The Columbia & Western
Snow comes early and stays late in British Columbia’s mountains. This fact is reflected on the layout. Still wearing the maroon and gray paint, engine 8549 (above) leads train No. 81, the westbound Boundary wayfreight, through shed No. 1. Engine 8608 has reported to the sta- tion at Farron to pick up its orders, creating plow extra 8608 (below). The caboose and H-16- 44 are from Kaslo kits and both were assembled and painted by Jeff Briggs of Briggs Models.
ing, roadbed and fascia out of the way at one time to keep the dust down. With wood-working complete, the saws were disassembled and stored. This is where advance planning and CAD shone. The roadbeds at Farron, Rose- bery and Old Nakusp were made re- movable to aid in track laying and fin- ishing in these difficult to reach places. The wiring and DCC control all went in at once, as well. Three Digitrax boost- ers supplying quad breakers provide 12 independent control areas. Duplex radio throttles control the trains and the op- erators greatly prefer the simple Digi-
trax UT handsets with their large speed knob and simple direction toggle. Three LogicRail fast clocks sit on the Loconet bus to keep the time.
Changes and lessons learned It became evident early on that the staging plan was not going to work. The biggest problem was the long hid- den runs to the staging table, but a sec- ond problem was sliding the transfer table out during operations as the area around Castlegar would get very busy. The solution was to add new staging tracks just beyond the visible portion
of the layout at the top of both helixes and to turn the transfer table into a central storage yard used to quickly re- stage the layout between sessions. Us- ing the added staging tracks plus the helixes allowed for two staging tracks at both the south and west ends. East end staging was more problematic, but I managed to squeeze two additional stub tracks in midway up the large he- lix just beyond Troup Junction. Using these two new tracks, the helix track and the continuous run connection, I now had four east end staging tracks. If I had to do it all over again I would have designed for at least one more staging track in each end of the layout. The old adage is correct: “you can never have too much staging.” After staging, the most serious prob- lem with the plan was a lack of switch- ing at Cascade. On the prototype there was very little industrial track be- tween Castlegar and Grand Forks, and the primary job of the Boundary freights was to get over the summit to the mills at Grand Forks and Midway. While ending the layout at the western foot of Farron Hill at Cascade made sense visually, the Boundary freight jobs felt unfinished as crew weren’t able to “terminate” or “originate” their runs prototypically. Instead, they sim- ply ran to
staging. I partially ad-
dressed this limitation by moving pro- totype tracks from Grand Forks, squeezing in a potato warehouse and the interchange with the Great North- ern/Burlington Northern Republic branch. Now with a bit more work at Cascade, the Boundary wayfreights can keep operators busy for two-plus hours in a session. Ideally, I would like at least a sawmill at Cascade if not a more faithful rendition of Grand Forks or Midway. The lesson here is to have crews originate and terminate their jobs prototypically. It is more satisfying than running in and out of staging. Initially we kept operations organized with a timetable, rigidly scheduling the actual trains the prototype ran in 1970. Two problems were apparent with this: in 1970 the prototype ran only two trains per day over Farron Hill, which seemed woefully little given the amount of ener- gy and space that had gone into the sec- ond deck; and how do you keep opera- tions coordinated when trains inevitably run late? To address the lack of traffic we “re- opened” the Phoenix copper field in the mountains west of Grand Forks, provid- ing an excuse to run ore trains from West Staging to the Tadanac smelter (South Staging) conveniently avoiding adding congestion to Nelson Yard. Addi- tionally, as the prototype run from Phoenix to Tadanac is downhill, save for
60 MAY 2013
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100