From my experiences on the C&O as a conductor, we had many industries that shared a common track. How were they dealt with? They were all scheduled and switched on 3rd Trick. Businesses were closed, so it was too easy to just switch out the deepest cars. After you spotted the farthest car in on the spur, you just had to respot the cars you temporarily had to move. Mimic this, and it will add to your switching duties.
what a great topic this thread has been. great ideas all around, and having one siding for 2 or 3 industries sounds kind of cool to try on a small switching layout.
MarkInLA Here's the LAJ Horn Lead Switching Map. It was given to me by Charlie Slater ex LAJ/ATSF conductor. He worked at LAJ '70-'84. Note the long spur between industries 6 & 10. It has 7 industries but only 2 were worked when he was there & only 4 have car spots shown. But paralleling that spur is a siding where moved cars could be left easily rather than having to move them long distances. In looking at alot of other LAJ Leads there were a few spurs that had 2 industries.
Yeah, thanks for all the insight..I s'pose it comes down to all and everything possible occurs all over the map..that whatever needs to be accomplished is accomplished and that nothing is carved in stone as far as one RR's activities or another's..This is my RR so I work out whatever routine is best for me and my customers/vice versa...Earlier when I said RS pulls all the cars out to get 2 shoe Co. cars in, I fully meant that, of course cars are temporarily placed on main (spur main, not main main ) and then pushed back in..Also, I get the picture of having runarounds if spur is long enough so as to be able to bypass multiples of cars to get closer to a certain dock of cars of this present RS's visit..I have one particular problematic spur where loco will always be trapped as he'd have to back into it..So, either this loco runs around its cars about 1/4 mi away down switchback main (only runaround on RR)..Or, 2nd loco arrives ahead of it and goes into a pocket track, first loco uncouples on main and runs past loco in pocket. 2nd loco now pushes cars into spur...Actually my RR is basically one big switching movement anyway..It just happens to be located in hills with grades and couple of tunnel instead of a flat/level city switching ops. or say,belt line. IF I ever rebuilt I probably would employ little if no grades or tunnels if RR were to be this small again..Kind of like the LA Junction RR in TO BE CONTINUED:
