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Locked
Re: Car Order
#operationspro
Our railroad, the Castle Rock and Pacific, is 2500 sq.ft. on two levels.? It is freelance, point to point - Galveston, TX to Castle Rock, CO.? There is a classification yard in each of the end point cities.? Beyond Galveston and Castle Rock there are two double ended staging yards that are the true endpoints.? The staging yards are not active during an op session, that is, there is no switching in staging - what ever car order goes in is that same as what comes out the next time that train runs.? We are currently running? a 5:1 fast clock so four hour sessions only represent 20 hours of a full day.?? Now for CAR ORDER on the Castle Rock and Pacific... We have 4 through freights that run staging to staging and return during a 24 hour day - so 8 through freights.? These trains pick-up and set out cars only at the two major class yards as they run across the railroad.? Before each session, I check and block any of these trains that are in staging.? If a train is coming out of Galveston staging, Galveston cars are in block #1 and Castle Rock cars in block #2 followed by the remainder of the train.? I use Operations Pro and love it.? I do not run in real time but rather build, update, print and terminate all manifests in sequence ;for all trains that are expected to run in that 20 hour fast clock session.? When a through freight comes out of staging for the first time during the session it is blocked because I blocked it before the session.? When it enters the second and last classification yard before entering staging on the opposite end of the railroad, the yardmaster a that yard has orders to reblock the train so that when it reappears on its next run out of staging it is already blocked.? Since I have generated all of the manifests in advance, I know how the train should be blocked when it reappears.? To keep things kind of "railroady" I print the blocking instructions on a pseudo "31 Order" and place it in the "restaurant rail" on the fascia above the yard and staple a copy on to the associated manifest. (a "restaurant rail" is one of those linear rails that are used to hold food order tickets in a restaurant)? I also stamp the Operations Pro generated manifests and switch lists with a green inked stamp that says "Blocking Required see 31 Orders".? In a pinch, the YM can delay the blocking until the train returns because no one else will see the train until it has passed through his/her yard the second time but we encourage them to get it done at the first opportunity.? This works for us and keeps things in order. Not really on topic but it goes with staging on our railroad - we swap open loads.? A train may go into staging with an empty flatcar but when the train is built again by Operations Pro it may have any number of different open loads for the next trip to a different industry.? When an operator gets a train out of staging they check the manifest for cars that have open loads and change them if necessary.? We keep a file cabinet full of different open loads.? All the operator has to do is remove any improper load and replace it with the load listed on the manifest.? In this way a flat with a steel plate load going into staging may come out with a load of? pipe or tractors or...whatever.? The downside of this is that you don't have all of the neat detail of chains and such to fasten down the loads but it does allow you to have sensible loads going to each industry.? Food for thought. |
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Ken,
The reading of the signals meaning is partly what was/is known as "route knowledge". Every driver had to be separately qualified for every route before they could be allowed to be in sole control of a train on it because they needed to "learn" the signals.?? You are correct that there are two types of dolls seen here - posts and lattice (white posts on the left and "black" lattice on the right).? The color of the latter is probably more to do with rust and accumulated smoke than a "choice" they along with the bracket would most likely have been painted white originally. Other than ensuring that posts and dolls higher than 40' were all lattice (for reduced wind-loading - some of these posts could be >70' high!) the choice might well be because of the parts to hand when the signal was altered or repaired or indeed which company or region happened to be in charge then. The LMR would have tended to be putting up posts, while the ER would have hankered for/retained lattices. Many lines changed hands several times during their lives. But that does not designate a material signalling difference as you guessed.? Luckily this allows almost any combination to be explained away if a precise prototype is not being modelled! There are some useful hints to help read the signals without route knowledge, you'll notice that the dolls are visually grouped by how they are placed along the gantry into a set of two dolls and a set of three dolls with a larger gap between the sets.? The sets are then placed (in this case) to the LHS of the line to which they apply under the bracket. Each set of dolls can only show one Aspect at a time. I say "in this case" because one of the four regions of British Rail (WR) inherited independent ways from its pre-nationalization forebear (GWR) and not only continued to use lower quadrant signals but placed them (usually) on the RHS of the track - this was naturally because their steam engines were Right-Hand drive unlike almost everyone else's....? In every case, if there were obstructions to "sighting" in the normal signal position it could be altered to allow for a clear view.? Another common trick (and frequently a use for that 70' post) was to place two arms one at the top and the other near the bottom and have them "co-acting" as mirrors of each other. This would allow a driver to see the next signal's aspect even if several overbridges intervened both from a distance and close-up as long as they knew where to look.? This route knowledge was not only because of the precise meaning of the individual signals, but also because the signals would come in sets ALONG the route. In a UK semaphore world, a distant signal arm (yellow with black chevron) read "through" a set of stop signals (red and white stripe - often referred to as "home" even though that is not precise) - that is to say - several stop signals in a row would have to be "off" for the distant arm at the rear of them to be moved to "off". The stop signals for a box would be positioned to allow the track to be divided for shunting and low speed work but often not be far apart enough for adequate braking at high-speed.? If the distant for a box was "on" as the train approached, one or more of its following stop signals were almost certainly at danger, and so they would all have to be approached at a low enough speed that the train could stop in front of any one of them.? The boxes were not placed at equal distances apart either.? Knowledge of how many stop signals there were in a signalboxes "set"? was therefore needed so that a driver could know when the next block (under the control of another box) was entered and so a higher speed could be maintained/resumed until the next distant arm could be seen. You'll see here that the distant arm for the following box is placed under a stop arm controlled by a closer box on one of the dolls in each set, because the two boxes are positioned too closely together for a separate distant signal post and adequate braking distance. In this case the stop/home and distant were mechanically interlocked (slotted) so that the distant arm (from the following box) would only go off if the stop arm above it (from the closer box) and all following stop signals it controlled were also "off" even if the following box had cleared the distant (after first clearing all its own stop signals, of course). A side benefit of the stop/home & distant was that it allowed denser positioning of trains and this was an advantage retained when 3-color lights were slowly introduced to replace semaphores.? ? What was also important in the British context was that high-speed passenger trains doing >100 MPH would routinely share the road with low-speed unfitted (mechanical brakes on each wagon and a guard's van) goods doing <30 MPH and fitted freight (engine controlled vacuum brakes) doing ~70MPH. It was up to the Signalmen to sort all this out - via communications usually made only on "block-bells" and "block instruments" (that is there was no routine use of the "speaking instrument" which was felt to be prone to idle chit-chat and safety-reducing confusion). The middle doll in the RHS set here has a home arm for Up Fast to Up Slow and that might be used to allow a fast fitted freight to be moved from Fast to Slow so it could passed by an express passenger train, after the fitted itself had earlier gone past a pick-up or coal wagon goods valiantly chugging along on the Up Slow, for example.? Here's a??of three dolls - it is a single bracket (mast) controlling a single track that divides into three roads - each of which has not only a stop/distant pair also a subsidiary "calling-on" arm as well - to allow a train or engine to proceed even if the road is occupied (to add a carriage or an engine, for example). All these nine arms can only show one Aspect at a time. The relative importance of the lines can be judged by the relative heights of the dolls. Hope that helps at least a bit. ?? Adam |
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Locked
Re: Layout editor zoom issue- new insights
#layouteditor
I never figured out the cause of the original problem (which I now can't reproduce (with or without the setClip disabled).
I'm going to leave it disabled (since it was causing the scrollbars to get overwritten). If (/when?) the original problem shows up again I'll look into again. |
David Cochrun
Adam Richards
George Warner