Urban Scene
The 818 and 802 lead a long train past the industries of East Vermil- lion. Vermillion is home to many customers with their own sidings. Other businesses in the city receive deliveries at the platforms and warehous- es of Waterstreet Freight or Milne Brothers. One of the SC’s oxide-red and silver Serpentine Route boxcars is on the Milne spur. Ahead of the train is a brief pause to exchange cars at Moriah Classification Yard, then the long climb to the iso- lation of Snake Canyon and the summit at Talon Mountain.
are broken up here and the cars are forwarded to on-layout loca- tions. Eastbound and westbound freight moves on trains made up at Moriah Yard. Cimmeron Yard near Vermillion and the yard at Hondo are terminals for trains that work the industrial districts. Both Moriah and Hondo have lo- comotive servicing facilities, and power is assigned from them for through trains and for the locals. The road’s main shop is at Moriah. While seven to ten operators usually show up for the second- Thursday-of-the-month sessions, 16 to 18 have worked the layout at one time. Two-man crews (en- gineer and conductor-brakeman) are used when there are enough people. Operating sessions last 2 to 2½ hours with a break mid-ses- sion. Although the Snake Canyon is busy, the purpose here is to re- lax and have fun.
SCRR crews and trains work differently than on most model railroads. Each operator or pair of operators selects an industrial
district (a yard or town). Using the typical car-card waybill system, they start with the local switch en- gine and do the pick-ups and set outs. This includes transferring cars between storage tracks and industry spurs within the district or from one spot to another, as well as assembling an outbound train with a caboose.
After making up the train, the switcher is stored on a siding. The crew then takes the waiting road power from a layover track in the industrial district, ties onto the train, pumps up the air, and moves onto the main line. They proceed to either Moriah Classifi- cation Yard or staging to drop cars and pick up new ones. The trains run as turns. The same operators do both local switching and main line runs, rather than having the town switchers pick up and set out cars on a siding and the long hauls handled by road jobs with separate crews. Trains from Mo- riah’s industries, and from Cim- meron, Hobbs, Coronado, and
Snake Canyon, exchange cars at the classification yard; trains from Vermillion, Grand, Hondo, and some cars from Snake Canyon go to staging.
If the operator’s destination is
Moriah Yard, which generally has a yardmaster, he communicates with him and follows the directions for which track to use to drop the train. Using the road engines, the caboose is switched onto the new train and the road engines couple up. The operator departs after get- ting clearance from the yardmas- ter. If the destination is the stag- ing yard, the same things happen except there is no yardmaster. In both cases, the operator gets a new set of waybills (car cards). When the train returns to its originating industrial district or yard, it terminates, and the road engines are shut down on the lay- over track. If time is short, a crew’s shift can end at this point and the local switching will be done at the next session. If not, the crew be- gins its work.
48 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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