him to check in with the tower operator at Little Jamaica.

As he heads out past the yard limits of Rock Ridge, 1/7th Norman passes a pair of GP60 engines idling. A quick stop and he shouts across the loud sounds of both engines to 1/87th engineer Bob. He asks why the wait and he replies "I'm waiting for my outbound freight. We brought these puppies over from the engine terminal." Norman nods and heads over to the interlocking at Little Jamaica.

 As he passes a quick look out to the right and he sees five box cars over at Marcal. 

Another shout out of the cab window to the tower operator about the freight cars over at Marcal. He's being told that Marcal received so many orders this past week that not only did they need more than the usual 2 freight cars, they need 5 and two of them had to be 86' box cars!!  1/87th Norman must be scratching his head on this one. Either someone didn't watch their inventory of some of the town folks must have that 'Get Up and Go' feeling in them. Looking at the manifest on final destinations, it's determined that a pair of A.P.R.R.  box cars are heading to Ralph's Grocery and the PC Box car is heading to Dan's Supreme located in Empire City. In addition, an A.P.R.R. 86' Box car is being sent full of toilet paper to Terminal Warehouse for storage. The Pennsy 86' Box Car is going to Battaglia Brothers Warehouse on the K.P.D. Man, that's a lot of toilet paper and paper products. Doesn't matter, the A.P.R.R. makes their monies on the movement of freight cars!

Here we see AP #200 shoving the cars on to the main from Marcal.

The first set of cars are dropped on the west departure track by CP South. Not sure why this is being done, 1/87th Norman cuts the cars. Now he's heading out to pick up some freight over at C&P Restaurant Supply and an empty Drop End Mill Gondola and add it to the train. 

The first pull is picking up the lone gondola over at Shapeless Steel. This will head over to Amalgamated Container on the K.P.D. 

Next stop on the West Harold Secondary is to pick up 5 box cars at C&P Restaurant Supply. BAR 7574 will head to Pilgrim State Hospital with frozen food. The pair of A.P.R.R. 40' box cars are heading over to best Wholesale with restaurant supplies. The pair of E.B.(Empire Belt) 40' Box cars are heading to Terminal Warehouse with additional restaurant supplies. All of these industries are located in and around Empire City on the N.Y.C.T.L.

A quick crossover to the main is required. In addition, in order to add these cars to the outbound train, 1/87th Norman needs to drop the cars on the main and do a 'run around' in order to shove them on to the other freight cars.

As we swing over to R.M.O. Electric, 1/87th Stuart is given the task of bring over empty coal hopper AP 9416 over to Rock Ridge as it's needed to get more coal at Hedberg Aggregates on the K.P.&W.

In addition, he needs to pull a pair of covered hopper full of wheat to be delivered to Ronzoni in Long Island City, NY. These cars are serviced by the N.Y.C.T.L. and / or the E.B. Railroad, depending which railroad is working the area. 

While pulling out the empty, 1/87th Stuart moves a pair of loaded coal hopper cars over to the main unloading track so the power plant doesn't have to cut back on operations. 

The loaded coal hoppers in place, he heads next door to pick up the pair of covered hoppers. A quick shove over to the yard, drop them off and then head back to the powe plant. 

GP 38-2 #300 and 1/87th Steve get the call to move a pair of empty gondolas that were picked up from Shapeless Steel and stored over at Rock Ridge due to capacity issues at the steel plant. They'll head to Gervais Pipe over in Empire City. Can you say 'storage charges'? Cha-Ching!!

The cars are dropped on the west ladder track and will be added to the train along with the other cars brought over by 1/87th Stuart. 

 1/87th Norman picks up the cars and adds them to the other outbound freight cars. 

AP RS-1 #201 with the yard engineer of the day and  heads down the west ladder to pick up a caboose to add to the outbound train. 

AP caboose #54, a wide vision caboose is called into service. 1/87th NJ John is watching the move carefully. 

Awaiting a green signal...

And he's off to add the caboose to the outbound freight cars...

Looks like 1/87th Stuart is giving the engineer some guidance so hook up to that 86' box car on the rear of the train. 

A successful move and AP #201 will head back to the yard...

We're going to stop it here for today. Not because we haven't finished the move. It seems that 1/87th Bob and it's crew have 'outlawed' for the day. What is 'outlawed'?  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The term outlaw, or outlawed refers to a crew (or train) which can no longer move because the crew has reached the maximum number of hours they are allowed to work, thereby outlawing their controlling the further movement of any train.

Check back again for the second part of the outbound on the A.P.R.R. as well as the rest of P.C.C.M. 72 on the K.P.D. and the N.Y.C.T.L.

Thanks for reading!

A.P.R.R. Layout Update

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

We're back up north for the season, so it's only fitting to run the railroad since it's been idle for a while. I took a look around the layout and decided to switch out a few industries, just to run things, move some freight cars, and have some fun!

This is Rock Ridge Yard looking from the north side of the layout. There was a small operating session that I held back on February 26th, which was more of a fact finding session to enhance future operating sessions which you can read Here

The moves for today took place at Freihofer Bakeries, Marcal Paper and C&P Restaurant Supply. 

Leased GP38-2 GMTX 2103 pulled a number of freight cars from Rock Ridge to replace the freight at C&P Restaurant Supply. 

Cars were dropped on the West Harold secondary track in order to pull cars out of the building. In addition, the cars that were located at Freihofer and Marcal were moved to C&P Restaurant Supply. 

With new inbound in place, GMTX 2103 picks up the outbound, including a lone NP reefer that was part of the freight taken from Rock Ridge in error. 

Heading out on the main, they'll head out and hold outside Rock Ridge by CP South.

AP RS-1 #200 fires up as he'll drop some cars at both Marcal and Freihofer. 

First pull from track 3 are three covered hoppers for Freihofer with baking products to make those great Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Next up are a pair of AP 50' RBL box cars that will be loaded with paper products from Marcal including tissues and of course, TOILET PAPER! 

A quick stop at CP Little Jamaica confirming the moves on the Little Jamaica secondary.

First cuts are at Marcal Paper...

Next cut are 3 covered hoppers at Freihofer Bakeries..

The cars are spotted and the crew heads back to Rock Ridge..

Meanwhile, GMTX 2103 has pulled into and thru the yard..AP 200 will break down the train and spot the cars within the yard. 

 First cut of cars are getting spotted on track 3..

Next cut of cars were dropped on on track 7..

The last set of cars were spotting on track 11..

As the cars are being spotted, GMTX 2103 returns to engine track #2..

The freight is now classified in the yard and AP 200 is back on track 2...

The layout ran well, one car gave me some difficulty and derailed coming out of C&P Restaurant Supply. Further inspection revealed that the car, an Athearn BB car, had a shift in its frame. Good thing is when the railroad was turned on, there were No Gremlins , unlike a previous return to the layout!!

Thanks for reading!

Tuesday Night's Operating Session - A New Possible Format?

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

As many of you know, I host operating sessions on my railroad. I run trains with a great group of guys and all of us have a good time. There's conversation, jokes and of course, the usual banter amongst friends. We do run trains and that's the fun part. 

There are three operating layouts in our group. One operator (Bob) uses a switch list on paper. It's very specific and the operator must study the industry in order to move the cars needed from the list. . His layout is the largest of the three. It's more like tremendous and takes up the entire basement which I think is about 30' x 60' (could be larger in the width). The second layout (Steve) is quite larger than mine. His layout and my layout do not use paperwork. He is adding signals to his railroad and will eventually have a dispatcher to run the railroad via radio. 

My layout runs with a dispatcher and a yardmaster. When I host a session, it runs well for the most part. I can get distracted when others ask questions or not familiar with parts of the railroad, which is understandable since I don't as host as often. Steve is our head gatherer and hosts the most. Last weekend Bob hosted and while he does use the paper switch list, he had one train that had to move first in order for the rest of the railroad to move. I thought that was a neat idea as it kept trains moving. When I host, depending on who is present, an operator of a train may have to wait and some just like to run a train then leave. 

My friend NJ John (the other John is in GA as I refer to him in my blogs quite often), is my senior operator and knows the railroad as well as I do (at times I think he knows it better than me). We discussed this and while I'm not a fan of paper or switch lists, I want the railroad to run with less down time between trains, as long as I have the operators to move trains.

I came up with a plan and last night I put it to the test. I was supposed to have a total of 6 people including myself, and I wanted a selected group of individuals. The main reason is that none of them are or were railroaders!. One could not make it and the other one cancelled on me at the last minute, something about doing things for work. Guess he needs to get his priorities in order, ya think? This just made me do both dispatch and yardmaster. With the other 3 guys running trains and the yard within a few steps it was not an issue.

Here's what I did. I put the jobs on index cards with the engine number, type of job and location on the railroad. One new twist, if you want to call it that was to have a pair of engines come up from the engine terminal and head to the yard, pick up a train and head to staging. This was John's idea as the engine terminal has never been used in an op session. Definitely not to a lack of people, just never entered into the equation.

The yard had a pair of RS units and two Geeps to use for local industries...

The first three assignments, if you know my industries are switched off the main. No one needs to wait coming from or going to staging. The first job goes to the yard light and then heads to staging. 

The next job, once there was an operator, would come from staging and head right to the power plant. No down time since there weren't trains ahead of him, and as long as he had the signals, went right to work. 

This last job, the operator went right to work, grabbed an engine and went out to get the cars, brought them back to the yard. He picked up the outbound cars, went back out, and I sorted them after he left the yard. He could have taken the outbound with him. Since there were just 3 operators, it didn't hold up anyone else...

  

In a matter of just under two hours, with three train operators, all six jobs were worked. Below are some random shots of last nights session...

The end result was that all three operators were constantly moving and running trains. I think John got more of a workout, retrieving engines and returning engines to the terminal and freight yard. It was his idea, so why not let him run with it! 

The assessment at the end of the session was that trains moved, it was enjoyable, the cards with all of the information eliminated many questions each operator may have had when running his train. The dispatcher and yardmaster had down time since trains flowed. Even if I did have a yardmaster, he wouldn't have been that busy. Since there wasn't a yardmaster, when John brought up his engines I pointed out the outbound train and he took it from there. Same thing when he brought up a train from staging for the yard. He dropped the cars, cut the engines and took them back to the engine terminal. I stood around a lot as once trains were moving, there was nothing to do but watch my railroad in action. Very cool!

As a bonus, John brought over some of his new UP motive power, working to replicate a UP engine move from real life...

Here's a short video of his new engines..

All of my night op sessions end with some munchies and drinks (non-alcoholic). Thanks to the guys that helped make this test a success!