From the beginning, it was always our intention to have an "operating" layout whereby we could host operating sessions to mirror real railroad operations on our layout. We have now held monthly operating sessions for six years and our operations have been perfected. They will continue to grow as Union Railroad becomes fully operational and the final portion of the layout is completed, the peninsula across the Monongahela River with Irvin Rolling Mill and Clairton Coke Works.
While we had not fully thought through our operating scheme when we started building the railroad, it has worked out quite well. We have a single classification yard at Pitcairn, roughly in the center of the layout. We have seen other layouts with classification yards at each end, but we did not want to devote that much room to class yards. Realistically, Conway Yard would be the predominant yard in the Pittsburgh Region during out era (Pitcairn Yard was pretty much out of service by the early 1980s), but we did not have enough room to do it justice.
Trains enter the visible portion of the layout from either Eastbound or Westbound Staging Yards (six double-ended tracks each), located on the lower level. These trains might be coming from Enola (Harrisburg), Baltimore or New Jersey (Westbound Staging), or Elkhart, Toledo, or Cleveland (Eastbound Staging). They all arrive at Pitcairn Yard, where the Yardmaster pulls freight cars destined for industries on the layout, and adds to the train cars destined for industries "off the layout." A new crew is called and the train leaves Pitcairn back to the staging yard track where it originated. Each train is named using the abbreviations outlined in Jeremy Taylor's Conrail Commodities book (Silver Brook Junction Publishing Co., 1974). ENPI, for instance, is the abbreviation of the train from Enola, PA (EN) to Pittsburgh, PA (PI).
But here is the neat part - each train in staging has its reciprocal train in the opposite staging yard. So, ENPI might be found in Westbound Staging Track 5, but its reciprocal, PIEN, is in Eastbound staging Track 5. Ideally, we would run both of these trains in the same op session, and we would "reset" the trains by switching them before the next session. However, if this doesn't happen, the train that was run would sit idle in the next session until its reciprocal is run.
We normally have four mixed freight/general merchandise trains in staging (ENPI, PIEN, PICA, CAPI), two piggyback trains (TV-2, TV-61), two coal drags, two Amtrak passenger trains (Pennsylvanian and Broadway Limited) plus an iron ore train and sometimes some surprises (currently a MOW train and a PRR excursion passenger train are sharing a track in WB Staging). The Amtrak trains both run west in the afternoon and east in the morning, so op sessions alternate between being AM or PM sessions. Prototype Amtrak schedules are utilized for the five passenger stations on the layout (Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg, Pitcairn, Latrobe and Johnstown). The posted arrival/departure times are all between 8 and 10 o'clock, so this works well using real time since our op sessions usually start at 7 pm. We recently acquired a Budd RDC car and plan to make commuter rail on half hour intervals from Pitcairn to Pittsburgh part of our normal operations.
Once freight cars are removed and classified at Pitcairn Yard, the real work begins. Local freight trains, usually with a locomotive at each end to allow access to sidings running in either direction, run both east and west of the classification yard to service local industries. These trains require two operators, one for each locomotive. Locals also deliver cars to the Chessie System interchange track at East Conemaugh, the Allegheny Valley Railroad at Island Avenue Yard, and more recently to the interchange with Union Railroad. To add another dimension, a pair of helper locomotives is kept at the Pittsburgh Station and in Westbound Staging to help push longer trains over the Allegheny Mountains (not really necessary, but it provides an assignment for another operator).
The Chessie System interchanges cars with Conrail at East Conemaugh and serves industries in Johnstown and Moxham. The third track of the helix is a dedicated Chessie track and connects to Rockwood Staging on the lower level. At least once each op session a Chessie train runs south to Rockwood staging, and another comes north to the Chessie staging yard at Moxham. If we are short on operators, these movements can wait until the next session.
Finally, Island Avenue Yard is a small (5 or 6 car) interchange yard on the North Side of Pittsburgh where AVR (Allegheny Valley Railroad) interchanges cars with Conrail, again via a local train out of Pitcairn, for servicing three industries in Pittsburgh's Strip District. This is cheating a bit, because AVR did not commence operations until the early 1990s (1994?) after Conrail was split up, but we wanted to add another railroad to make operations more interesting.
While we had not fully thought through our operating scheme when we started building the railroad, it has worked out quite well. We have a single classification yard at Pitcairn, roughly in the center of the layout. We have seen other layouts with classification yards at each end, but we did not want to devote that much room to class yards. Realistically, Conway Yard would be the predominant yard in the Pittsburgh Region during out era (Pitcairn Yard was pretty much out of service by the early 1980s), but we did not have enough room to do it justice.
Trains enter the visible portion of the layout from either Eastbound or Westbound Staging Yards (six double-ended tracks each), located on the lower level. These trains might be coming from Enola (Harrisburg), Baltimore or New Jersey (Westbound Staging), or Elkhart, Toledo, or Cleveland (Eastbound Staging). They all arrive at Pitcairn Yard, where the Yardmaster pulls freight cars destined for industries on the layout, and adds to the train cars destined for industries "off the layout." A new crew is called and the train leaves Pitcairn back to the staging yard track where it originated. Each train is named using the abbreviations outlined in Jeremy Taylor's Conrail Commodities book (Silver Brook Junction Publishing Co., 1974). ENPI, for instance, is the abbreviation of the train from Enola, PA (EN) to Pittsburgh, PA (PI).
But here is the neat part - each train in staging has its reciprocal train in the opposite staging yard. So, ENPI might be found in Westbound Staging Track 5, but its reciprocal, PIEN, is in Eastbound staging Track 5. Ideally, we would run both of these trains in the same op session, and we would "reset" the trains by switching them before the next session. However, if this doesn't happen, the train that was run would sit idle in the next session until its reciprocal is run.
We normally have four mixed freight/general merchandise trains in staging (ENPI, PIEN, PICA, CAPI), two piggyback trains (TV-2, TV-61), two coal drags, two Amtrak passenger trains (Pennsylvanian and Broadway Limited) plus an iron ore train and sometimes some surprises (currently a MOW train and a PRR excursion passenger train are sharing a track in WB Staging). The Amtrak trains both run west in the afternoon and east in the morning, so op sessions alternate between being AM or PM sessions. Prototype Amtrak schedules are utilized for the five passenger stations on the layout (Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg, Pitcairn, Latrobe and Johnstown). The posted arrival/departure times are all between 8 and 10 o'clock, so this works well using real time since our op sessions usually start at 7 pm. We recently acquired a Budd RDC car and plan to make commuter rail on half hour intervals from Pitcairn to Pittsburgh part of our normal operations.
Once freight cars are removed and classified at Pitcairn Yard, the real work begins. Local freight trains, usually with a locomotive at each end to allow access to sidings running in either direction, run both east and west of the classification yard to service local industries. These trains require two operators, one for each locomotive. Locals also deliver cars to the Chessie System interchange track at East Conemaugh, the Allegheny Valley Railroad at Island Avenue Yard, and more recently to the interchange with Union Railroad. To add another dimension, a pair of helper locomotives is kept at the Pittsburgh Station and in Westbound Staging to help push longer trains over the Allegheny Mountains (not really necessary, but it provides an assignment for another operator).
The Chessie System interchanges cars with Conrail at East Conemaugh and serves industries in Johnstown and Moxham. The third track of the helix is a dedicated Chessie track and connects to Rockwood Staging on the lower level. At least once each op session a Chessie train runs south to Rockwood staging, and another comes north to the Chessie staging yard at Moxham. If we are short on operators, these movements can wait until the next session.
Finally, Island Avenue Yard is a small (5 or 6 car) interchange yard on the North Side of Pittsburgh where AVR (Allegheny Valley Railroad) interchanges cars with Conrail, again via a local train out of Pitcairn, for servicing three industries in Pittsburgh's Strip District. This is cheating a bit, because AVR did not commence operations until the early 1990s (1994?) after Conrail was split up, but we wanted to add another railroad to make operations more interesting.