was used in some areas to reflect pres- ent-day practice, and all track was drilled on the outside of the rail and spiked every 4 to 6 inches to securely anchor it. Consequently, the trackage is very stable and reliable. Minimum radius is 32 inches on mainlines and 28 inches in yard areas; the upper level has the mainline curves superelevated like the prototype. The rails and ties are weathered with acrylic paints and only No. 6 and No. 8 switches are used. The layout has about 400 freight cars on it, and another 250 cars that are rotated in between operating ses- sions. With the variety and number of on-line industries,
several different
types of freight cars are used in local service, from standard boxcars to a
for 12 to 14 people to show up for a ses- sion, so we use two-man crews. They are given a switch list at the beginning of the session, and we usually run 14 trains. There are five local switch jobs that take each crew at least an hour and a half to complete since they work several indus- tries. The industries are ones that are ac- tually found between Albuquerque and Las Vegas, New Mexico, from a recycling firm to a building material supplier, a large cereal plant, and a furniture wholesaler. To add more switching op- portunities, industries that would be be- lievable for the area have been added. Then there are the mainline trains, east and westbound Amtrak trains and the Rail Runner commuter trains. It takes a two-man crew to handle the
from the yard at Lamy and then taking them down to Albuquerque Yard for de- livery to BNSF.
In addition to all that, there is an ex- cursion railroad that operates on one of the industrial lines. Its train runs out to the end of the industrial branch, and then the engine runs around it for the return trip. There is also a dinner train. Operated on a weekend sched- ule, it starts at Lamy Yard and goes to Las Vegas (New Mexico, not Nevada) and back. Like the real dinner trains, it rolls along at a leisurely 15 to 20 miles an hour to let the passengers enjoy the beautiful scenery as they eat and drink. This also requires the dinner train to yield to traffic that generates more revenue for the railroad.
fleet of ethanol cars. Because our rail- road also serves as a run-through for BNSF, just about any car type can be seen on NPSF tracks. During different operating sessions we run a unit coal train, a stack train or an auto rack train, which add interest and allows us to run cars that otherwise would not be justified in our operations. It takes at least nine or ten people to make an operating session work. One of the crew, Ramon Rhodes, who is very fa- miliar with BNSF and Santa Fe opera- tions, was a tremendous help in develop- ing the layout’s operations. It is normal
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
traffic that comes in and out of Albu- querque Yard (the main yard). One of the major industries on the line is a new ethanol plant. I wanted to model some- thing different from the typical oil refin- ery or chemical plant, so when ethanol plants began to spring up across the country, I created the story that one was built along the line. Switching the blocks of tank cars, the grain cars that feed the plant and the pellet cars that take away the byproduct of the process can keep two crews busy for an entire session. The crews are responsible for bringing the loads and empties to and
As mentioned above, the NPSF is
dispatcher controlled and the mainline switches are thrown at a panel using Decoder Pro. Seth Cohen designed the panel and did the track diagrams for the local panels around the layout. There is a yardmaster overseeing train movements in the Albuquerque pas- senger station. Train crews control turnouts at local industries after re- ceiving permission from the dispatch- er, and everyone keeps in touch over handheld radios. The benchwork is a combination of table top and tempered hardboard
45
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