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When I called crews on the Milwaukee Road in the 1970's, we had assigned jobs (yard jobs and locals) that were bid on seniority. Road jobs were called on pools operating between specific terminals. We also had an extra board that was controlled strictly by seniority. However, no one had to show up f...

FL, Thanks for reviving this thread. I don't have an update on Minitrix. There has been, I think, a significant development in DC model railroading. This looks to be very important because it is a way around having to go to DCC in order to get some of the desirable effects of DCC without the cost. T...

Yeah, I ate one of those shoe-sized potatoes on the North Coast Limited. No matter what else you ordered with it, it's gonna fill you up. Very tasty, too.

Les

Generally, that is what happens. There are even switches (called spring switches) designed to operate that way. If the switch being run is not a spring switch, the wheel flanges will still shove the points out of the way, but will bend the throw bar doing so. A powered switch that locks the points i...

That should have read "Sun Valley", not "Idaho Valley".

That railroad really blew it. My price has gone back to $500/day.

Les

I offered to consult to one of my former railroads for the bargain price of $300/day, but was turned down. Actually, the C&S and CB&Q offered passenger train service on this route out of Denver until Sept. 1, 1967. Trains 29 and 30 provided overnight service between Denver and Billings, Mont...

From my experience (10 years station operations; 16 years train operations), it would appear cars are "lost" more often than they are misrouted. A common occurrence is for a load (full or partial) to be released by a customer thinking it is an empty. When the car is then spotted for loadin...

I used to work for the Carolina Piedmont, and this information is correct. It at the time operated M-F. The daily operations started at Laurens at 0700. Cars from CSX would be line up or delivery to stations between there and Greenville. The single-track line runs along the backbone of the ridge, wi...

Don't forget the ARDC (American Rail Dispatching Center) located in the ancient railroad station in St. Albans, VT. This center handles dispatching on contract for an assortment of short lines and regional railroads. It is run by Tom Murphy, a nice guy, by the way. I used to work for several short l...

My Grandfather (an Iowa farmer) used to say that the west began at the 100th meridian. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, this was generally as far west as Midwestern-type crops could be grown with only natural rainfall. So this was the place where most farming gave way to ranching. Now, with irr...

Here is a question I have been wondering about for quite awhile. What geographic area (Railfan Forum) does Nebraska belong in? It isn't listed as part of Midwest or Western. Nebraska goes farther west than either Kansas or the Dakotas. Yet the Dakotas are listed as being "Western", and Kan...

Hopefully, this is not the problem it once was, in the days of parallel mergers and large fleets of dissimilar locomotives. Going back to the 70's and 80's for examples: The C&NW concentrated their ALCOs on the Winona, MN-Rapid City main line. The 17-stall roundhouse at Huron, SD was the mainten...

I now have the Sound Box installed on my N scale Denver Union Terminal Railroad. This railroad is powered by an MRC Tech II 2800 dual pack. The railroad uses common rail wiring. When I ordered this pack, the seller did not know if it would work with common rail. It does. The Sound Box will only work...

I just ordered a Kato Analogue Sound Box. This is a new product for use on non-DCC model railroads. It is similar in concept to the out of production MRC sound system, but has some notable improvements. The box is wired in line with your existing throttle. It contains a good-sized internal speaker, ...

My procedure on finding a stowaway on my train was to stop the train and throw him off.

Les