Do professional railroaders approach a switching situation differently from model railroaders? You bet they do. First, I’d wager they don’t consider the switching at various industries as a game to be played for entertainment value. It’s work for them and has real and serious consequences in terms of time, money and personal safety.
Second, I bet they shun making things overly complex. Efficiency is the name of the game at work, and making a switch job into a puzzle just to eat up more time on the clock would be laughable to a pro. Railroads will lay out the trackage for an industry as efficiently as possible in order to get the job done with a minimum amount of wasted moves and extra trackage.
I can hear some of you saying but…but…it isn’t work, it’s my hobby. I want to have fun. I only have a tiny space for a layout; I have to make things complicated or the operating session would be done in five minutes or less. Then what would I do?
The usual excuses that are offered for the status quo in the hobby are often just that, excuses. The real world of railroading has many operations and practices that are often shunned by modelers because they’re too (take your pick) simple, dull, boring, repetitive, not sexy, not approved by some expert in the hobby, or gasp, never been done before, and so on.
It’s way past time for some new thinking about layout design and operations, especially for O Scale. I’ve watched a Norfolk Southern switch crew take over two hours just sorting cars for the plastics plant in town, and they weren’t even close to being done with the job. They hadn’t pulled any empties or spotted inbound cars yet. Furthermore, all this operation took place on a simple arrangement of trackage that would make a very nice O Scale layout in a real world space like a one car garage or spare bedroom. You could include staging tracks or not. Many of you have said you want to see more small space layouts and design ideas. We’re listening and hope to fulfill that request in the future.
Regards,
Mike