Several Ques regarding RR operations.

[yardlimit]

I apologize in advance for my ignorance.

I am developing a fairly unique activity for Marias3
which is set in the mid-50s. Uses a period consist.

I need to know some dumb stuff that may seem obvious
to others.

First: Would it be at all probable to find a CP engine group
from Canada occasionally hauling freight in Marias
pass today or historically?


Second: Is it unusual to find cars (livery) from diverse roads
in concentration in the yards of other companies?
If so, why?

Third: Historically, or today, is it unusual to find an
GP engine group operating in the mountains without
dynamic brake equipt?


I'm working up what appears to be an outrageously challenging
activity set in a specific time frame. I want to try and make
it accurate to whatever degree is possible, as well as fun.
Consider any answer carefully. Any input from those working in
the Railroad industry would be invaluble.

Yardlimit.

[henry3]

>I apologize in advance for my ignorance.

There's nothing wrong with ignorance per se, just in remaining ignorant. <g> Let me see if I can help out a bit here without showing too much of *my* ignorance.

>First: Would it be at all probable to find a CP engine group
>from Canada occasionally hauling freight in Marias pass today >or historically?

With today's run-through agreements and power pooling arrangements I'd say the probablility is likely to be much higher today as opposed to the 1950's. During that time frame locomotives tended to stay on or close to the home road, though there were exceptions.

Of course, you could designate Marias as a CP route for the purpose of your activity... :)

>Second: Is it unusual to find cars (livery) from diverse roads
>in concentration in the yards of other companies?

Now this is not that unlikely, depending on the type of car. The more generalized a car is (boxcar, flatcar, etc.), the more likely it is to show up *anywhere* on the North American railroad network. I have seen Alaska RR boxcars parked in rail yards out in West Texas and NdeM boxcars in New York. Now granted, home road and regional cars will always tend to outnumber the "foreigners" in a given area.

Now if the car is more specialized, then it tends to travel in a more predictable path or set of paths. For instance, there's a nice set of Boeing cars in the file library that are frequently seen going over Marias Pass. These cars would probably *never* show up down in Texas because it would be so far off of any of the route between Boeing's facilities.

>
>If so, why?

Once again we come back to the nature of the North American rail network and the ability of a shipper to load a car at one point on the network and send to just about any other point on the system. Below is a simplified example:

If I manufacture widgets in Norfolk, Virginia and a customer in Whitefish, Montana wanted to buy five carloads from me, I'd contact say Norfolk Southern for the five cars. NS would probably send me five Norfolk Southern boxcars which I would load up with the product. NS would then move the cars to Chicago and deliver them to BNSF. A BNSF freight would haul the cars westward from Chicago, over Marias Pass and drop them in Whitefish yard for eventual delivery to my customer. These cars may end up sitting in other yards along the way depending on routing instructions/train movements.

Now if you imagine all the possible combinations of shippers and customers....

>Third: Historically, or today, is it unusual to find an
>GP engine group operating in the mountains without
>dynamic brake equipt?

This pretty much depends on the railroad. On some roads (SP) every GP-type locomotive was/is equipped with dynamics. On other roads (Rock Island), *no* Geeps were so equipped. Still other roads tried to buy only a certain number of Geeps with dynamics for use in the mountains while saving the extra cost on Geeps that were supposed to operate in flat areas. I think GN and NP (and thus BN/BNSF) fell into this category. Finally, some mountain roads (UP) ended up with large numbers on non-dynamic geeps by acquiring other roads (MP, MKT, CNW) which had them in significant numbers.

In any event, I'm sure that this happened all-too-often whenever the possibility existed. And I'm sure it made the engineers who "benefitted" from it less than happy. <g>

>I'm working up what appears to be an outrageously challenging
>activity set in a specific time frame. I want to
>try and make it accurate to whatever degree is
>possible, as well as fun.

I look forward to seeing it. Good luck!

>Any input from those working in the Railroad industry would be invaluble.

Agreed. C'mon rail folks! Jump on in!

Henry

[yardlimit]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON May-12-02 AT 00:45AM (EDT)[/font][p][font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON May-12-02 AT 00:44*AM (EDT)[/font]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON May-12-02 AT 00:43*AM (EDT)[/font]

This has been more than helpful. I just needed to get a few things in perspective. I've aquired a few more "tools" for
the activity since I posed this question. Its beginning to flesh out. Damn thing takes about 10 hours to complete which may put some folks off, but it aint boring. I don't want to tip my hand yet, but it combines urgency with adversity --and a degree of humor.

I need to take this opportunity to add another question:
Were 100 ton coal hoppers/gondolas in common use during the
50s, or were only 50 tonners seen then?


Many thanks,
Yardlimit.

[henry3]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON May-12-02 AT 01:25AM (EDT)[/font][p]Back in the 1950s, 100-ton hoppers (or gondolas) were virtually non-existant. The 50-ton hoppers would have been plentiful back then as well as the 70-ton hoppers.

Glad to be of help and still looking forward to what you come up with.

Henry

[yardlimit]

Great. I think I have most of the material I need at this point. The player consist components will require 3 items: The engine, 1 car type, and a caboose. The caboose is available at this site, but the other two items come from other sites which offer them as free downloads. Any AI trains I will try to compose of items commonly available at Train-sim. The specific components required by the consist might be annoying for a user to gather. I could package them in. Naturally I would give credit to all sources, but perhaps that approach might require permission from those involved in their creation. Everything I put together will be free in origin, and freely given, but I am a little concerned that the components not filed here may not be available indefinately. (sites come; sites go) Any thoughts?

Yardlimt