Persistent Operations Part II

Edmonds Landing  August 7th, 1959

      When last we left our little railroad we had completed the work for the week. CMO Cannon O'Reilly went home to make his corned beef hash and the railroad was quiet. Sure the shop crew was out in force and there was track work to be done but all movement ceased out on the high iron.  Until the late hours of Sunday the 9th.  A pair of MILW GP-9's have made their way to Edmonds landing with two cars in tow. And come the morning of the 10th and it will all start again. But how did we get here?

    This is where persistent operations comes into play. The railroad never quit. It just needed to prepare for the next week. So the first thing the owner does is pull all the car cars for the cars destined for Missoula and for Seeley Lake. 

Pulling the CC's for all interchange

Those CC/WB are the broken down, the WB's pulled, CC's set out and the plastic sleeve set aside. Any car flags are returned to their piles. 

Putting the paperwork to rights

    The cars are pulled from the layout and put away. The bottom of the plastic tote is lined with an old towel and secured to keep the lower level of cars from rolling when the tote is moved. 

Car storage

    Now to set the week up for action.  I came up with a dice roll chart for the railroad. The results will get the next week running.

Makes for mostly easy weeks

The result

    So looking at our chart we have 2 cars coming in from the MILW and no cars coming in on the GN at Seeley Lake.  Now the fun part. I put on my dispatcher hat and peruse my cars. Which ones would work? I think a pair of boxcars.  Then I pull out my WB, shuffle them and see what's coming in.

Assorted millwork and general merchandise

    But what makes it persistent is I still have three cars left on the layout. They waited over the weekend and now Monday morning are ready to go. There was no grand reset of the whole layout. This whole process took me less then fifteen minutes.  So I guess it's time to run some ops. 

    The track is cleaned with a lens wipe cloth and the charge on the tablet is checked. It'll do this time. Ask Alexa to turn the lights on over the layout and kick the train power on. The number board lights up on the H16-44 and we're almost ready to go. Check the bill boxes on the fascia to see what work we have and prepare to go. Turn over the one minute timer to get the blue flag dropped and we're way.  Just another day on the Milwaukee Road Clearwater Branch 1958-1964.

Heading to work

    Thanks for coming along. In the final part we'll discuss how we use this idea to work for one move or a full operating week. The railroad is always waiting to work and it's up to us to make sure the tiny  1/87th citizens of the Clearwater Valley are serviced in an appropriate manner. 

Persistent Operations Part 1

 

Mike and Dan operate the CSLP

    The Clearwater, Seeley Lake & Pacific is set up to run what I've dubbed "Persistent Operations" that is operations that persist over time. This is different from a scenario set up where you have a beginning and an end to the operations usually requiring a reset of the layout to enable operations once again.  I developed my scheme over a few months as I prepared to build my layout. I knew I wanted a few things:

• The ability to walk into the train room at any time and operate for as long as I wanted. One car move or a whole "day" the operations scheme needed to support that.
• Not era dependent. If it was the transition era or the modern day I wanted it to feel appropriate no matter the time. 
• Shortline railroading.  What started as a town to town run gradually became a single location and areas within it. This was necessitated by the 11'x7' room and fitting the railroad to the physical space. 
• I wanted a living world. My imagination is deep and I needed the operating scheme to support that. It's not for everyone but I wanted to know the deeper "why" behind my railroad and it's daily operations. 

    With these goals in mind I have managed to meet everyone. Over the next few parts of this series I will address each one, how I arrived at them, how the operations work, and how you can set up your railroad to run them.  Before we get into the full paperwork and thought process I feel I should set the scene for this series with some background. 

NOTE: The time has slipped on the layout. Explanation is HERE.

    The Clearwater Branch of the Milwaukee Road's Ninth/Sixth/Eighth subdivision runs on a five day work week. Monday through Friday. The Milwaukee sends a train to Edmonds Landing on Mondays and Wednesday. The Great Northern interchange is picked up and set out on Friday.  This means that the railroad follows a general pattern for the week. Monday is devoted to priority merchandise and then routine traffic. Tuesday is more routine traffic and preparing for the overnight interchange. Wednesday is again dealing with the interchange. Thursday is preparing for the GN interchange and Friday is getting all MILW interchange ready and working the GN interchange.  So let's ride with our crew on Friday, August 7th 1959 and see how they finish up their day. 

    Here H16-44 #435 is working the team track lead at Hansen's Lumber. This will be the final bit of work in town before the train heads to Seeley Lake to pick up the GN interchange.  Most of the day has been spent pulling all the cars destined railroad west to Missoula and placing them at Edmonds Landing. Sunday night the Milwaukee Road crew will exchange the pulled cars with fresh interchange. 

    X435 West enters Clearwater with the GN Interchange in tow. This is a fair representation of the amount of traffic that is generated at Seeley Lake. The crew will spot the GN boxcar at the rear at Blackfoot Valley Feed.  The X29 boxcar is full of equine supplies for the farmers and ranchers of the region.

    After dropping the boxcar the crew runs around the Deep Rock tank car and shoves west towards Edmonds Landing,, the final destination for the tank car. There they will pick up the Seeley Lake Traffic and head geographically north, railroad east. 

    With Seeley Lake Traffic in two X435 East is now making it's way towards Clearwater out of Edmonds Landing with an eventual destination of Seeley Lake. First the crew will again run around the train as there is no runaround in Seeley. 

    And this is how the weekends. All of the cars on T1 and T2 will be headed to Missoula on the next train. This is a good place to end this part and prepare to start the next one. The stage has been set. The next part of this series will walk you through what it takes to set up the week of work. You'll see it all. The decisions, the paperwork, and all the nuts and bolts of keeping my office empire running.  The goal is simplicity, flexibility and a high play value.