Switching Operations 101, Episode 2: Switching A Bakery

hey guys welcome to another edition of operations 101 today we're going to be taking a look at one of my favorite Industries and that's anything related to food manufacturing these facilities have the advantage of taking a huge number of car types um which require car spots you get some operational interest and you can often get a uh fair amount of um industry into a small amount of space so here's a cup of coffee let's head down to basement stairs and do a walk through on how we operate these fascinating Industries before we get started I just wanted to spend a second on the industry that we're going to be focusing on Trio Foods is the largest industry on the downtown spur or it was when I started modeling it in 2007 it's located right off of 12th Avenue which is one of the busiest streets in Miami and they're primarily Bakery products as I understand it they take incoming box cars and incoming loads of what I believe are vegetable oils so let's just take a quick scan before we get into the video we've got four loading doors a through D see if I can get this down here and then towards the end zoom in a little bit you've got some tanks for vegetable uh vegetable oil unloading so that's what we're going to be uh focusing on uh in today's talk is switching this industry so with the preliminaries out of the way let's go through a short demo here of uh a train actually working the branch and typically 2007 2008 the trains would be on the longer side 12 or 13 cars but just to make it easier to illustrate Concepts I'm going to keep it short so on this particular day I'm assuming that the only thing that's happening on the spur is is they're going to run down um and switch to Geo and Suns so the first three cars um really had nothing to do with this session I'm assuming they would have been handled earlier in the day up north perhaps East rail or uh West rail the last two cars the tank and the Box are what we're going to be dealing with and it's going to be important to keep those cars at the back of the train and block the way they are in order to make things simpler when we actually get down there so with that said let's get this bad boy fired up and on the road also note that um when you only have one train you don't need staging um so I'm just assuming that the day starts um with him approaching the downtown spur so he's peeling off on the spur um this here is the main but that's just a dummy track so let's get the show on the road he's Crossing North River Drive here Miami High Life ronon in the front Ferris uh processing and trading in the back so off he goes and I'm not going to show the whole route just show him starting off here here he comes on the scene this just gives you a sense for the speed that I run at doesn't necessarily have to be a 2 mph crawl but again it's not a slot car either you're hearing the offboard sound run through computer speakers in the background [Music] the tank car is likely vegetable oil the Box Car at the back of the train I saw a W Bill once that a conductor mailed me and said it was some type of sauce whatever that is so there he goes he's Crossing 21st Avenue here on his way it's about 100t run down the branch so uh takes about 10 minutes to to make the run I'm not going to show that here and here we're looking at Trio um in the foreground is 12th Avenue which is one of the bigger uh Avenues on the city which does factor into things um I have not yet put in the great Crossing signal that's going to come later so I just have to assume that it's um in there and the train will be here in a second he's to my back so what we're going to do is pull all the way down until we clear the turnout uh that you see on the upper right there so he's Crossing 12 that's the gulf Atlantic Warehouse on the right no longer rail served was featured in an episode of Burn Notice so we need to get him past that switch and we're going to pick up those two cars also so we need to give enough room that when we pull those two cars they will clear the switch also so let's get him up there the runaround sighting is pretty long if I remember it's 10 to 12 ft so we cleared the switch but we need room also for that tank car and the blue box car so that should do it at this point we need to sip our coffee and take a pause the locomotive is going to cut off the headend so we need to allow time for the U cut to be made and then he's going to run to the other end um and come down on the and uh make his runaround move so at the South End of the runaround it's important to realize that generally in a day typical operating day they will only do one runaround I mean it's that's it they really try to minimize those and everything is set up accordingly there's really no reason to do more okay at this point this is where a lot of Mo model railroaders uh get themselves in a little bit of trouble they would just pull the switch flip it and go which is uh not really what happens at this point the conductor needs to get out unlock the turnout um again I use those props occasionally to simulate that generally not when I'm running by myself but that lock could represent the uh lock on the turnout if I was in the mood so the conductor has flipped the switch he's still on the ground now I'm stopping again because remember he needs to put the turnout back uh and lined it for the uh lack of a better term the main so right now it's set up for the diverging route the engineers stopped the conductor goes down again and we're going to normalize the turnout again take your time take sip your coffee or your beer at this point the conductor's walking back they're set and he's going to finish the uh runaround so let's get him back up to the other end he probably going slightly faster from what I've seen and there we go now we have to stop again to align the switch allow a little bit of time for that for I need to flip the switch again and here you can see why it was important to keep track of where these two cars to keep them on the back of the train they're already in the correct position which I've noticed uh is their local Practice Things tend to are organized and blocked in the yard they don't do the Sorting uh typically here although they could it would not be uh out of the question so I'm going to use the two incoming loads as handles so let me go get those the conductor's on the ground he's calling out [Music] distance and then remember from the previous video he's going to ask for three-step protection and go in and get everything coupled and then he's going to walk down uh past the tank car and uncouple that and at this point he's going to pull all the way past 12th Avenue now having watched this move in person once he gets him M CLA 12 what he needs to do now just stop the action for a while and get the gate [Music] unlocked this is a good point to talk about operational props and it's something I've backed off on a little bit I mean I started out using a lot of them and got to the point where it just seemed to be a little bit hokey just a little bit too unrealistic but having said that there's a few of them that I do enjoy that I think add to the experience and the thing with these that I use is you can keep them fairly close to scale um one thing that you're going to see with almost all Industries are locked Gates and these are something that you can model um so what would happen here is I've kept it simple you look at the entrance just use a skewer and open them like that and all these are are some alcam ET chain link I Cate A Rod or some spring wire see if I can pull it up and it just drops into it too so I do use the uh gates with that done he's also got to get this turn out aligned so now we're ready to shove back into the industry and he's walking back that way to call out distance [Music] again we're calling out car [Music] lengths now here's a step that's important that is a crucial safety measure in the field it's vital that you be 100% sure that that couple has been made because if he shoves down and that couple is not made when he approaches the tank car you could have a runaway so what they will do is ask for a stretch and that's where the uh conductor you'll hear him on the radio say give me a stretch and he will back up just slightly see if we can do it here like that to make sure he's got the car and so there we do have it so everything is good in the world now he's going to go down and get the empty uh vegetable oil tank [Music] car going out far distances [Music] [Music] he's got it ask for three step and we are ready to pull this cut we're going to put the empties back in the train and then spot the loads [Music] got to get that tank car clear of the switch so we can shut back [Music] conductor tells him he's clear throws the turnout and now we're going to sh shove and get rid of these two empties and dump them back in the train [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so with the empties pulled the next step is to get the uh loaded cars spotted so let's pull up and take care of that [Music] [Music] [Music] so we're clear of the switch ready for the shove back move allow time for the conductor to do that at this point our Advanced planning to have the cars in the right location uh pays off and remember that car spots matter the uh shipping manager is going to be pretty unhappy if that tank car is at the loading Bay and not at the tanks and for our purposes we'll put the uh box car at B when I have cruise over I will work up a switch list but for myself I'll just write it on a 3x5 card so let's get them down there [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay so he's spotted at the vegetable oil tanks remember two things have to happen here he's going to ask for three step but this is a loaded car that's going to be uh sitting here for a while we also need to allow time for the uh conductor to set the brake wheel on that so just cool your jets you know give yourself a little bit of a pause and then we're going to pull the uh box car up to gate B the alignment has to be pretty close he is calling this out we need to get the door lined up there we go so we're going to ask for three-step and uncouple the car and we're also going to set the uh brake wheel for you have to throw the switch back and at some point he's going to have to go back and block that gate but let's go back to the train for now [Music] [Applause] [Music] calling out distances pretty soon okay so we're pretty much wrapped up here what would happen in the real world is at this point uh procedurally they need to perform a brake test I may I don't really get that involved with it I'm just aware that it's going to happen maybe give a little bit of a longer pause and then keep in mind that also we need to close the gates and lock them and we're done back to the yard so once again no head scratchers nothing uh that complicated going on not going at uh unbearably slow speeds but even so it's going to take a good 40 minutes to do this I saw the actual operation take place on a back in 2008 and I had the time stamps of the photos and it took them about 35 minutes so I know exactly how long it was interesting too that just as modelers sometimes miss a couple they missed a couple and he had to go in there and manually lift the uh coupler to line things up so there we go another 10 minutes back to the main and we are good to go here

Channel: Lance Mindheim's Railroad Channel

Views: 4,936

Keywords: Lance Mindheim, Model Railroad Operations, Model Railroad Switching Layouts, Lance Mindheim Downtown Spur

Id: Id-KmJFgz-Y

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2024