This Afternoon

This afternoon, Craig joined me in running the sequence of events that constituted the operating session I had posted the previous time.

This part will look at the morning interstate freight arriving into the yard.  Then the yard pilot will make up a train consisting of the empty VLXs which will be shunted on a pilot run to Sadliers.

Initial view of yard before operating session begins

Below photo shows the oil pots at Shell which are currently being loaded and will be picked up later in the session.

Below we see the Pilot arrive at the yard for duties with the interstate goods from Adelaide arriving on road 3.

The Yard Pilot is ready to break up the train.

Below we see the first wagon to come off is the Guards van and the VLXs behind will be placed in front of the Van before proceeding to Sadliers to be loaded for the afternoon interstate run back to Adelaide.

The below shots shows the Van coming off and will be shuffled and placed at the rear of the VLXs.

A trip down the main line and we arrive at Sadliers for the shunt of the empties.  

Below we see the shunt into Sadlier take place with the Van on the Main road whilst shunting the empties back into Sadliers to be loaded.  The Y will need to hook up onto the van and bring it into road 2 then run around it.  Then it will proceed back to the yard.   

In the next blog post, we return to the yard, where the session will continue as per the sequence outlined in the previous post.

Thoughts on a Shunting Session

Below is a depiction of the layout with some industries which can be shunted on local Pilot jobs. In real life, these pilots would leave from Tottenham Yard in Western Melbourne and shunt some of the industries. Tottenham Yard was huge and many trains would terminate and be made up there.  It was only 1 station away from where I used to live in Sunshine, Victoria.

Anyway, last Sunday I was fully immersed and quite enjoyed executing the session outlined below.
The trains are obviously made up but it doesn't really deviate that much from what happened in real life, obviously all happened on a much larger scale.

Now before I start any scenery I need to make the decision - do I model the country or do I go for an industrial layout.  Both have their positives and minuses.

Below is what I executed on Sunday which took about 2.5 to 3 hours to complete.  I would like to get a couple of chaps over to execute the session to see what they think and get some feedback.  Craig, Darren, Geoff, Anthony and Mark are good candidates!

Two, possibly three operators - each outlined with the colour code below (Pilot Working and Shunt could be combined)

1. Freighter arrives this morning - Road 3 (Longest Road)
2. VLXs come off and go to Sadliers
3. Whence Return - Road 4 or Road 5 holds train for Geelong, hence empty JXs from (1) come off to be placed for Geelong Loading
4. From Road 4 or Road 5,  shunt off ELX (later to be used for Arc Eng) and place in spare road  - Geelong Goods departs
5. Grain or Jet
6. Ex staging, from Geelong with JXs in consist - arr. Road 4 - Loaded JXs to be shunted on evening freighter, other JX to be shunted to Boral with ELX as Pilot (step 7)
7. Trip train to Boral and ARC Eng.
8. Whence return Arrival from North - onto Road 2 - Any TWs to be off-loaded - split train keeping road 2 free.
9. Arrival from South - onto Road 2- Any TWs to be off loaded - keep Road 2 free - utilise stub-ended sidings.
10. Pilot to work Caltex with empties TWs from (8) and (9) - Need to take wagon to place in between Engine and Tank car- Bring back Sadliers and Loaded TWs
11. Whence return, make up Northbound goods with TW/s in loading then departs
12. Sadliers loading to be on Express Freighter then departs
13. Other TWs to be loaded on Southbound Goods then departs

Depicts Main Line Run

Depicts Pilot Working

Depicts Shunting

The following shows the schematic of the layout.

Layout Schematic