Operations on My Hanley Spur Layout

                                  

I've done about three years of research and book-creating on Kingston's waterfront and its industrial and transportation history. On my Hanley Spur blog I've published lots of posts on modelling the Kingston industrial waterfront's structures and scenery, but my HO scale layout is, at its heart, an operating model railway. The research I've done is to try to learn more about the prototype and how it worked in 1970, nominally. 

I've published very few posts on how my layout operates, and now that a reliable and tested operating pattern is in place, let's look at how this wondrously wistful view of CN and CP in Kingston gets cars where they're going. Bear with me - I often find reading other modellers' operating schemes very difficult if too much detail is presented. I'm not publishing a trackplan because it doesn't really add much to this post, and I'm following the inimitable Bob Fallowfield's lead by keeping the trackplan my secret-sauce.

All car movements are documented using car cards. This same system has lasted through four layout iterations when my modelled locales were: Winnipeg, Vancouver, Vermont and now Kingston. When it's time to serve the industries, I pull inbound cars and designate ladings on cards. I don't use four-part car cards because I find my system is flexible and not the same-cars-same-industries all the time. That would be too monotonous!

This is my CN industry list, roughly listed from north to south on the prototype CN Hanley Spur. All the modelled industries in my CN and CP industry lists had rail service by the respective prototype railway.

You can see a mix of inbound and outbound loads. In some cases, such as the freight shed and CN Express, empties from online industries are routed there for loading, those cars switched twice before going off-line.

 CN OPERATIONS  -  OUTER STATION YARD 

CN operations begin at Kingston's Outer Station yard. This is where cars destined to Kingston industries or outbound cars are marshalled. The photos (top and above) show a CN roadswitcher working the yard. Once CN stopped basing a locomotive at the Outer Station, blocks were lifted and set out at Queens by passing trains instead, and a switcher from Belleville performed the yardswitching for remaining industries. If I need more cars or more room in the yard, cars are taken to and from the yard to two interchange tracks at 'Queens'. Once brought to the yard, the cars' cards are placed in the 'Yard' file.

I generally switch three different sectors of the CN waterfront trackage in rotation, starting with cars at the top of the 'CN Industries' file (i.e. the least-recently switched). I then gather the car cards for those industries from the 'CN Yard' file, then switch the three sectors profiled below. Once set-out at an industry, the cars are added to the CN Industries file.

                                           CN OPERATIONS - HANLEY SPUR SOUTH END

My Hanley Spur only reaches as far as the four tracks of my Wellington Street yard. The CN team track and freight shed are still served, and one spur (centre track with gondola car - above) nominally continues across Ontario Street to the Kingston Shipyards and Canadian Locomotive Co. (CLC). This job usually handles 5 to 10 cars. 

The freight shed can hold six house cars, so for interest's sake, and the make the set-outs and lifts a little more interesting, I generally lift as many cars as I am setting out. Sometimes, loaded cars 'appear' from the Shipyards or CLC on the spur that 'goes' there.

CN OPERATIONS - ALONG RIDEAU STREET

Serving industries from River to Cataraqui and North Streets: Queen City Oil (above), National Grocers, the Whig-Standard newsprint warehouse and Imperial Oil limestone warehouse. Imperial has tank car unloading as well as a boxcar spot for other oil products. This job can handle 3-5 cars.

If I don't have an inbound car for an industry, I generally don't lift the outbound car. This job makes liberal use of the siding as a run-around track near the Queens interchange, especially if doing so makes yarding the train at the Outer Station easier.

CN OPERATIONS - OUTER STATION INDUSTRIES

This job doesn't require a caboose, as it switches industries lining the CN yard. Two industries are also served by CP: Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile and Presland Iron & Steel. On those tracks, there is a CN end and a CP end to each of the tracks, or the cars are not coupled together to preserve the notion of joint service by both railways. This was due to the history of CP initially serving the industries, before their track was realigned. Then, these industries were 'orphaned' because the connection went from a diamond to an overpass and a new alignment parallel Division Street.

CN Express is also served. Non-modelled industry cars like Northern Telecom and DuPont cars are pulled or spotted. Company service cars also come and go from the yard.

CP OPERATIONS

This is my CP industry list, roughly listed from north to south on the prototype CP Kingston Subdivision:

Unlike CN, CP has to bring in and tote out all its cars to and from Smiths Falls. There are actually more CP industries than CN industries on my layout, so it's not possible to switch them all in one run. So, like CN, industries switched in rotation. Four to six industries that were least-recently switched (i.e. at the top of the CP Industries file), get service. Each run can be 6-10 cars. There are a mix of facing-point and trailing-point industry spurs. The CP siding becomes a run-around track, where Kingston-bound cars are switched out, and outbound cars are marshalled for the return journey. 

This train then waits until one or two CN runs are made. It then begins the next run to the 'Queens' interchange [nominally from Smiths Falls!] to pick up its inbound cars and the next run goes to work. Here's CP switching on its lead, with off-spot empty gondolas for scrap metal loading sitting on the CP run-around track.

CP's realignment served newly-established warehouse industries along Railway Street like the ones above, as well as some established at the time of World War I! Nightly operating sessions run from 1830-1930. (That's 24-hour clock time, not years!) It's all 1970, nominally! That takes in the CBS News, CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett, then it's upstairs for Jeopardy! If work needs to be done on the layout, that work is interspersed with operations. Messes are always cleaned up to allow operations to resume, though! Off-line cars are kept in storage under the layout until they are brought back onto the layout. The power stays on the layout, on isolated tracks, allowing me to switch both railways with the same transformer.

Running extra...

Social media gets a lot of hard knocks, but before the information interchange known as Facebook, there were YahooGroups. I joined around 2006 and found much useful information in the  many useful messages posted by knowledgeable group members. Now known as groups.io, I still belong to a couple of legacy groups, one being Canadian-Passenger-Rail. Two well-known members of that group were Julian Bernard and David Scott, who both left us this past week. Their contributions will be missed, although Julian's live on in his daughter Lesley's efforts to preserve VIA equipment! 

Look. Then look away. There's a trend in model railroading: subconsciously modelling someone else's model railway. I'm convinced that it's a variation on that old saying, "If you look at something long enough, you'll become it." If you see Union Pacific on the cover of Model Railroader magazine, you should really think, 'Denmark!', because that's where MR darling author Pelle Soeborg lives. He's now notched nearly 20 covers and numerous articles. His inspiration is the American heartland and he models it really, really well.

From Pelle's FB page, you'll realize he has an ideal work/life balance. Of course I'm insanely envious, (in an appropriately non-covetous way) of both his life and his modelling. I am on par with him achieving the former, but I'll never achieve the latter, because I don't have his eye, his skill or his attention span. But I get by. And I don't look too long.