Enter Sandman

I made no progress whatsoever yesterday on the layout.  I felt beat up by the time I made it home.  I ended up going out to eat with my wife while the girls were at VBS and took a nap trackside until they were done.

Today, I was thinking more about what Larry and I discussed this past weekend regarding the Ottawa local.  In being true to the prototype, my layout is going to start moving a lot of sand!  I do mean a lot!  The two sources will be the Ottawa Silica Company and Belrose Silica company.  They have the potential to produce a total of 24 car loads per session.  That's good because we have two hungry plants requiring lots of sand.  Libbey-Owens-Ford in Ottawa and Philadelphia Quartz in Utica will be receiving loads of sand throughout the day.  I pondered just how many cars this would require and how many sand hoppers would move during a session.  I punched in some test data into my random car generator spreadsheet.  During any given session, we can move anywhere from 20 to 60 cars of sand alone on the Ottawa local!  I would say on average, the crew would be moving 30 to 35 hoppers.  That's a *LOT* of sand!  I will have to sell off some less needed rolling stock to fund the insatiable sand appetite on the ROCK!

In the previous session with Larry and myself, I tried to match the amount of outbound mine loads to the factory requests.  Since, I will have a three track yard in Ottawa, no more.  If there are a surplus of cars at mine or plant, they will simply sit in the yard until the next day.

Larry and I had also discussed that this local might have to be split up into two shifts.  The 1st shift crew would work as much as possible and then turn it over to the second shift to complete the job.  I know that I want to prevent movement of finished windshields from the shipping dock at L-O-F until after 5pm.  So, that alone will push the local's time out quite a bit.  I'll probably have it start around 7 or 8am.

Honestly, the Ottawa Local could be run independently of the rest of the railroad for solo or two person op sessions.

The Rock Island Railroad is undergoing some major changes to portray the prototype more accurately.  I can not wait!


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