Me too. I'm a little too far from SOO territory to be plausible, but I do have a few of their locos, so someday we'll do a run-through with them for your benefit! :)
Glad you enjoy it! I wonder what it is about this particular video that makes it so much more popular than the rest of my series. I never realized grain trains were so popular!
Well I got to watch this 2 years after it was made and I enjoyed it a lot.✌️ realistic and I like your style hooking up taking off and your engines sound awesome reving up.
Glad you enjoyed it. It's fun that I had the FOBNR car in the mix for that video. If I did it again I would have a more realistic unloading plan, but it will do for now...
Great video! I also had to put the extended Kadee couplers on my GPs for the same reason. I laughed when you said "Oh look, there's a switch engine right there!", just something about the way you said it. Thanks for sharing this!
Glad you enjoyed it! Model Railroading is Fun, after all. I think what you were picking up in my voice was partly relief that the switcher was in a good spot, because I was filming the whole thing by myself, keeping several balls in the air at once while trying to sound relaxed...
I love your model railroad. It really feels timeless. I could just sit there and run operations all day. It has honestly inspired me to model the BN in some fashion. I’ve always loved the Hill lines and their successor, the Burlington Northern 😄
You and me both! I wish I would spend more time just running operations, but I keep getting the urge to finish, improve or expand it. Hopefully I will make some more videos like this one soon...
It's always interesting to learn how these big plants work, since the goal is usually to make your model factories somewhat authentic looking. I used to model Texas in N-scale long back, and I was always looking to learn how those big chemical and oil refineries there work. And, I looked into switching grain trains. Great hobby. I miss it. It's always so much fun! This was Burlington Northern's best paint scheme, IMO. The no-nonsense look, with the black roofing on the locomotive cabs.
I agree with you. It's very interesting how big plants work, and what their inflows and outflows are, but hard to find information about them. Kalmbach has done a series of books for model railroaders on "Industries you can model" but surpisingly even they have very little specific information about the ratios of loads in to loads out, of various commodities.
In talking with some local railroaders who handled this grain train, I found out more and will have to do an update on this video someday. It turns out that they yarded the train in Interbay, and then the elevator would call for specific cars to be brought over based on specifications like their protein content or water content. This meant that the crews had to do a lot of switching to deliver the cars in the right order, not just shove them in the terminal yard. Fascinating. I wonder if I can get any of my crews interested in this level of minutiae.
@@muchfunwithtrains I've watched two of your Burlington Northern vids, so far. Another dilemma in model railroading is space. Unit trains that serve one customer require building a BIG plant and that can be space-prohibitive on a layout, especially if different types of unit trains are operated (auto plant, intermodal terminal, petro plant). I notice some modelers will build only the back of a large factory, including visible rail unloading facilities, and place this scene against a wall. I guess one not always have to build the entire Big Box factory to create the scene effectively. I enjoy the vids.
Another really enjoyable session Burr, plenty background info, modellers licence and lovely looking locos. Good to see that after all those hours of sessions, you still spot more potential ops with the grain train return, look forward to it. All the best Brian
Glad you enjoyed it! I've been thinking lately that if it takes more than 200 person-hours to conduct an operating session here, it's going to take me a few years to make videos about all the various train moves involved!
This brings back some memories. I worked as an "extra board" brakeman for the GNRY in the late 60's. We ran trains from Wenatchee into Interbay on one day and quite often would be called for a "Gold Bar Turn" the next, taking the same cars back up the mountain because Interbay was too small to hold them. Gold Bar had a small yard but it would hold a train broken down. Even though I was young, tying down hand brakes on 8 or 9 cars on 8 or 9 tracks was a lot of work. Every summer about the first of August all available storage space was used up. The aluminum plant near Ferndale was called Intalco back then and just like the Kaiser plant in Spokane and the Alcoa plant in Wenatchee was a dangerous place to work..All three of those plants took a mans life in a space of 2 years. I don't recall there being a "Fern Turn" back then, we just switched it out as needed when we were making the trip to Vancouver or back to Seattle.
These memories are really valuable to those of us trying to model the GN and BN eras. Thank you so much for sharing them. I've heard about how much the Gold Bar yard was used for storage, but now you're making me think that I could put a staging yard in to represent that move that you described, as a way to keep too many cars from clogging my not-large-enough model of Interbay yard.
@@muchfunwithtrains The TOFC trains were called "Pigs" by the crews and usually had 20 or fewer (usually about a dozen) cars. IIRC there were never any containers back then, just trailers. The hotshot of the division was #5 Spokane to Seattle and #6 going East. The train usually had an RPO car and mail was dropped in Ephrata and Wenatchee when the crews changed. There would also be a couple of hot cars with priority freight. Numbered trains to Vancouver were 712 N and 711S, all others were called Extra North and Extra South except the International passenger train. I think you were right about limited switching for road crews around Everett. I think the local that served the 747 plant was called the "Jet".
Thanks again. Do you have any memory of the type of "hot cars" that might have been attached, and whether they would have been at the front or rear of train? What you are describing is what I call "late GN" ops and since I'm modeling 1973 I've replaced #5&6 with #3&4, and the 711/712 trains had different numbers by then. The other interesting complication that I haven't wrapped my head around yet is that the BN ran the old NP train north to Sumas via Kruse Jct. as well as the old GN train to Vancouver BC. The consolidation of operation plans evolved over time, so coming up with a reasonably accurate 1973 lineup is tricky.
@@muchfunwithtrains I believe the "hot" cars were ordinary but newish freight cars with cushion rail and roller bearings. I think a lot were bound for Boeing but not positive about that. The trains were usually 2 sometimes 3 power units which were numbered in the 3,000s. these were followed by a mail car (might have been a baggage car),and a RPO car. The "hot" cars were next or just ahead of the caboose. the TOFC's were the rest. My last run was in Sept of '68 so I know nothing post merger. There was a local called the "Train Ship" that ran to Vancouver but stopped in a yard somewhere near Bellingham. Most of the time you had to switch out the yard but sometimes load the barge bound for Alaska. Have you modeled the Pacific Coast Railroad? It mainly worked Pier 5 (I think) in Seattle and was owned by the GN although we got a PCR check when we worked it. I've been poking around these model sites for a couple of weeks and I am amazed at you'alls attention to detail. One thing seems to be missing though, how come your rolling stock is void of grafitti?
@@Patrick-th5yt Yes, we run the train ship here on occasion. I hadn't thought about the PCR much but will look into it. Was the Pier 5 you're talking about over in West Seattle? As for grafitti, I don't recall seeing much of it in the early '70's, so I don't bother with it. But some of the more modern modelers certainly do. It takes some skill, though, to do it right.
Burr, man, I love this video. First, I model the part of the BN where these cars may have originated from. Don't care about the odd modern--ish FMC hopper car. I'll have a a few such discrepancies on my layout as well. Life's too short to sweat that type of thing. Some comments beyond that... The MILW was big in my area. Overbuilt is the single best word. BN is my first love, but I've always had a morbid fascination with the Milwaukee Road. Their Pacific Extension and extreme west end are exotic areas of interest to me. My wife and I honeymooned in Port Angeles WA briefly in 2005. The entire Pacific NW is an enchanting place for this hayseed. Finally, I like your backhanded way of promoting the FOBNR with that car. I have one on my layout also. Such a neat way to promote the organization. Also, EMDs riding on Alco trucks are... just not right! Thank you sir for posting this video!
Thanks for your comments, Eric. It's fun and useful to hear what people have to say, since there's so much information involved in making a layout "plausible". This is part of why I like to promote the FOBNR, where I learn quite a bit. And I'm glad you enjoyed the video(s).
I was hoping an astute viewer would notice that! I decided to keep the video shorter by not including that last move. I did it this morning, after publishing the video. :)
I just read through all the comments to see if anyone else had mentioned the 4 other cars before I commented about them! Great work with the layout and ops. I am looking forward to watching more of your videos!
Burr- I noticed the FMC hoppers in your consist and thought to myself that those weren’t around in 1973. A few minutes later in the video you pointed that out. I try to be prototypical but I fudge once in a while, especially when I like a particular car or paint scheme. Thanks for coming clean.😉
It's a real struggle, isn't it? On the one hand, I'm trying to stay "plausible" with a multi-colored fleet of diesels, so 1973 seems good. On the other hand, there's lots of great stuff to model and run plus or minus 5 years of that, including that FM diesel switcher featured in some of my earlier videos, that was scrapped in 1968. A lot of interesting grain cars were built for the BN during that era, and some of it after 1973, as you mentioned. And what about the Railbox cars? Argh! Some people just model "the diesel era" and forget about it. But I have a young friend that comes over sometimes and with his eagle eyes comments on every one of my cars with a built data after 1973. Let him enjoy it! I know I am.
14:33 Regarding long shank couplers on the front of the locomotives, since it looks like you use skewers for uncoupling, you could cut the pins shorter. I cut them so they end just below the pulling face of the coupler. When two cars are coupled, it looks more like air hoses meeting instead of passing each other. And they clear locomotive snow plows even if the loco has a normal shank coupler. From another BN modeler but at the other end of the BN era.
Thanks - this is a good idea. Except it eliminates the possibility of magnetic uncoupling forever, so I've been reluctant to start cutting the pins. And with over 50 cars to do, it seems easier to put the longer couplers in the few locos that need it. So I like the idea, but I haven't gotten the courage to do it yet.
@@muchfunwithtrains I arrived at that same conclusion many years back. Scale couplers for pictures right after paint and weathering, then swap them out for long shanks when I put them in service!
Mr. Stewart, I really appreciate how you operate your locomotive power at or near prototypical speeds when coupling to and decoupling from a train. I have witnessed many modelers rushing that aspect of operation. My layout is DC and I am able to achieve such control because 1) I have good locos to begin with and 2) I keep everything clean. But even when I let cleanliness go unattended for a while I find that I usually can achieve near-prototypical speeds. Besides, why the rush?!? Although I don't model a particular era, the location is imaginary and the railroad is an amalgamation of several (including SF, BN, Burlington Route, Amtrak, UP, Rock Island and CSX) I try to operate prototypically SPEED-WISE only. At the moment my layout is still in early development, so there isn't any local work YET...I just run them around and around and around...still, it's a love of mine and has been ever since I was a kid. Thanks, Dad, for building my first 4x8 HO table! :o) I invite you to check out my RUclips channel for a couple of BN unit coal train videos: ruclips.net/user/shortscob_s0LqLjY and ruclips.net/user/shortszDwO9zVUz50 I would appreciate the Like and leave a comment! Shoot, you could also subscribe! Thanks again for a great series! Russ House, Washington, IL
Thanks Russ. I thank my own dad for helping me with a 4x6 layout when I was in about 4th grade. I did slot cars for a while in 8th grade but went back to trains right after that and the rest is history. Thanks for the links to your videos.
I was a brakeman for Southern Pacific in 1973. Oakland California based. Ran between Roseville, Salinas , San Francisco and Oakland CA. We would have never run a road crew in these yards to do switching that you just did.. Brakeman for line, Switchman for designated yards. My father was an executive officer for Southern Pacific. Just so happens he was in charge of all communications, the communications department for the SP. Later his department to invent a company you know as Sprint. Southern Pacific didn't have handhelds in 73. We were still using our lanterns or hand signal. I still have mine lantern today. I live in the East Bay of California San Francisco. Trains now totally remote controlled in some yards very close by. Enjoyed your layout..
Thanks for watching and for your comments. The grain train video has been very popular but I am itching to fix many of the mistakes I made in it. As you say, the road crew would never have broken the train down like that. A switch crew used an SD9 for that job. Also, they would have used larger six axle locos on that train, I'm pretty sure, not the GP38-2's. Also, they spotted individual grain cars based on things like protein and moisture content, so they wouldn't have been able to just shove a block of cars in there, they would have pulled specific cars from the unit train and sent them to the unloading pits based on the customer's request. Also, they broke the train down in Interbay, not in Stacy. The list goes on and on! But I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway.
@@25mfd exactly what it was! We always carried extra 6 volt batteries either in the head end or if there was a caboose there. The conger had a switch that could go from spot to distant bulbs. Inside the cap was a clip for two spares bulbs... Old school there. One thing I would not do would be to stand on top of a moving boxcar for signaling. You had old timers who would, not me. Dang tough to do that.
@@michaeldeckert6023 pretty cool... there's a vid on YT of some old school steam era footage, it's a safety film... at one point in the vid it shows a crew switching in the yard and a brakeman on top of a boxcar, the pin puller misses getting the pin in a failed kick attempt... the guy up top gets herky jerked around after the missed pin pull... he was standing far enough back from the end of the car of the car... had he been riding near the roofs end, he would have been easily thrown off... so yea i can't blame you one bit for not riding up top
Great layout! Great video! I love seeing BN model railroads. Surprisingly I don't see many on utube or elsewhere. Mine is 16'x8' midwest setting 1995 & still using cabooses😁Thank you!
I have the same experience, and wonder why. It's a great era and railroad to model, for all sorts of reasons. I'm amazed at how many views this video has received (over 12,000).
I remember seeing standard 40 foot boxcars with grain doors still being used being unloaded at the Cargill grain terminal on Seattle's waterfront and with the grain car shortage at the time I saw Northern Pacific ice reefer cars with grain doors used to haul grain this was in 1980. Just shortly after this the F-UNITS and 40 foot boxcars disappeared.
I was down on the waterfront one day in 1980 when a 50+ car string of old 40' boxcars went rolling past, presumably on their way to scrap - I so wish I had taken multiple pictures of it, instead of just gawking. But in those days we didn't have cellphones with cameras...
Nice work! I recently dismantled my 40 year old N-Scale layout empire and replaced it with a smaller HO-Scale point to point prairie branchline. It's freelanced, but it's BN in the early post merger days of late 1970. I enjoy being able to run NP, GN, CB&Q and BN power. I have enjoyed all your videos as they are of similar era and road (BN).
New sub here. Very nice looking layout and well explained on the grain train operation. I just started operations on my latest layout. Its proto-lance. I have only 2 unit trains: 1 is a coal train, the other is a chemical/tank car train. I'm finding operations have opened a whole new world to this affliction we call Model Railroading!
Yes, it's a lot of fun and is addictive. This grain train video is fun to watch but has a number of operational inaccuracies in it - one of these days I'll run the operation again and do it right, so you can look forward to that...
Thank you for running trains the way they should be. Slow and smooth, nothing worse than people with massive model rail empires with huge multi people ops sessions who just run more trains the prototypes as fast as possible back to back to back to rush and get through the ops session to get it over with. The only time I did an ops session at a club it was like that and it made me never want to go to one again.
It's funny how hard it is to overcome the constant urge to rush, in this instant gratification world we live in. I agree with you. Every op session we have here seems to accomplish less than the one before, and be more fun. A good trend.
Well the fun thing about doing 1970's era is you still got the GN, NP, CBQ, and SPS painted locomotives with some "new" Green BN's. Its fun to use SP&S locomotives due to them looking completely different from everything else, not only in paint but also locomotives (C-420's/C-636's). Also with that era you can have fun with mixed "rainbow" consists of BN lead, NP and SP&S following making for some interesting looking units.
So true. Also, the bulk of the covered hoppers in that train were acquired by the BN in 1981! I finally removed them from the layout a few weeks ago, but of course the video lives on. When I started building the layout I would buy almost anything with green paint on it, but have slowly been weeding out the outliers, as well as renumbering the legacy road locos. Thanks for pointing this out.
I know! I wonder how many others noticed this? So far only two of you have mentioned it. The real mistake on my part was not figuring out the train was too long before being in the middle of a video shoot. I decided I would rather make the video shorter than take the extra time to bring those 4 cars back. Did you watch my Part 4 video on a narrow gage mine run? In the middle of that one, I accidentally dump a loaded narrow gage gondola off the edge of a cliff down to crash onto the mainline at Delta Wye. Anyway, congrats for noticing!
@@muchfunwithtrains I noticed the narrow gauge derailment last session but didn't notice the missing grain cars until I read xavier's comment and your reply.
Car supply 1970s After the merger BN placed large orders for covered hoppers. However because of bumper crop harvest , new car orders hardly had any effect. Box cars were still common on account many small grain elevators on branchlines that could not handle hoppers. From the late summer to early fall car supply was an issue. During these times grain would arrive in 40 foot,50foot boxcar, clean covered hoppers for cement service, open hoppers covered with plastic tarps. Most grain arrived in blocks from stations in Washington, Idaho,Montana and North Dakota Blocks of cars were also recieved from Union Pacific and the Milwaukee Road. At times when the grain Terminal yard was full incoming cars would be held on the lead tracks next to pier 86. Pier 86 could operate around the clock if desired but the port of Seattle had an agreement with the Residents of Queen Anne Hill to avoid night time operations. The old Hanford St grain was twice the size of the pier 86 Terminal. Pier 86 grain Terminal could handle more grain a faster rate than the old Terminal and the old Terminal did not have an inbound yard. The track layout at Pier 86 was a through Design, inbound cars from the southend with 2 unloading tracks with electronic scales The near track had the car tipper for boxcar the far track was for covered hoppers only. There was a run around track were a covered hopper was spotted to take grain dust and other debris from unloading grain. Next to the elevator was another tipper to unload trucks!
Thanks Frank - this is great info that I didn't have. Will see how much of it I can include in the operation, and the model. Really appreciate your speaking up!
Reporting marks for cars NP, GN,CB&Q,SP&S,MILW,UP NAHX and other private car lines Inbound yards that held cars Spokane, Pasco,Wenatchee, Auburn, SP&S yard division point on the Columbia River Other Grain Terminals Kalama, Tacoma, Seattle Ships loading on Columbia River Must not have draft greater than 45 feet Not unheard of for ship to take grain at different Terminals
Hi Burr! I'm Shane. I don't run DCC on the rails, rather I run DCC on an AC buss with sound that follows the train around the layout! I use the lighting functions to light up various structures around the layout. I have been working with TCS and their WOW Sound. I am are tired engineer, and so I am very particular about sound, especially the prime mover!!! Almost everyone out there use sound loops, and to my ear it sounds horrible!!! TCS is the only DCC manufacturer that got the sound of a LOADED DIESEL ENGINE. I guess all of those years of hearing the real thing has made me pretty fussy!!! The big sub-woofers and the super tweeters make it sound like EMD is pushing through the basement wall-exactly the way I want it! I also engineered the control system that is a hybrid utilizing the 4017 Decade Counter and it's clock function. The train throws the switch, much the same way you would with standard DC. I first used this about 30 years ago. It worked so well that I stayed with it!!! There are tiny little switches that the train taps. The number of taps corresponds to the throttle number that the train is assigned to, making it all automatic!!! I am testing infra-red uncoupling, and it seems to be working well! I also have working brakes That still has some bugs to work out, but it looks like I will be able to make it work fairly well in the future. I like your channel!
Thanks Shane - this is a great list of features we're all going to enjoy in the future. When you say you "have working brakes", what do you mean by that? Do you mean that your controller has a brake function that makes the loco slow down electrically, or that the loco has brakes of some kind onboard physical resistance device. Kind of a dumb question, but I wanted to ask anyway.
@@muchfunwithtrains I just lost my reply to your question. The brakes are on the cars themselves: they are electric. They are not yet quite marketable. The MS that I developed has really slowed things down!!!! It has been 30 years ago that I first had the idea. I have some rather steep grades on my layout; 4% to be exact. The cars that are equipped weigh 8 ounces and can hold themselves plus 3 others on a 4% grade!!!! The brake beams have been the fly in the ointment, but I believe that I have this figured out now! They will be Infra-red controlled: just aim an Infra-red beam at them, and they will apply. Aim the Infra-red again, and they will release. I have overcome several problems, and I should have something workable by next year!
Hi Burr. I don't know if I told you but I'm modeling the two Boeing Aircraft Assembly plants. I'm coming off the Mountain into Everett/Mukilteo the into Seattle. It isn't prototypical but I'm trying to put folkal points. Plus I will be adding the Wichita plant. Got to have a start and finish right. Keep having fun, Chris. Can I ask were you got your background pictures of Seattle?? My picture of the Space Needle is to new.
I took the pictures of Seattle on my own camera in the 1990's sometime, and had them enlarged. I haven't done the work to find a suitable shot of the same view in 1973, which would be ideal, but I didn't move to Seattle until 1979, so I don't have any of my own.
It's true! I got so excited about getting the engines back to the roundhouse, I forgot to finish the switch job! I noticed it the next day, but by then I wasn't going to re-shoot the whole thing. But kudos to you for being only the second person so far to notice and comment on this major error. The other thing that drives me crazy watching this video is that I'm pretty sure BN didn't use 4-axle engines on unit trains like this, so I should have been using SD40-2's or U-boats. Also, now that we're in the weeds on this, the whole premise of the operation is unprototypical. What they actually did was to terminate the unit train in Interbay yard, and then have an SD9 run the cars over to the grain terminal, in smaller cuts, as specified by the customer, based on the protein and water content of each load. I could set all this up using waybills, but (1) I haven't gotten around to it yet, and (2) I'm not sure if anyone would actually enjoy doing the job, other than me, and I'm too busy making videos! LOL. Thanks for your astute comment!
So... after 20yrs on UP in Roseville serv unit and working in Stockton, CA; first mistake, real operations would have had the rear end tell the headend when they were clear in the rail. Then the headend would set over the remaining cars to another rail under the yardhamster's instructions. The Cab may have been cutoff on the yard ladder depending on what direction the Cab track faces to avoid another runaround.
That makes a lot of sense - thanks! You can really tell a model railroad operator with no actual railroad operating experience, huh! It makes me want to go back and re-shoot the video and do it right!
After working 32 years at a major brewery we used 6 cars of malted barley every day. I have unloaded many of them myself. My favorite was the o.d CNW 180 series cars, they had the easiest operating hopper openings.
I can't wait until they start putting cameras in the cabs of the locomotives and you run the train from a engineer's perspective on your iPad or phone.
Excellent video and explanations Burr! I'm curious to know if all your cars have a different road number? I ask this question because I watch a lot of videos that trains have same road number cars... On my own collection each car has its own road number to be more realistic ;)
Yes they do, although once in a great while I'll let two cars be on the RR with the same reporting marks. It has to be for a good reason. Usually I will eventually get around to changing the number with decals or dry transfers to keep each car unique.
Thanks. The GP38-2's are Athearn Genesis w/Tsunami, and I think the GP35 in the center is an Atlas/Kato unit from the 1990's that I put a Tsunami decoder in a few years ago.
This is good to know. The other thing I've heard is that once the covered hoppers were widely available, by the mid '70's, they used the grain boxcars mainly on the lighter branchlines and ran them into Seattle on regular manifest trains to be spotted at the P86 grain terminal.
They're round colored push-pins you can get at most office supply or craft stores. People use them to mark locations on maps and that kind of thing. Here, I use them to designate whether a switch is thrown or not, and also, whether it is on the mainline or not. Green means the switch is on the mainline and needs to be returned to normal when you leave the area. Yellow means the switch is on a side track. Red means the switch is thrown. I got this idea from Al Frasch, who used it on his large operations-oriented N scale layout.
Great Videos. Justed watched all 5 switching videos, several times. Your Card Card/ Waybill system. Do you use a 4 cycle system or how do you cycle youe cars. Engine speed is so "Smooth" as such slow speeds. How are you setting up your DCC chips? Not all of your engine's brand new. What DCC chips do you use? What is your trick to gettig engines working so smothly at the speeds you ran them? You als made a coment in Part 1 about setting up a brake function, for Switch Engine. I have an NEC DCC system, will this take a special chip?
Glad you liked it. I'm using the 4-cycle waybills, but some of them have only 3 or 2 cycles, depending on the type of load/destination combo. I set up all the engine decoders for a max speed of 30 scale MPH, which makes everything much smoother. Most of them are Tsunami's or ESU's. Activating the brake function involves setting the braking rate CV and mapping it to the button you want to use for braking. I use F9, but other choices work. I'll do a video on that one of these days. All of the main brands of decoders have a braking function available, but you have to go in and activate it. My DCC system is NCE as well. There is no special chip required, just studying the manuals for the decoders you are using.
If you go to my RUclips page, and scroll down a few rolls, you should see a "section" called something like "operations video series", and if you click on that, it should show you all of them in order. I hope this helps - I don't find it easy to find RUclips pages either.
Does this mean that the road power would spot the Cab on the Cab track in Balmer before retiring to the engine terminal? I got so used to seeing road power going back and forth between Stacy and Balmer without Cabs in the 80's that I forgot to pay attention to keeping the crews together.
Only what I read in various books and magazines. The best source is some recent articles in the quarterly journal of the "Milwaukee Railroad Historical Society". I'll describe some of it in my upcoming video on a MILW coast train running on BN trackage rights from Bellingham to Seattle. I hope to post it in the next few weeks. The main story in the Seattle area is that as a condition of the BN merger, MILW was given trackage rights on BN in various places between Portland and Bellingham. As a result, SP used MILW to get better revenue on hauls north of Portland, and MILW's traffic increased significantly during the 70's. Until they shut down the Pacific Extension.
this is a very cool layout hopefully when i get around to building a layout it looks just as good quick question at 11:00 in the video i noticed the cabooses coupler is painted yellow is there a reason for this model or prototypical? EDIT: lol just watched 53 more seconds and found my question thanks
I saw this on many prototype photos of the cabooses they repainted, so I copied it on some of my models. I don't know if it was deliberate for safety or they were too lazy to mask the coupler while spray painting.
@@muchfunwithtrains ha thats the thing about prototypical modeling you learn so many details you could never find unless you were looking for it great layout by the way
@@muchfunwithtrains I currently use an MRC DC power pack which I've had since my teens (somewhere around forty years now). It has a momentum setting, which I've used from time to time, and also a brake switch which works whether you've switched on momentum or not. But you make a good point in regard to the lighting.
Well Burr Stewart?. I believe it was early 1960"s to mid 60's?. when the railroads starting to phase out boxcars?. At grain elevators. For covered hoppers because they were more efficient to haul grain in. Than the boxcars plus they had the bottom dump capacity's. To unload grain easily than hauling it in a regular boxcar.
Yes, thank you. I've heard that they kept the boxcars in grain service only for the light-duty branchlines, until the early '80's when most of them were abandoned.
Wait wait.... the power departed the yard without the Conductor and rearend brakeman? The Cab would have gone with the power if it "departed" the yard.
You're right. One of the problems I'm having (other than my obvious lack of real railroad experience) is that I built the P86 grain terminal right next to Stacy instead of Interbay, due to space constraints. So now I think of the train as "terminating" in Stacy, with the motive power moving light to Interbay for servicing. Does that mean that a hosler crew would have then made the light engine run from Stacy to Interbay after the original crew clocked out? Thank you so much for your comments - it's great to learn from my mistakes.
Thank you! I've been waiting for years for someone else to notice that, and you finally did it! You're right. It was a mistake. I got caught up in filming it properly and forgot what I was doing operationally. There are a few other mistakes in this (very popular) video, and one of these days I'll do another run and fix them. For example, the locomotives for this unit train should have been six-axle jobs. Also, the loaded grain trains terminated in Interbay, not Stacy, and the loads brought over to the grain terminal by a dedicated SD9 switcher. The next version of this video will be a lot more involved, and hopefully more accurate.
@@muchfunwithtrains glad you responded very cool.. I can't remember if you were a conductor on that consist and you forgot those four cars all day... There would probably be a definite paperwork write up... But that's what makes our hobby wonderful hobby
You ask when they stopped using box cars for grain. I don't know, but the 1981 documentary _Grain Elevator_ shows grain being loaded into a box car. You can watch it at ruclips.net/video/VGqZn5s_q_Y/видео.html
Thanks - this is consistent with @trainmasterbob , so I'm planning to set up one of the four grain terminal tracks to have a loading dock and be for boxcar unloading.
You do realize the full size railroads only leave the ties long on the side they mount the switch stands on ? Looks dumb having super long ties in that location.
Love seeing Burlington northern stuff... soo and Chicago northwestern too.... ah the memories
Me too. I'm a little too far from SOO territory to be plausible, but I do have a few of their locos, so someday we'll do a run-through with them for your benefit! :)
A good day of switching operations on the Burlington Northern. Thanks Burr excellent video. 😁👍
Glad you enjoyed it. Another nice long one is coming soon...
@@muchfunwithtrains ok I will be lookin forward to that
Hi from Australia. What a presentation! Can’t get enough of it. I love the speed with which you have managed to let the trains travel.
What else did you like about it?
Thanks Burr, just what I needed tonight after a stressful day, a relaxing ride-a-long with a BN grain train. Keep them coming, cheers Alan J
Thanks Alan - glad you enjoy them.
We're fans of your work, Burr! Excellent work.
Glad you enjoy it! I wonder what it is about this particular video that makes it so much more popular than the rest of my series. I never realized grain trains were so popular!
Love your Realistic Scale Speeds while Switching!
I have an N scale layout also, but love the slower switching speeds too, so ended up concentrating in HO mostly.
Well I got to watch this 2 years after it was made and I enjoyed it a lot.✌️ realistic and I like your style hooking up taking off and your engines sound awesome reving up.
Glad you enjoyed it. It's fun that I had the FOBNR car in the mix for that video. If I did it again I would have a more realistic unloading plan, but it will do for now...
Very nice work love me some BN
Same here!
Great video! I also had to put the extended Kadee couplers on my GPs for the same reason. I laughed when you said "Oh look, there's a switch engine right there!", just something about the way you said it. Thanks for sharing this!
Glad you enjoyed it! Model Railroading is Fun, after all. I think what you were picking up in my voice was partly relief that the switcher was in a good spot, because I was filming the whole thing by myself, keeping several balls in the air at once while trying to sound relaxed...
I love your model railroad. It really feels timeless. I could just sit there and run operations all day. It has honestly inspired me to model the BN in some fashion. I’ve always loved the Hill lines and their successor, the Burlington Northern 😄
You and me both! I wish I would spend more time just running operations, but I keep getting the urge to finish, improve or expand it. Hopefully I will make some more videos like this one soon...
@@muchfunwithtrains looking forward to watching them, thanks tons
saludos = cheers
from 🇦🇷Argentina
Great Video! Just saw BNSF 3119 again... Man, makes you appreciate BN locomotives even more!
Thanks!
I love operations because I love switching. This was great. Thank you for your time.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks Burr, love those trains
GladI I love them too! :)
Great video. As soon as I graduate I will have plenty of time to build my first layout
Keep at it! This is my fourth layout...
It's always interesting to learn how these big plants work, since the goal is usually to make your model factories somewhat authentic looking.
I used to model Texas in N-scale long back, and I was always looking to learn how those big chemical and oil refineries there work.
And, I looked into switching grain trains. Great hobby. I miss it. It's always so much fun!
This was Burlington Northern's best paint scheme, IMO. The no-nonsense look, with the black roofing on the locomotive cabs.
I agree with you. It's very interesting how big plants work, and what their inflows and outflows are, but hard to find information about them. Kalmbach has done a series of books for model railroaders on "Industries you can model" but surpisingly even they have very little specific information about the ratios of loads in to loads out, of various commodities.
In talking with some local railroaders who handled this grain train, I found out more and will have to do an update on this video someday. It turns out that they yarded the train in Interbay, and then the elevator would call for specific cars to be brought over based on specifications like their protein content or water content. This meant that the crews had to do a lot of switching to deliver the cars in the right order, not just shove them in the terminal yard. Fascinating. I wonder if I can get any of my crews interested in this level of minutiae.
And as far as the BN paint scheme, stay tuned to this channel for more. I'll never get tired of seeing those black and green diesels in action...
@@muchfunwithtrains I've watched two of your Burlington Northern vids, so far. Another dilemma in model railroading is space. Unit trains that serve one customer require building a BIG plant and that can be space-prohibitive on a layout, especially if different types of unit trains are operated (auto plant, intermodal terminal, petro plant).
I notice some modelers will build only the back of a large factory, including visible rail unloading facilities, and place this scene against a wall. I guess one not always have to build the entire Big Box factory to create the scene effectively. I enjoy the vids.
Thank you for the video.
It's first time i saw your channel.
Welcome!
Excellent. Very enjoyable watching the grain train switching operation.
Glad you enjoyed it
great video and good job 👍👏 , greetings from Solingen/Germany
Danke, Harald!
Another really enjoyable session Burr, plenty background info, modellers licence and lovely looking locos. Good to see that after all those hours of sessions, you still spot more potential ops with the grain train return, look forward to it. All the best Brian
Glad you enjoyed it! I've been thinking lately that if it takes more than 200 person-hours to conduct an operating session here, it's going to take me a few years to make videos about all the various train moves involved!
This brings back some memories. I worked as an "extra board" brakeman for the GNRY in the late 60's. We ran trains from Wenatchee into Interbay on one day and quite often would be called for a "Gold Bar Turn" the next, taking the same cars back up the mountain because Interbay was too small to hold them. Gold Bar had a small yard but it would hold a train broken down. Even though I was young, tying down hand brakes on 8 or 9 cars on 8 or 9 tracks was a lot of work. Every summer about the first of August all available storage space was used up.
The aluminum plant near Ferndale was called Intalco back then and just like the Kaiser plant in Spokane and the Alcoa plant in Wenatchee was a dangerous place to work..All three of those plants took a mans life in a space of 2 years. I don't recall there being a "Fern Turn" back then, we just switched it out as needed when we were making the trip to Vancouver or back to Seattle.
These memories are really valuable to those of us trying to model the GN and BN eras. Thank you so much for sharing them. I've heard about how much the Gold Bar yard was used for storage, but now you're making me think that I could put a staging yard in to represent that move that you described, as a way to keep too many cars from clogging my not-large-enough model of Interbay yard.
@@muchfunwithtrains
The TOFC trains were called "Pigs" by the crews and usually had 20 or fewer (usually about a dozen) cars. IIRC there were never any containers back then, just trailers. The hotshot of the division was #5 Spokane to Seattle and #6 going East. The train usually had an RPO car and mail was dropped in Ephrata and Wenatchee when the crews changed. There would also be a couple of hot cars with priority freight. Numbered trains to Vancouver were 712 N and 711S, all others were called Extra North and Extra South except the International passenger train.
I think you were right about limited switching for road crews around Everett. I think the local that served the 747 plant was called the "Jet".
Thanks again. Do you have any memory of the type of "hot cars" that might have been attached, and whether they would have been at the front or rear of train? What you are describing is what I call "late GN" ops and since I'm modeling 1973 I've replaced #5&6 with #3&4, and the 711/712 trains had different numbers by then. The other interesting complication that I haven't wrapped my head around yet is that the BN ran the old NP train north to Sumas via Kruse Jct. as well as the old GN train to Vancouver BC. The consolidation of operation plans evolved over time, so coming up with a reasonably accurate 1973 lineup is tricky.
@@muchfunwithtrains
I believe the "hot" cars were ordinary but newish freight cars with cushion rail and roller bearings. I think a lot were bound for Boeing but not positive about that. The trains were usually 2 sometimes 3 power units which were numbered in the 3,000s. these were followed by a mail car (might have been a baggage car),and a RPO car. The "hot" cars were next or just ahead of the caboose. the TOFC's were the rest. My last run was in Sept of '68 so I know nothing post merger.
There was a local called the "Train Ship" that ran to Vancouver but stopped in a yard somewhere near Bellingham. Most of the time you had to switch out the yard but sometimes load the barge bound for Alaska. Have you modeled the Pacific Coast Railroad? It mainly worked Pier 5 (I think) in Seattle and was owned by the GN although we got a PCR check when we worked it.
I've been poking around these model sites for a couple of weeks and I am amazed at you'alls attention to detail. One thing seems to be missing though, how come your rolling stock is void of grafitti?
@@Patrick-th5yt Yes, we run the train ship here on occasion. I hadn't thought about the PCR much but will look into it. Was the Pier 5 you're talking about over in West Seattle? As for grafitti, I don't recall seeing much of it in the early '70's, so I don't bother with it. But some of the more modern modelers certainly do. It takes some skill, though, to do it right.
Burr, man, I love this video.
First, I model the part of the BN where these cars may have originated from. Don't care about the odd modern--ish FMC hopper car. I'll have a a few such discrepancies on my layout as well. Life's too short to sweat that type of thing.
Some comments beyond that...
The MILW was big in my area. Overbuilt is the single best word. BN is my first love, but I've always had a morbid fascination with the Milwaukee Road. Their Pacific Extension and extreme west end are exotic areas of interest to me. My wife and I honeymooned in Port Angeles WA briefly in 2005. The entire Pacific NW is an enchanting place for this hayseed.
Finally, I like your backhanded way of promoting the FOBNR with that car. I have one on my layout also. Such a neat way to promote the organization.
Also, EMDs riding on Alco trucks are... just not right!
Thank you sir for posting this video!
Thanks for your comments, Eric. It's fun and useful to hear what people have to say, since there's so much information involved in making a layout "plausible". This is part of why I like to promote the FOBNR, where I learn quite a bit. And I'm glad you enjoyed the video(s).
Wow what a nice layout and I liked the history too! 😎👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
I guess the four remaining grain hoppers in the receiving yard will be added to the remainder of the grain train later.
I was hoping an astute viewer would notice that! I decided to keep the video shorter by not including that last move. I did it this morning, after publishing the video. :)
I just read through all the comments to see if anyone else had mentioned the 4 other cars before I commented about them! Great work with the layout and ops. I am looking forward to watching more of your videos!
Burr- I noticed the FMC hoppers in your consist and thought to myself that those weren’t around in 1973. A few minutes later in the video you pointed that out. I try to be prototypical but I fudge once in a while, especially when I like a particular car or paint scheme. Thanks for coming clean.😉
It's a real struggle, isn't it? On the one hand, I'm trying to stay "plausible" with a multi-colored fleet of diesels, so 1973 seems good. On the other hand, there's lots of great stuff to model and run plus or minus 5 years of that, including that FM diesel switcher featured in some of my earlier videos, that was scrapped in 1968. A lot of interesting grain cars were built for the BN during that era, and some of it after 1973, as you mentioned. And what about the Railbox cars? Argh! Some people just model "the diesel era" and forget about it. But I have a young friend that comes over sometimes and with his eagle eyes comments on every one of my cars with a built data after 1973. Let him enjoy it! I know I am.
A great presentation, so relaxing and enjoyable to watch.
Glad you enjoyed it!
14:33 Regarding long shank couplers on the front of the locomotives, since it looks like you use skewers for uncoupling, you could cut the pins shorter. I cut them so they end just below the pulling face of the coupler. When two cars are coupled, it looks more like air hoses meeting instead of passing each other. And they clear locomotive snow plows even if the loco has a normal shank coupler. From another BN modeler but at the other end of the BN era.
Thanks - this is a good idea. Except it eliminates the possibility of magnetic uncoupling forever, so I've been reluctant to start cutting the pins. And with over 50 cars to do, it seems easier to put the longer couplers in the few locos that need it. So I like the idea, but I haven't gotten the courage to do it yet.
@@muchfunwithtrains I arrived at that same conclusion many years back. Scale couplers for pictures right after paint and weathering, then swap them out for long shanks when I put them in service!
Mr. Stewart, I really appreciate how you operate your locomotive power at or near prototypical speeds when coupling to and decoupling from a train. I have witnessed many modelers rushing that aspect of operation. My layout is DC and I am able to achieve such control because 1) I have good locos to begin with and 2) I keep everything clean. But even when I let cleanliness go unattended for a while I find that I usually can achieve near-prototypical speeds. Besides, why the rush?!?
Although I don't model a particular era, the location is imaginary and the railroad is an amalgamation of several (including SF, BN, Burlington Route, Amtrak, UP, Rock Island and CSX) I try to operate prototypically SPEED-WISE only. At the moment my layout is still in early development, so there isn't any local work YET...I just run them around and around and around...still, it's a love of mine and has been ever since I was a kid. Thanks, Dad, for building my first 4x8 HO table! :o)
I invite you to check out my RUclips channel for
a couple of BN unit coal train videos:
ruclips.net/user/shortscob_s0LqLjY and
ruclips.net/user/shortszDwO9zVUz50
I would appreciate the Like and leave a comment! Shoot, you could also subscribe!
Thanks again for a great series!
Russ House, Washington, IL
Thanks Russ. I thank my own dad for helping me with a 4x6 layout when I was in about 4th grade. I did slot cars for a while in 8th grade but went back to trains right after that and the rest is history. Thanks for the links to your videos.
I subbed. Noticed I'd remarked on this clip a year ago while watching it again just now.
Glad you enjoyed it, both then and now. It must be time for me to run another BN grain train! :)
Awesome layout. Cool video
Glad you enjoyed it!
I was a brakeman for Southern Pacific in 1973. Oakland California based. Ran between Roseville, Salinas , San Francisco and Oakland CA. We would have never run a road crew in these yards to do switching that you just did.. Brakeman for line, Switchman for designated yards. My father was an executive officer for Southern Pacific. Just so happens he was in charge of all communications, the communications department for the SP. Later his department to invent a company you know as Sprint. Southern Pacific didn't have handhelds in 73. We were still using our lanterns or hand signal. I still have mine lantern today. I live in the East Bay of California San Francisco. Trains now totally remote controlled in some yards very close by. Enjoyed your layout..
Thanks for watching and for your comments. The grain train video has been very popular but I am itching to fix many of the mistakes I made in it. As you say, the road crew would never have broken the train down like that. A switch crew used an SD9 for that job. Also, they would have used larger six axle locos on that train, I'm pretty sure, not the GP38-2's. Also, they spotted individual grain cars based on things like protein and moisture content, so they wouldn't have been able to just shove a block of cars in there, they would have pulled specific cars from the unit train and sent them to the unloading pits based on the customer's request. Also, they broke the train down in Interbay, not in Stacy. The list goes on and on! But I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway.
@@muchfunwithtrains don't change a thing! Enjoyed every moment. YOUR railroad you run it your way.thank you for the ride.
what type of lantern did you use... one of those metal conger lanterns? those are nice
@@25mfd exactly what it was! We always carried extra 6 volt batteries either in the head end or if there was a caboose there. The conger had a switch that could go from spot to distant bulbs. Inside the cap was a clip for two spares bulbs... Old school there. One thing I would not do would be to stand on top of a moving boxcar for signaling. You had old timers who would, not me. Dang tough to do that.
@@michaeldeckert6023 pretty cool... there's a vid on YT of some old school steam era footage, it's a safety film... at one point in the vid it shows a crew switching in the yard and a brakeman on top of a boxcar, the pin puller misses getting the pin in a failed kick attempt... the guy up top gets herky jerked around after the missed pin pull... he was standing far enough back from the end of the car of the car... had he been riding near the roofs end, he would have been easily thrown off... so yea i can't blame you one bit for not riding up top
Great layout! Great video! I love seeing BN model railroads. Surprisingly I don't see many on utube or elsewhere. Mine is 16'x8' midwest setting 1995 & still using cabooses😁Thank you!
I have the same experience, and wonder why. It's a great era and railroad to model, for all sorts of reasons. I'm amazed at how many views this video has received (over 12,000).
I remember seeing standard 40 foot boxcars with grain doors still being used being unloaded at the Cargill grain terminal on Seattle's waterfront and with the grain car shortage at the time I saw Northern Pacific ice reefer cars with grain doors used to haul grain this was in 1980. Just shortly after this the F-UNITS and 40 foot boxcars disappeared.
I was down on the waterfront one day in 1980 when a 50+ car string of old 40' boxcars went rolling past, presumably on their way to scrap - I so wish I had taken multiple pictures of it, instead of just gawking. But in those days we didn't have cellphones with cameras...
Nice work! I recently dismantled my 40 year old N-Scale layout empire and replaced it with a smaller HO-Scale point to point prairie branchline. It's freelanced, but it's BN in the early post merger days of late 1970. I enjoy being able to run NP, GN, CB&Q and BN power. I have enjoyed all your videos as they are of similar era and road (BN).
I have some info on the 40' Boxcars used in grain service. I will contact off line.
Glad to hear it! It's fun trying to keep track of all the various loco types and what year they were repainted, etc. The fun never ends!
Great!
New sub here. Very nice looking layout and well explained on the grain train operation. I just started operations on my latest layout. Its proto-lance. I have only 2 unit trains: 1 is a coal train, the other is a chemical/tank car train. I'm finding operations have opened a whole new world to this affliction we call Model Railroading!
Yes, it's a lot of fun and is addictive. This grain train video is fun to watch but has a number of operational inaccuracies in it - one of these days I'll run the operation again and do it right, so you can look forward to that...
@@muchfunwithtrains Sounds good! I will look forward to it sir!
Very nice ops session. Thanks for sharing. Dave
Thanks 👍
Beautiful layout
Thanks so much!
Thank you for running trains the way they should be. Slow and smooth, nothing worse than people with massive model rail empires with huge multi people ops sessions who just run more trains the prototypes as fast as possible back to back to back to rush and get through the ops session to get it over with. The only time I did an ops session at a club it was like that and it made me never want to go to one again.
It's funny how hard it is to overcome the constant urge to rush, in this instant gratification world we live in. I agree with you. Every op session we have here seems to accomplish less than the one before, and be more fun. A good trend.
Great Video, Highly enjoyed
Glad you enjoyed it
Well the fun thing about doing 1970's era is you still got the GN, NP, CBQ, and SPS painted locomotives with some "new" Green BN's. Its fun to use SP&S locomotives due to them looking completely different from everything else, not only in paint but also locomotives (C-420's/C-636's). Also with that era you can have fun with mixed "rainbow" consists of BN lead, NP and SP&S following making for some interesting looking units.
I agree! It's a lot of fun.
great ops, great history. thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it
6:00: Since that GP35 #2581 has AAR trucks, it's a former Frisco (SLSF) unit. BN acquired the Frisco around 1980.
So true. Also, the bulk of the covered hoppers in that train were acquired by the BN in 1981! I finally removed them from the layout a few weeks ago, but of course the video lives on. When I started building the layout I would buy almost anything with green paint on it, but have slowly been weeding out the outliers, as well as renumbering the legacy road locos. Thanks for pointing this out.
Awesome👍
Thanks 🤗
Absultly wonderful. I really hate to nitpick, but you pulled a me and forgy about the gain cars you pulled off with the swither.😎😂😱📷🥺
I know! I wonder how many others noticed this? So far only two of you have mentioned it. The real mistake on my part was not figuring out the train was too long before being in the middle of a video shoot. I decided I would rather make the video shorter than take the extra time to bring those 4 cars back. Did you watch my Part 4 video on a narrow gage mine run? In the middle of that one, I accidentally dump a loaded narrow gage gondola off the edge of a cliff down to crash onto the mainline at Delta Wye. Anyway, congrats for noticing!
@@muchfunwithtrains I noticed the narrow gauge derailment last session but didn't notice the missing grain cars until I read xavier's comment and your reply.
Car supply 1970s
After the merger BN placed large orders for covered hoppers.
However because of bumper crop harvest , new car orders hardly had any effect. Box cars were still common on account many small grain elevators on branchlines that could not handle hoppers. From the late summer to early fall car supply was an issue. During these times grain would arrive in 40 foot,50foot boxcar, clean covered hoppers for cement service, open hoppers covered with plastic tarps.
Most grain arrived in blocks from stations in Washington, Idaho,Montana and North Dakota
Blocks of cars were also recieved from Union Pacific and the Milwaukee Road.
At times when the grain Terminal yard was full incoming cars would be held on the lead tracks next to
pier 86. Pier 86 could operate around the clock if desired but the port of Seattle had an agreement with the Residents of Queen Anne Hill to avoid night time operations.
The old Hanford St grain was twice the size of the pier 86 Terminal. Pier 86 grain Terminal could handle more grain a faster rate than the old Terminal and the old Terminal did not have an inbound yard.
The track layout at Pier 86 was a through Design, inbound cars from the southend with 2 unloading tracks with electronic scales
The near track had the car tipper for boxcar the far track was for covered hoppers only.
There was a run around track were a covered hopper was spotted to take grain dust and other debris from unloading grain. Next to the elevator was another tipper to unload trucks!
Thanks Frank - this is great info that I didn't have. Will see how much of it I can include in the operation, and the model. Really appreciate your speaking up!
Reporting marks for cars
NP, GN,CB&Q,SP&S,MILW,UP
NAHX and other private car lines
Inbound yards that held cars
Spokane, Pasco,Wenatchee, Auburn,
SP&S yard division point on the
Columbia River
Other Grain Terminals
Kalama, Tacoma, Seattle
Ships loading on Columbia River
Must not have draft greater than 45 feet
Not unheard of for ship to take grain at different Terminals
Hi Burr! I'm Shane. I don't run DCC on the rails, rather I run DCC on an AC buss with sound that follows the train around the layout! I use the lighting functions to light up various structures around the layout. I have been working with TCS and their WOW Sound. I am are tired engineer, and so I am very particular about sound, especially the prime mover!!! Almost everyone out there use sound loops, and to my ear it sounds horrible!!! TCS is the only DCC manufacturer that got the sound of a LOADED DIESEL ENGINE. I guess all of those years of hearing the real thing has made me pretty fussy!!! The big sub-woofers and the super tweeters make it sound like EMD is pushing through the basement wall-exactly the way I want it! I also engineered the control system that is a hybrid utilizing the 4017 Decade Counter and it's clock function. The train throws the switch, much the same way you would with standard DC. I first used this about 30 years ago. It worked so well that I stayed with it!!! There are tiny little switches that the train taps. The number of taps corresponds to the throttle number that the train is assigned to, making it all automatic!!! I am testing infra-red uncoupling, and it seems to be working well! I also have working brakes That still has some bugs to work out, but it looks like I will be able to make it work fairly well in the future. I like your channel!
Thanks Shane - this is a great list of features we're all going to enjoy in the future. When you say you "have working brakes", what do you mean by that? Do you mean that your controller has a brake function that makes the loco slow down electrically, or that the loco has brakes of some kind onboard physical resistance device. Kind of a dumb question, but I wanted to ask anyway.
@@muchfunwithtrains I just lost my reply to your question. The brakes are on the cars themselves: they are electric. They are not yet quite marketable. The MS that I developed has really slowed things down!!!! It has been 30 years ago that I first had the idea. I have some rather steep grades on my layout; 4% to be exact. The cars that are equipped weigh 8 ounces and can hold themselves plus 3 others on a 4% grade!!!! The brake beams have been the fly in the ointment, but I believe that I have this figured out now! They will be Infra-red controlled: just aim an Infra-red beam at them, and they will apply. Aim the Infra-red again, and they will release. I have overcome several problems, and I should have something workable by next year!
Looking forward to it. Clever idea!
Love those Engines.
Me too!
Hi Burr. I don't know if I told you but I'm modeling the two Boeing Aircraft Assembly plants. I'm coming off the Mountain into Everett/Mukilteo the into Seattle. It isn't prototypical but I'm trying to put folkal points. Plus I will be adding the Wichita plant. Got to have a start and finish right. Keep having fun, Chris. Can I ask were you got your background pictures of Seattle?? My picture of the Space Needle is to new.
I took the pictures of Seattle on my own camera in the 1990's sometime, and had them enlarged. I haven't done the work to find a suitable shot of the same view in 1973, which would be ideal, but I didn't move to Seattle until 1979, so I don't have any of my own.
Wonderful 😊!!!!!
Glad you like it!
Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
You forgot the five grain car loads pulled off with the caboose.?!!!😮🎉❤
It's true! I got so excited about getting the engines back to the roundhouse, I forgot to finish the switch job! I noticed it the next day, but by then I wasn't going to re-shoot the whole thing. But kudos to you for being only the second person so far to notice and comment on this major error. The other thing that drives me crazy watching this video is that I'm pretty sure BN didn't use 4-axle engines on unit trains like this, so I should have been using SD40-2's or U-boats. Also, now that we're in the weeds on this, the whole premise of the operation is unprototypical. What they actually did was to terminate the unit train in Interbay yard, and then have an SD9 run the cars over to the grain terminal, in smaller cuts, as specified by the customer, based on the protein and water content of each load. I could set all this up using waybills, but (1) I haven't gotten around to it yet, and (2) I'm not sure if anyone would actually enjoy doing the job, other than me, and I'm too busy making videos! LOL. Thanks for your astute comment!
Keep the videos coming
Workin on it...
So... after 20yrs on UP in Roseville serv unit and working in Stockton, CA; first mistake, real operations would have had the rear end tell the headend when they were clear in the rail. Then the headend would set over the remaining cars to another rail under the yardhamster's instructions. The Cab may have been cutoff on the yard ladder depending on what direction the Cab track faces to avoid another runaround.
That makes a lot of sense - thanks! You can really tell a model railroad operator with no actual railroad operating experience, huh! It makes me want to go back and re-shoot the video and do it right!
After working 32 years at a major brewery we used 6 cars of malted barley every day. I have unloaded many of them myself. My favorite was the o.d CNW 180 series cars, they had the easiest operating hopper openings.
Good to know! I wonder how many cars per day they would have used at Rainier Brewery in Seattle.
I love model train's alot ok sir
Same here!
I can't wait until they start putting cameras in the cabs of the locomotives and you run the train from a engineer's perspective on your iPad or phone.
They're already doing it on the Silicon Valley Lines, and I'm in process of setting it up here as well. Stay tuned! :)
Excellent video and explanations Burr! I'm curious to know if all your cars have a different road number? I ask this question because I watch a lot of videos that trains have same road number cars... On my own collection each car has its own road number to be more realistic ;)
Yes they do, although once in a great while I'll let two cars be on the RR with the same reporting marks. It has to be for a good reason. Usually I will eventually get around to changing the number with decals or dry transfers to keep each car unique.
@@muchfunwithtrains Thanks to answer my question :)
Beautiful layout, beautiful locos! Which brand are they if I may ask? Keep the videos coming!
Thanks. The GP38-2's are Athearn Genesis w/Tsunami, and I think the GP35 in the center is an Atlas/Kato unit from the 1990's that I put a Tsunami decoder in a few years ago.
The "Break man" aka The hand of god reaches down and dose the heavy lifting lol, Great video :)
that's certainly how it felt to me! :)
I knowin Canada of us they kept the boxes going regularly into the 90s, I'd assume if it was a big enough cut, it would be added in no problem.
This is good to know. The other thing I've heard is that once the covered hoppers were widely available, by the mid '70's, they used the grain boxcars mainly on the lighter branchlines and ran them into Seattle on regular manifest trains to be spotted at the P86 grain terminal.
What did you use for the colored marker's on turnout's .Thanks
They're round colored push-pins you can get at most office supply or craft stores. People use them to mark locations on maps and that kind of thing. Here, I use them to designate whether a switch is thrown or not, and also, whether it is on the mainline or not. Green means the switch is on the mainline and needs to be returned to normal when you leave the area. Yellow means the switch is on a side track. Red means the switch is thrown. I got this idea from Al Frasch, who used it on his large operations-oriented N scale layout.
Great Videos. Justed watched all 5 switching videos, several times. Your Card Card/ Waybill system. Do you use a 4 cycle system or how do you cycle youe cars. Engine speed is so "Smooth" as such slow speeds. How are you setting up your DCC chips? Not all of your engine's brand new. What DCC chips do you use? What is your trick to gettig engines working so smothly at the speeds you ran them? You als made a coment in Part 1 about setting up a brake function, for Switch Engine. I have an NEC DCC system, will this take a special chip?
Glad you liked it. I'm using the 4-cycle waybills, but some of them have only 3 or 2 cycles, depending on the type of load/destination combo. I set up all the engine decoders for a max speed of 30 scale MPH, which makes everything much smoother. Most of them are Tsunami's or ESU's. Activating the brake function involves setting the braking rate CV and mapping it to the button you want to use for braking. I use F9, but other choices work. I'll do a video on that one of these days. All of the main brands of decoders have a braking function available, but you have to go in and activate it. My DCC system is NCE as well. There is no special chip required, just studying the manuals for the decoders you are using.
Burr, great videos! How can I watch all parts? Where are they located? Love the commentary
If you go to my RUclips page, and scroll down a few rolls, you should see a "section" called something like "operations video series", and if you click on that, it should show you all of them in order. I hope this helps - I don't find it easy to find RUclips pages either.
The road power would have grabbed the Cab and departed. The yard crew (regardless of power used) would have completed the industry spotting work.
Does this mean that the road power would spot the Cab on the Cab track in Balmer before retiring to the engine terminal? I got so used to seeing road power going back and forth between Stacy and Balmer without Cabs in the 80's that I forgot to pay attention to keeping the crews together.
Do you have any history how the BN worked with the Milwaukee Road?
Only what I read in various books and magazines. The best source is some recent articles in the quarterly journal of the "Milwaukee Railroad Historical Society". I'll describe some of it in my upcoming video on a MILW coast train running on BN trackage rights from Bellingham to Seattle. I hope to post it in the next few weeks. The main story in the Seattle area is that as a condition of the BN merger, MILW was given trackage rights on BN in various places between Portland and Bellingham. As a result, SP used MILW to get better revenue on hauls north of Portland, and MILW's traffic increased significantly during the 70's. Until they shut down the Pacific Extension.
this is a very cool layout hopefully when i get around to building a layout it looks just as good quick question at 11:00 in the video i noticed the cabooses coupler is painted yellow is there a reason for this model or prototypical?
EDIT: lol just watched 53 more seconds and found my question thanks
I saw this on many prototype photos of the cabooses they repainted, so I copied it on some of my models. I don't know if it was deliberate for safety or they were too lazy to mask the coupler while spray painting.
@@muchfunwithtrains ha thats the thing about prototypical modeling you learn so many details you could never find unless you were looking for it great layout by the way
Sound capability has a lot to do with why I'm thinking of converting my little switching layout to DCC.
And it's not just sound! The realism of the lighting effects, braking, and slow speed performance is totally worth it.
@@muchfunwithtrains I currently use an MRC DC power pack which I've had since my teens (somewhere around forty years now). It has a momentum setting, which I've used from time to time, and also a brake switch which works whether you've switched on momentum or not. But you make a good point in regard to the lighting.
Well Burr Stewart?. I believe it was early 1960"s to mid 60's?. when the railroads starting to phase out boxcars?. At grain elevators. For covered hoppers because they were more efficient to haul grain in. Than the boxcars plus they had the bottom dump capacity's. To unload grain easily than hauling it in a regular boxcar.
Yes, thank you. I've heard that they kept the boxcars in grain service only for the light-duty branchlines, until the early '80's when most of them were abandoned.
True
Wait wait.... the power departed the yard without the Conductor and rearend brakeman? The Cab would have gone with the power if it "departed" the yard.
You're right. One of the problems I'm having (other than my obvious lack of real railroad experience) is that I built the P86 grain terminal right next to Stacy instead of Interbay, due to space constraints. So now I think of the train as "terminating" in Stacy, with the motive power moving light to Interbay for servicing. Does that mean that a hosler crew would have then made the light engine run from Stacy to Interbay after the original crew clocked out? Thank you so much for your comments - it's great to learn from my mistakes.
I don't understand why you didn't go back if you had the room and pick up those four grain cars that were part of the original consist ...?
Thank you! I've been waiting for years for someone else to notice that, and you finally did it! You're right. It was a mistake. I got caught up in filming it properly and forgot what I was doing operationally. There are a few other mistakes in this (very popular) video, and one of these days I'll do another run and fix them. For example, the locomotives for this unit train should have been six-axle jobs. Also, the loaded grain trains terminated in Interbay, not Stacy, and the loads brought over to the grain terminal by a dedicated SD9 switcher. The next version of this video will be a lot more involved, and hopefully more accurate.
@@muchfunwithtrains glad you responded very cool.. I can't remember if you were a conductor on that consist and you forgot those four cars all day... There would probably be a definite paperwork write up... But that's what makes our hobby wonderful hobby
You ask when they stopped using box cars for grain. I don't know, but the 1981 documentary _Grain Elevator_ shows grain being loaded into a box car. You can watch it at ruclips.net/video/VGqZn5s_q_Y/видео.html
Thanks - this is consistent with @trainmasterbob , so I'm planning to set up one of the four grain terminal tracks to have a loading dock and be for boxcar unloading.
You do realize the full size railroads only leave the ties long on the side they mount the switch stands on ? Looks dumb having super long ties in that location.
I know you are right. Which location did you see this at? I have fixed most of them...
Great video!
Thanks!