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Post by grahamline on Oct 17, 2018 9:30:29 GMT -8
We keep running up against some annoying situations and misconceptions as we refine the operations session "down t'club."  For example: 1. Why must model railroad crews hurry to get their work done? Meaning, no time to look at basic train instructions ("this train does work at X, Y, & Z") or, running at Indianapolis 500 speeds and then complaining the jobs are over too soon. 2. Mistaking horribly complicated switching trackage for a "good operating layout," when all it does is require one car be moved eight or nine times to get everything spotted correctly. 3. A model railroad has to be really big to be fun, and has to have track laid in every possible square foot of the benchwork. 4. A congenital inability to read car numbers, or car cards & waybills, paired with an inability to read signs on buildings like "Consolidated Fruit Warehouse" and other complicated names. 5. Inability to distinguish among single-door boxcars, double-door boxcars, insulated boxcars, and mechanical refrigerator cars. Prefer switching the orange, brown, red, and yellow cars. Discuss. |
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Post by sd80mac on Oct 17, 2018 9:41:26 GMT -8
Some people just don't have any regard for realism. It always irks me a bit when I'm at an operating session at a nice layout, with nice models, and some doofuss is running a train around with no headlight on, not blowing the horn for the crossings, switching back and forth just using the direction toggle switch instead of bringing the train to an actual stop. To each their own, I guess, but such foolery is not tolerated on my own layout. Someone I know actually reprogrammed and limited all of his motive power to a scale 30 mph because people were running way, way too fast.
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Post by 12bridge on Oct 17, 2018 9:57:36 GMT -8
You are always going to have "Those Guys" at a club environment, and your not going to change it short of running them off. Thats just the way it is with some people.
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Post by grahamline on Oct 17, 2018 10:59:38 GMT -8
You are always going to have "Those Guys" at a club environment, and your not going to change it short of running them off. Thats just the way it is with some people. You're absolutely right. It's kind of like showing up at a Civil War reenactment in a French Foreign Legion uniform. For everyone who "buys into" the program -- which is no different than that on a hundred other model railroads -- there is another who seems personally affronted by prototypical railroading. Over 20 years, the club has built a solid core. Only one person was kicked out, and that after sending some pretty offensive emails to the whole membership. |
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djh4d
Full Member
Posts: 205
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Post by djh4d on Oct 17, 2018 11:30:08 GMT -8
switching back and forth just using the direction toggle switch instead of bringing the train to an actual stop. What? Are they running their train back and forth so they don't have to sit at a signal?
Also, don't forget the ones that runs a track cleaning care back and forth in the same yard track and tells everyone they're switching.
-Dave
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Post by bnsf971 on Oct 17, 2018 11:43:50 GMT -8
In the club I belonged to, there was a member that would hook up to a random string of cars, set the freight train speed at Northeast Corridor passenger speeds, and head in to the crew lounge while letting his train roam unattended. He was known as Launchpad Larry.
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Post by nstophat on Oct 17, 2018 12:25:48 GMT -8
Or running a loaded coal train with a pair of GP-7's up a 2% grade at nearly 50 scale miles per hour, while the manned N&W Y3 Mallet that is the pusher has a maximum top speed of 25 and the train string lines...
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Post by nstophat on Oct 17, 2018 12:28:06 GMT -8
You are always going to have "Those Guys" at a club environment, and your not going to change it short of running them off. Thats just the way it is with some people. Timetable & Trainorders operations will weed them out quickly. One of the local guys in the round-robin group on Fridays runs TT & TO, and if you die on the railroad, you can't run for the next calendar year..... |
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Post by grahamline on Oct 17, 2018 12:42:29 GMT -8
Or running a loaded coal train with a pair of GP-7's up a 2% grade at nearly 50 scale miles per hour, while the manned N&W Y3 Mallet that is the pusher has a maximum top speed of 25 and the train string lines... Anything we run that calls for a helper will stall without one. It's based on head-end power vs. car count. We have a short "sneaker grade" well in advance of the big hill, and the sneaker will catch out a conductor who isn't keeping a proper eye on his train's length. |
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Post by packer on Oct 17, 2018 12:44:29 GMT -8
....not blowing the horn for the crossings... Just curious, what is one supposed to do if crossing are really close together? One spot on the club layout has 2 crossings in the span of about 100 scale feet. I've been doing the horn as normal for the first, but then holding it through the 2nd. Or in the event of switching when having to go over those same 2 roads? I'm guessing when backing you blow the horn as if the last car was the locomotive. Or in paved industrial areas where there isn't an actual road.
Ones I've seen (not all club members, and not all at ops sessions):
- People dropping their kids off at the club like it's a daycare.
- People who leave the bell on constantly (I don't know how the actual signaling works, but I'm pretty sure it's not 100% on)
- People who have malfunctioning equipment, then set their trains to warp, then wander off without telling anybody. So their train may have split into several pieces, lots of parts derailed, and everyone else has to fend for themselves.
- people who don't operate (using JMRI system) taking a string of cars, then dropping them off randomly. I wouldn't mid if they put them back...
- a weird guy walked in on an ops session. his first question was " where am I and what is this place?" The president responded: "Shalimar, Florida, and this is the Miracle Strip model RR club." "oh, sweet. I'm from Alabama" the guy responded, so he looks around a bit, then he sees a member set his drink down on a table. The guy then asks "Is that rum and coke?" Then the member responded "no, it's sweet tea." He looks around at the model trees, then asks "are these weed?" someone responded "no," then he asked "do ya'll know where I can get any?" It was at this moment we had 2 people ask him to leave and follow him out. Luckily for him the member who is a sheriff was on duty. |
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Post by sd80mac on Oct 17, 2018 14:06:18 GMT -8
....not blowing the horn for the crossings... Just curious, what is one supposed to do if crossing are really close together? One spot on the club layout has 2 crossings in the span of about 100 scale feet. I've been doing the horn as normal for the first, but then holding it through the 2nd. Or in the event of switching when having to go over those same 2 roads? I'm guessing when backing you blow the horn as if the last car was the locomotive. Or in paved industrial areas where there isn't an actual road. I'm not talking about the intricacies of horn rules so much as I am about the people that are running a fully equipped 28-function decoder locomotive and just ignore it like it does nothing. The sound is there to add realism, use it! In real life, crossings in multiple succession like you describe usually warrant repeated long-long-short-long sequences until the final crossing is crossed. During back up moves, the horn usually isn't used for crossings depending on the length of the train. Doesn't do much good to blow the horn if the engine is 20 cars away. |
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Post by kentuckysouthernrwy on Oct 17, 2018 16:04:34 GMT -8
Ya take what ya get, if you want to be in an operating club. Good luck. I do find the strict practice of horn blowing can get tiring as road crossing spacing is a bit tight in places. Biggest thing for me is too high volumes on sound. We have a guy with a steamer he brings that is set at 100% that comes late and sets up in one of the yards and you dont even have to see him, you know Jim has arrived. People with loud bells another peeve.
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Post by fr8kar on Oct 17, 2018 17:47:17 GMT -8
Regarding multiple crossings, some people try to blow a sequence for each crossing, shortening up the timing to make the sequence fit while others continue the sequence from one crossing to the next. There are a few that are setup such that I will blow a sequence before reaching the first road, start another sequence and finish it as I cross the second road. Other times when there are several crossings I will simply blow my standard sequence and repeat it continuously without regard for the number of crossings until I have covered the last crossing. You don't have to blow the crossing when backing up, but I'll ring the bell until I'm clear of the crossing.
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Post by Paul Cutler III on Oct 17, 2018 20:06:26 GMT -8
I'm the Operations Chairman for a large club (65 members in a 10,000 sq. ft. club building), and I've been operating with these guys for 25 years. Trying to organize a group of operators is like herding cats.  All our members are independent-minded at times (some more than others), and just getting them all ready at the same time is a challenge. Only a few are "hard core" operators; the rest are casual types. I have guys complain that we're taking things too seriously and others who complain we aren't serious enough, so I guess it's just about right. grahamline, 1). Do you have speed limits and a scale speedometer? Do all your trains run at the same speed, or do you have different classes of train that require different speeds? At my club, I've found that by having a bunch of different train classes and speeds, the engineers tend to pay more attention to the speed limit that is shown on their train order. The speedometer helps them see what 25 mph is vs. 65 mph. 2). Complicated switchwork is in the eye of the beholder. I've had some guys complain about a simple run around track move (they wanted only trailing point switching). But still, I hate moving the same car over and over. They wanna do that, go build a Timesaver layout. 3). A large layout can be simple. That's what our layout is. It doesn't have to squeeze in track in every square inch to be fun. 4). I don't get that; if they don't want to put the right cars in the right places, then why are they operating? On our layout, operators can either be engineers running mainline trains or local freight crews. Mainline engineers just run trains and they do no switching. We learned that lesson; it ties up the mainline too long with guys that can't cut a coupler to save their lives.  Some guys just want to run trains and do that really well (even if they can't switch), and some just want to switch. We accommodate both. 5). We use AAR codes on car cards, but we also list the name, number, type, etc. We don't list the color.  However, we have just recently started to offer a blank switch list for the local freights. If the guys really want to, they can come in early and use the car cards to write their own switchlist any way they want. And this is quite realistic. If the guys want to put the orange car at the brown building instead of 40' Reefer PFE 17752 RS at Western Car Loading, that's fine with me as long as it gets there. |
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bis54
New Member
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Post by bis54 on Oct 18, 2018 9:07:13 GMT -8
What I'd like to see is an operating session that is by invitation only. It would have to be at non standard club time. Probably a lot less trains than we normally run.
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Post by grahamline on Oct 18, 2018 9:20:13 GMT -8
I'm the Operations Chairman for a large club (65 members in a 10,000 sq. ft. club building), and I've been operating with these guys for 25 years. Trying to organize a group of operators is like herding cats. All our members are independent-minded at times (some more than others), and just getting them all ready at the same time is a challenge. Only a few are "hard core" operators; the rest are casual types. I have guys complain that we're taking things too seriously and others who complain we aren't serious enough, so I guess it's just about right. Graham Line, 1). Do you have speed limits and a scale speedometer? Do all your trains run at the same speed, or do you have different classes of train that require different speeds? At my club, I've found that by having a bunch of different train classes and speeds, the engineers tend to pay more attention to the speed limit that is shown on their train order. The speedometer helps them see what 25 mph is vs. 65 mph. GL: We have a freight-only line with 2MT through a relatively busy area (industrial sidings, branch junctions, supporting yards etc.) and then single track that climbs eastbound through the less-populated Oregon Cascades. Classes affect dispatching priority but not speed. The ETT sets a 40 mph maximum on single track and there are simple mileage calculators posted here and there on the benchwork. These seem to have helped quite a bit, except for one guy who runs everything at a scale 10 mph. We run track warrants in dark territory, for the moment. 2). Complicated switchwork is in the eye of the beholder. I've had some guys complain about a simple run around track move (they wanted only trailing point switching). But still, I hate moving the same car over and over. They wanna do that, go build a Timesaver layout. GL: Most of our track configurations are lifted from Southern Pacific SPINS books. No puzzles, and generally enough lead. 3). A large layout can be simple. That's what our layout is. It doesn't have to squeeze in track in every square inch to be fun. GL: Our single track segment is very simple. One mill complex, passing sidings, a rock quarry and a veneer mill are about it in 200+ feet of track. The west end is more dense. 4). I don't get that; if they don't want to put the right cars in the right places, then why are they operating? On our layout, operators can either be engineers running mainline trains or local freight crews. Mainline engineers just run trains and they do no switching. We learned that lesson; it ties up the mainline too long with guys that can't cut a coupler to save their lives. Some guys just want to run trains and do that really well (even if they can't switch), and some just want to switch. We accommodate both. GL: I think some people simply can't see the difference between the 3s, 6s, 9s and 0s and aren't aware or won't admit it. A few cars have been overweathered for ops. Orange reefers regularly turn up with the wrong paperwork. We do have guys who only bid on pool jobs (staging to staging runs) but half of these still have drops and adds to do. 5). We use AAR codes on car cards, but we also list the name, number, type, etc. We don't list the color. However, we have just recently started to offer a blank switch list for the local freights. If the guys really want to, they can come in early and use the car cards to write their own switchlist any way they want. And this is quite realistic. If the guys want to put the orange car at the brown building instead of 40' Reefer PFE 17752 RS at Western Car Loading, that's fine with me as long as it gets there. GL: We have recently rejiggered our car cards because AAR codes aren't precise enough for our 1979 setting, and we doubted anyone would learn Umler codes well enough to be comfortable. Our ops guru invented codes like LO55G for a 55' covered hopper in grain service. Tank cars are similarly broken down into classes for asphalt, LPG, chemicals, and food-grade ladings. AAR+length+service. Most of our problems are real-world problems, not model railroad problems, so we're fairly happy. Attendance at op sessions is usually about 20 out of our 30 members, a number which keeps crews turning regularly. The club was featured in MRH model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/11814 but the trackplan doesn't show the Woodburn branch which is over 100' long and leaves the mainline at Shelburn, running on a lower deck. |
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Post by jonklein611 on Oct 18, 2018 10:47:55 GMT -8
You are always going to have "Those Guys" at a club environment, and your not going to change it short of running them off. Thats just the way it is with some people. Timetable & Trainorders operations will weed them out quickly. One of the local guys in the round-robin group on Fridays runs TT & TO, and if you die on the railroad, you can't run for the next calendar year..... Is that a fast clock year? |
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Post by nstophat on Oct 18, 2018 12:10:45 GMT -8
Timetable & Trainorders operations will weed them out quickly. One of the local guys in the round-robin group on Fridays runs TT & TO, and if you die on the railroad, you can't run for the next calendar year..... Is that a fast clock year? No. If you die on the railroad, you've either had a head-on collision or you've run it off the layout and into the great Concrete Floor Canyon. He models steam, and most all of locomotives are older brass models. |
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Post by bnsf971 on Oct 18, 2018 16:01:43 GMT -8
What I'd like to see is an operating session that is by invitation only. It would have to be at non standard club time. Probably a lot less trains than we normally run. We did that a couple of times. The "left-outs" complained vocally, and that was the end of that. |
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Post by fr8kar on Oct 18, 2018 17:49:54 GMT -8
Is that a fast clock year? No. If you die on the railroad, you've either had a head-on collision or you've run it off the layout and into the great Concrete Floor Canyon. He models steam, and most all of locomotives are older brass models. Oh, I was thinking die as in hog-law, go dead, run out of hours. I thought that was a little heavy-handed. But now that you explain it like that it makes much more sense and isn't an overreaction at all, IMHO. |
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Post by wp8thsub on Oct 18, 2018 19:11:35 GMT -8
It's kind of like showing up at a Civil War reenactment in a French Foreign Legion uniform. I'm OK with the Civil War re-enactments if they let the Union side use live ammunition. The same should work with moron operators. |
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Post by grahamline on Oct 18, 2018 20:29:44 GMT -8
What I'd like to see is an operating session that is by invitation only. It would have to be at non standard club time. Probably a lot less trains than we normally run. We did that a couple of times. The "left-outs" complained vocally, and that was the end of that. I don't think our club would stand for that, and rightly so. With only 30 members (there's a facilities-mandated cap) that would be shooting ourselves in the foot big-time. |
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bis54
New Member
Posts: 32
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Post by bis54 on Oct 19, 2018 0:01:55 GMT -8
Paul, here's my idea a little more fleshed out. We run a passenger only ops based on your old layout.
Saturday night you bring all your New Haven equipment. We set up to run between Cedar Hill and Boston. All trains go past Middleton. One dispatcher, two yard masters, a couple people as switch crews, engine hostlers in each yard. Two or three road engineers. Except for the yard masters all crews could rotate thru the different jobs. Run this ops session Sunday. Quicker set up. Less operators needed. The New Haven passenger ops that was run on your layout comes back.
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Post by nstophat on Oct 19, 2018 2:40:02 GMT -8
No. If you die on the railroad, you've either had a head-on collision or you've run it off the layout and into the great Concrete Floor Canyon. He models steam, and most all of locomotives are older brass models. Oh, I was thinking die as in hog-law, go dead, run out of hours. I thought that was a little heavy-handed. But now that you explain it like that it makes much more sense and isn't an overreaction at all, IMHO. Ryan, you actually die, dead. And you get a headstone in the cemetery to boot! |
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Post by bnsf971 on Oct 19, 2018 3:13:29 GMT -8
We did that a couple of times. The "left-outs" complained vocally, and that was the end of that. I don't think our club would stand for that, and rightly so. With only 30 members (there's a facilities-mandated cap) that would be shooting ourselves in the foot big-time. In the case of this club, there were 36 members, and the ops session was on a Wednesday night, when nobody else was around. Ten people attended, and the session went well. Of course, those same people complained constantly that I never attended club meetings, held on a weekday at 5 pm, when I was at work. |
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bis54
New Member
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Post by bis54 on Oct 19, 2018 4:19:18 GMT -8
As PAC said we have 60+ members at our club. We are lucky to get 20 to show up for ops. We also have our own key and several members show up and run weekdays. No one has a reason to complain but someone always does. What I hate is a knee jirk reaction to complaints. Most should just be ignored.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2018 7:14:26 GMT -8
As long as you're having fun...
Life's too short to get caught up over a headlight or a missed horn.
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Post by csx3305 on Oct 19, 2018 7:32:41 GMT -8
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Post by Paul Cutler III on Oct 21, 2018 19:09:19 GMT -8
bis54, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but that would be some work, man, to set up a private operation like that. Just NH passenger ops? Um, possibly. I still have that chalkboard with all my trains on it. Only now I have more passenger cars with all these Rapido coaches and parlors...hoo boy, I'd have to redo it. I would probably eliminate the fast clock for such a session, just like my old layout. Just make it turn based, but instead of one passenger engineer/switcher, have two? Maybe just go from Cedar Hill to Middleton, using Boston/Great Lakes to park all the trains we're not using. I dunno about freight ops. Middleton, Steel Mill, Cedar Hill? A couple freight trains to start with? I'm thinking just 6 operators to start with: 2 yardmasters, 2 engineers, 2 local freights (no dispatcher). I'd keep the elevator up, too, for easy access to Cedar Hill. As for complaints, as I have said before, all complaints will be heard but not necessarily acted upon.  grahamline, Yeah, we're not exactly AAR compliant, either. We've invented a few extra letter codes for our specific operational needs (we add an "L" at the end for longer cars due to curve restrictions). Still, the codes are only important when setting up the operation when we're matching waybills to car cards. When we make the car cards in our database program, the code is entered via a dropdown list. When selected, it automatically enters the car info into the fields on the card itself. So if I select "XM" it automatically puts in "Boxcar", or if I select "FT" it puts in TOFC. In your specific examples at our club we would have: grain hopper (LM), LPG (TP), chemicals (TC), and food-grade ladings (TG). We don't have a separate one for asphalt, mainly because we don't have any asphalt factories or tanks. bnsf971, Fortunately at our club, we already have "private" operation sessions, so to speak. There's a group of guys that come in every Tuesday to run trains, and another group that comes in on the weekends. All members have 24-7 access to the club, so if a bunch of us gathered on a Friday night to do an operation session, no one would say boo to us. It would be difficult, however, to keep uninvited members out of the club if they wanted to come in the door...but then why would we tell them when it is? |
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Post by fmilhaupt on Oct 22, 2018 2:23:22 GMT -8
My modular club was approaching its tenth anniversary when a group of the "core" members were bitten by the operations bug. We were fortunate to be invited to run on a really good operations-focused layout, where some of us are now regulars.
We tried running on the club's existing set of modules, but they just weren't set up for the single-track, timetable-and-train order operation we wanted, so the operations-oriented group built its own layout. Since one of our operations guys was building a house at the time, it gave us a more permanent home in his purpose-built basement (I joke that we were "Tom Sawyered" into building a home layout for him). While our operating sessions are open to any member of the club, the ones who want to operate come to the operations layout for our regularly-scheduled sessions, and the ones who want to run freely at train shows take the other modules out there. We have a group of local non-members who also turn out for operating sessions.
Granted, this has meant that a couple of us who used to regularly turn out to help set up and run trains at the train shows don't do that any more. About half of our operations-focused guys still go to and help with the public set-ups of the other layout at shows. In my case, the amount of effort to set up and continuously run in circles at a show just doesn't have the right balance between the work required each time and the play value I get back from it. Had the club stayed with just running at train shows, I'd no longer be a member.
Splitting the club has worked pretty well for us.
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All our members are independent-minded at times (some more than others), and just getting them all ready at the same time is a challenge. Only a few are "hard core" operators; the rest are casual types. I have guys complain that we're taking things too seriously and others who complain we aren't serious enough, so I guess it's just about right.
Some guys just want to run trains and do that really well (even if they can't switch), and some just want to switch. We accommodate both.
However, we have just recently started to offer a blank switch list for the local freights. If the guys really want to, they can come in early and use the car cards to write their own switchlist any way they want. And this is quite realistic. If the guys want to put the orange car at the brown building instead of 40' Reefer PFE 17752 RS at Western Car Loading, that's fine with me as long as it gets there. 
