We are at the start of a railroad "day" here on my layout. The night crew has set out the arrivals from the Pittsburgh-Cleveland freight that arrived in the night. Let's take a look at what we have:
The six cars on the nearest track are the recent arrivals. According to our paperwork, we have: A Norfolk & Western box car laden with copper wiring bound for Kansas City; a Southern box car laden with lumber also bound for KC; a covered Baltimore & Ohio gondola headed for Chicago Tool in Chicago; a New York Central gondola loaded with scrap bound for KC; a ATSF box that's empty returning to KC and a Milwaukee Road stock car, also bound for KC. KC is one of the major yards on my layout and a lot of traffic either originates or terminates there.
Six isn't a lot of cars, so it's a fairly slow day. In addition, the local brewery has ordered a 40' box to ship beer in, so we'll also have to pull a PRR Merchandise Service box from the storage track to send as an empty to the brewery. It's ultimate destination is also KC, though there is no direct connection. All KC-bound cars will have to go through the CB&Q in Chicago who will hand them off to the CNW for final delivery (in some cases the CGW is also involved.) Because all six cars are headed to Chicago for interchange, we can simply pull the whole string and add them to the Chicago outbound track where another PRR Merchandise Service box is waiting it's turn to head west. So we've got seven cars headed to Chicago and we still have the morning deliveries yet to arrive. The maximum train length is 10 cars, so we're already pretty far along, though yesterday was fairly slow too, so I don't think we'll be getting too much in today.
Don't fret though, there's other work to be done. We also need to pull the coal cars that were loaded by the dock crew overnight and stack them on a track until there's enough to justify a coal drag. One thing I've noticed is that all yards tend to go through natural boom and bust cycles. Currently, things are pretty slow, but that can all change by the end of the day.
Now that we have our orders, the next step is to figure out where the night crew left the switcher and get to work.
The six cars on the nearest track are the recent arrivals. According to our paperwork, we have: A Norfolk & Western box car laden with copper wiring bound for Kansas City; a Southern box car laden with lumber also bound for KC; a covered Baltimore & Ohio gondola headed for Chicago Tool in Chicago; a New York Central gondola loaded with scrap bound for KC; a ATSF box that's empty returning to KC and a Milwaukee Road stock car, also bound for KC. KC is one of the major yards on my layout and a lot of traffic either originates or terminates there.
Six isn't a lot of cars, so it's a fairly slow day. In addition, the local brewery has ordered a 40' box to ship beer in, so we'll also have to pull a PRR Merchandise Service box from the storage track to send as an empty to the brewery. It's ultimate destination is also KC, though there is no direct connection. All KC-bound cars will have to go through the CB&Q in Chicago who will hand them off to the CNW for final delivery (in some cases the CGW is also involved.) Because all six cars are headed to Chicago for interchange, we can simply pull the whole string and add them to the Chicago outbound track where another PRR Merchandise Service box is waiting it's turn to head west. So we've got seven cars headed to Chicago and we still have the morning deliveries yet to arrive. The maximum train length is 10 cars, so we're already pretty far along, though yesterday was fairly slow too, so I don't think we'll be getting too much in today.
Don't fret though, there's other work to be done. We also need to pull the coal cars that were loaded by the dock crew overnight and stack them on a track until there's enough to justify a coal drag. One thing I've noticed is that all yards tend to go through natural boom and bust cycles. Currently, things are pretty slow, but that can all change by the end of the day.
Now that we have our orders, the next step is to figure out where the night crew left the switcher and get to work.
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