The next portion of our railroad "day" is a simple run from the KC yard to Chicago. There is quite a backlog of cars waiting to head to Chicago, so this will clear out some needed room, but still leaves almost two complete trains (10 cars each) waiting to head out.
On this run, we pull an F unit that we haven't used in awhile. We have a boxcar of boxes heading for Windy City Biscuit (CHI), a gondola of specialty sand headed for the Port of Cleveland, a covered hopper of hops also headed for the port, two tank cars of crude oil headed to Caitlin Chemical (CHI), a covered hopper of barley headed for Pittsburgh, a tank car of crude headed for the port, a stock car of cattle headed for Champion meat (CHI), a tank car of oil headed for the PRR Cleveland shops, and finally a covered hopper of crushed glass headed for Pittsburgh. All those CLE and PIT cars probably mean an overload for the CHI-CLE run tomorrow.
Here we are rolling through an unfinished portion of the layout... (actually it's part of the loop through Cleveland -- the dogbone loop goes through Cleveland, which just subs for any Midwestern city. You have to use your imagination on my layout as I don't have a 500' point-to-point mainline. There is some running of laps to simulate distance as a result.
Here we are entering the Chicago yard limits.
Once here, we simply cut loose and head for the track of KC outbounds. We have mostly empties heading home. The full lineup: a gondola loaded with scrap, a boxcar with labels, and the rest are empties -- Frisco covered hopper, Milwaukee stockcar, ATSF box, Milwaukee covered hopper, Allied Chemical tank and a GATX tank -- being routed to KC.
The Chicago crew disassembles the just-delivered cars and adds them to the growing trains for tomorrow.
Next up: Working the KC yard and the Chicago Great Western comes to town...
Additional note: This was a frustrating run because I kept losing cars (uncoupling) behind the F unit. I checked the coupler height against my coupler gauge and found it to be too low. After quite a bit of fiddling, mainly through trial-and-error adjustments, I finally got it in-gauge. For you newbies out there, be religious about your couplers and your car weights. When you get those two things right, even sloppy track work won't slow you down. Uncouplings used to be a fairly common occurance, but after immediately flagging suspect cars and not letting them back out until they met specs, this has been almost completely eradicated.
So this run that should have been about 15 minutes from start to finish ended up being about an hour because I spent 45 minutes fussing with the F unit. Maybe that's what the F stands for...
On this run, we pull an F unit that we haven't used in awhile. We have a boxcar of boxes heading for Windy City Biscuit (CHI), a gondola of specialty sand headed for the Port of Cleveland, a covered hopper of hops also headed for the port, two tank cars of crude oil headed to Caitlin Chemical (CHI), a covered hopper of barley headed for Pittsburgh, a tank car of crude headed for the port, a stock car of cattle headed for Champion meat (CHI), a tank car of oil headed for the PRR Cleveland shops, and finally a covered hopper of crushed glass headed for Pittsburgh. All those CLE and PIT cars probably mean an overload for the CHI-CLE run tomorrow.
Here we are rolling through an unfinished portion of the layout... (actually it's part of the loop through Cleveland -- the dogbone loop goes through Cleveland, which just subs for any Midwestern city. You have to use your imagination on my layout as I don't have a 500' point-to-point mainline. There is some running of laps to simulate distance as a result.
Here we are entering the Chicago yard limits.
Once here, we simply cut loose and head for the track of KC outbounds. We have mostly empties heading home. The full lineup: a gondola loaded with scrap, a boxcar with labels, and the rest are empties -- Frisco covered hopper, Milwaukee stockcar, ATSF box, Milwaukee covered hopper, Allied Chemical tank and a GATX tank -- being routed to KC.
The Chicago crew disassembles the just-delivered cars and adds them to the growing trains for tomorrow.
Next up: Working the KC yard and the Chicago Great Western comes to town...
Additional note: This was a frustrating run because I kept losing cars (uncoupling) behind the F unit. I checked the coupler height against my coupler gauge and found it to be too low. After quite a bit of fiddling, mainly through trial-and-error adjustments, I finally got it in-gauge. For you newbies out there, be religious about your couplers and your car weights. When you get those two things right, even sloppy track work won't slow you down. Uncouplings used to be a fairly common occurance, but after immediately flagging suspect cars and not letting them back out until they met specs, this has been almost completely eradicated.
So this run that should have been about 15 minutes from start to finish ended up being about an hour because I spent 45 minutes fussing with the F unit. Maybe that's what the F stands for...
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