My old friend Tony Thompson has started a mini series of blog posts on Realistic Layout Operation. As always, Tony is a thoughtful person, who probably has more model railroad operating experience than anyone I know. The first post in the series surprised me, but I’m not going to precis it; you should read it yourself.
Tony does, however, raise an interesting question: what makes layout operation realistic? And since, I have been thinking about realism and accuracy in railway modelling for a few years now, maybe it would be fun to see if my philosophy can apply to operations too. In a nutshell, my modelling philosophy comes down to this: accuracy is observed in details, while realism is the feeling we get from the spaces between those details.
It’s easy to see how we can make operations more accurate. We can follow the rule book the real railroad followed. we can increase the fidelity of the paperwork. We can use a throttle that looks like a real control stand or backhead. We can lock our switches. We can connect air lines and wait for reservoirs to fill. We can animate our water towers.
Those are all details, and the aficionados among us appreciate them. But I’m not sure they impart a feeling of reality.
I’ve only driven a real train once – on a steam experience before we left England. For a day, I supplemented the regular crew on a little 0-4-4 in Devon, alternately firing and driving. It was loud and hot, and you could barely see what was happening outside. To move the train, you and the fireman had to think ahead so there was enough steam at the moment it was required, and braking took a similar level of local knowledge and planning. Trains are heavy and changing their speed is hard!
It’s hard to imagine how that experience could scale down to make a realistic operating feeling for an engineer on our models. The closest I ever came was on Tom Hood’s layout before he converted to DCC. At that time, he had throttles where the brake was separate from the speed, and the locomotives were tuned beautifully to creep to a stop. It was the one time I felt that I couldn’t stop the engine if I needed to.
Boosting the momentum on our DCC systems could help with a similar feeling of mass. Proto:87 seems to help with a feeling of mass as well, as the models have no space to hunt for the rails, and are imperceptibly more purposeful as a result. I think springing could also assist with making our flyweight models behave like Foremans and Tysons as they roll over the variations in the track.
I don’t think, however, that it is possible to duplicate the heat and the noise of a real locomotive driving experience. Standing outside the model, the ability to see is perfect, so we may have to content ourselves with a feeling of mass.
Aside from engineer, the operating position I have the most familiarity with is dispatcher. Most of that experience has been in Timetable and Train Order layouts, which you would think would be as realistic as it can get. There you are, after all, in the dispatcher’s office with nothing before you but prototypical paperwork.
That may be so, but it feels more like a game than like reality, and the primary reason is driven by our tiny layouts and the volume of traffic we move on them. I have never dispatched a real railroad, but I suspect that OS reports don’t feel like a distributed denial of service attack on the poor guy who is trying to write a complicated helping order.
A real railroader once told me that if you wanted feel like a real engineer, you should go out at night when it’s 4 degrees Celsius and raining to try to read the car numbers on a cut of cars by lantern-light. I’ve heard other stories of railroaders who sat waiting for a signal for almost an entire shift. Another one told me about holding a brakeman’s hand as his life drained from his severed legs. Even after my steam experience day, I fell asleep before we got out of the car park.
Real railroad operation is heavy, exhausting, dangerous work interspersed with boredom. Model railroad operation is a social evening out to play a game with interesting rules and intricate game pieces. We can make those game pieces as accurate as we like, but realism is much more difficult to come by given the constraints of time and space in our game rooms. Perhaps that’s a good thing; I enjoy an evening out with like-minded friends, and I don’t want to have to hold any of their hands while they expire on the ballast. Perhaps “realistic” operations should not be the goal so much as “satisfying” operations.
Pembroke:87 
@pembroke87.ca
I think "satisfying" is a really good measure! I feel there is no point striving for maximum accuracy if operating friends get fed-up running the trains.
I once tried applying some random "interventions" to an op session. For example declaring a switch failure such that one of the yard tracks was unavailable for a while. Whilst this may be realistic it merely resulted in frustration, and I didn't repeat it.
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Operational realism is somewhat in the eye of the beholder I guess. What I do strive for though is to slow the trains down. Nothing ruins the view more than a model of a hulking locomotive screeching to a halt in half a car's length!
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I find there are enough real events that disrupt operating sessions that you don’t need to invent interventions!
Slowing down seems to be a theme across the hobby, although I think it can be taken too far. I wonder if the reason we like it is that the models appear to have greater momentum when they’re moving slowly?
@pembroke87.ca Yes indeed, one needs to strike the right balance between operational fidelity and fun.
There's nothing quite like a model steam locomotive taking off like a top fuel drag car to shatter the realism of a carefully crafted model railway!
“Realistic operation” for your era will be so different from what is today, or even existed on the GTR of the time. With radio still in its infancy, switching is done using hand signals. Maybe the line uses telephone dispatching, but more likely it’s telegraphy that’s used. A smaller line like the Canada Atlantic will doubtless have its own operating practices that likely will differ somewhat from the GTR, too. Maybe not all cars have air brakes yet. They’d be through-piped to permit their being in a train. Airbrakes are mandatory in your era on all Canadian railways; they have been since about 1893. I recall a contemporary quote to the effect of–“All trains must be equipped with a power brake that will not require train crews to use the common handbrake” ie the Westinghouse (now Wabco) automatic air brake. (or their competitor, New York Air Brake {now Knorr}). Yet brakemen might well be on top of cars of a train descending a grade “where failure of the brakes might be attended to with hazard”. Another quote from memory–“A call for brakes when running must immediately be answered by each trainman opening a Conductor’s valve and applying handbrakes.”
Retired from CN as a mainline locomotive engineer running between Sarnia and Toronto after 35 years in the running trades starting as a brakeman, I’ve had my share of sad experiences I will not relate here. But I was taught so many hand signals as a new brakeman. Car counts, instructions to apply hand brakes or throw a switch (you never “throw a turnout“–what is that nonsense anyway?). The switch is the part of the turnout that moves, and which is thrown to rotue rolling stock from one track to another. A hand signal for “I’m going in between cars to couple air hoses” (aka “hosebags”)
Whistle signals–four short blasts to request a signal. Three short blasts to indicate that the engine is about to back up. Two long and two short for a public crossing, sounded starting 1/4 mile from the crossing, commonly at a whistle post. The current version of 14L for public crossings was introduced in the 1940’s.
You’ve done a great job creating the appearance of an independent railway of the early 20th century; its operation will be very distinct, too. There’s so much more on this that I can expand on should you be interested.
Steve Lucas
Yes, please! The Canada Atlantic moved to the uniform code of operating rules (maybe not the right title) in 1903 I believe. I do have a rule book from just before that time. Communication was by telegraph, and interchange cars would have had air brakes, and all CA cars were fitted in the mid 90s when the car shops experienced a wood shortage. So, the CA in 1905 looked more like a “modern” railway than not. Car service rules, I believe, were still in their infancy. These are all details I would like to get right, but I don’t know if they will feel “realistic” when they do, or will they be so foreign to someone like Tony that they will feel like the hydrogen railway he mentions in his post?