The plan is for an operating railroad. This means schedules, dispatching and card forwarding systems. For operations I have seen that different people like different things. What one person thinks is boring another enjoys. So I wanted my railroad to have a variety of operating jobs. For the diehard yard masters, there will be Binghamton and Oneonta. Oneonta may be divided into west and east bound yards. For the weigh freight guys, there is the westbound local out of Oneonta visiting Sidney, Bainbridge and a fictional paper mill. For the switching puzzle enthusiast, there will be the eastbound local from Oneonta to Cobleskill. For the unit trains there will be a gravel train, a salt train, and a propane train. In addition there is the bridge line trains for people that just like to drive.
The center of the railroad is Oneonta. The line running northeast leads to Cobleskill and then to staging in Schenectady. Southwest from Oneonta are the towns of Sidney and Bainbridge. Once past Bainbridge you arrive at Nineveh where there is a wye leading south to staging in Scranton. The west branch of the wye leads to Binghamton. This wye is a seriously scaled down version of the Binghamton/Scranton/Nineveh main lines. West from Binghamton we have Owego and then on to Buffalo staging.
The layout is a two deck design in a 15' by 30' room. It is laid out in an 'E' shape. Oneonta, Sidney , Bainbridge and Nineveh are on the lower deck with Binghamton, Cobleskill, Owego and the staging yard on the upper deck. The staging yard has three tracks leading into it so it represents Buffalo, Schenectady and Scranton.
The decks were originally to be connected by a three track helix. The tracks were Oneonta/Binghamton, Oneonta/Schenectady and Oneonta/Scranton. Of course Ernie Poole and Dan Boudreau hated it. The helix would hold the longest length of track and you could not see anything that happened in it. Dan had a couple of ideas for a "tipped" helix that would expose tracks here and there while Ernie just said to make a long run along the back of the layout. I was pushing back because I did not want to expose three tracks going to different places running parallel to each other. So after sufficient abuse I got the idea of just combining the three tracks into a two track main. The three tracks merge into the two track main at the bottom of the hill, and then three tracks diverge from the two track main at the top of the hill. So now the worst aspect of the railroad (the helix) has been transformed into one of its most interesting. A 2 scale mile long double track main with a 2% grade cut into the cliffs along the back of one of the walls of the railroad. It will have a lot of traffic because it represents three different hills; Belden Hill, Richmondville Hill, and Mt. Ararat. Almost every mainline train will have to go up and down this same section of track. However their schedules will list it by different names. It will just be up to the dispatcher to keep everything straight.
One important thing I considered when making the plan is where people will be working and will they interfere with each other. You will notice that above Oneonta is the staging yard. And below Binghamton is a narrow section containing the grade. This will keep people from bumping into the yard operators. Also the aisles are about 3 and a half feet wide. This will allow people working the towns on the middle peninsula from interfering with the yard operators.Other standards that I am using are:
- Minimum 18" radius curves
- 2% ruling grades
- No hidden switches
- Long tunnels will be next to facia and the facia will have holes to view trains in tunnels.
- Short tunnels will be less than 3 feet.
- Passing sidings will accommodate an 8 foot long train.
- Minimize hidden track.
- Track Planning for Realistic Operation by John Armstrong
- Bridge Line Blues by Hal Reiser
- The Delaware & Hudson by Jim Shaughnessy
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