My Opinion
POV - Operations
May 12, 2004
By Scot Osterweil |
Author
Bio
Just so we're all clear on the terminology, by operations I mean the operation of a model railroad to imitate or "model" the practices of real railroads.
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Let's talk about operations and the role of "point of view." Just so we're all clear on the terminology, by operations I mean the operation of a model railroad to imitate or "model" the practices of real railroads. This includes coordinating the movement of many trains on the line, signaling, the breaking up and reassembling of freight trains at yards, the switching of industry sidings, the tracking of freight cars to make sure they end up where they're intended, the servicing of locomotives and other rolling stock at terminals, and the maintenance of timely passenger schedules. In truth, everything the prototype railroad does to fulfill its mission is operations and the goal is always to do it with increasing efficiency. Unlike us, the Santa Fe never sends a locomotive out on the line just so the superintendent can enjoy watching it run. For many, if not all of us, there is a bit of megalomania involved in building a model railroad. We build a miniature world that fits our vision of how the real one should be, or how it was, and most of us enjoy being the supreme ruler of that world. We get serious about operations not only because if offers rewarding intellectual challenges (which it does), but because we aren't satisfied unless the railroad we've modeled in three dimensions also behaves like a real railroad over time. The only hitch is that real railroads are pretty complex, and once we get bitten with the operations bug, it's sometimes difficult to figure out how to keep it to a manageable scale. When I planned my (still un-built) HO layout, I started with the idea of modeling a branch of the New York Central just west of Boston. Though I was modeling a branch running through small New England villages, I wanted to include its junction with the very busy main line. In no time I was pondering how to include through freights, express freights, and heavy drags as well as long distance, middle distance and commuter passenger trains. Suddenly, my modest little railroad was going to require lots of hidden storage, and 3 or more operators to run realistically. In the end, many of us conclude that only through large clubs working in small scales can we capture that kind of action. Of course if we choose to model smaller railroads (and many of us in large scale are doing just that) then operations will be more manageable. But even the operations of a rural narrow gauge line might require more operators than we can usually muster for our backyard sessions. Which brings me to the subject of this piece: point of view.
Think about how a real railroad runs. Even in this day of modern, centralized, computerized control, there is no one among the thousands of employees who has the whole picture of the railroad at work. No one plans all the day's movements, or knows the whole timetable. No one knows where all, or even most of the rolling stock is. No one can visualize where all the trains are. Part of what makes a railroad so fascinating is the complexity of activity that is undertaken without the kind of "supreme ruler" that we try to be on our model layouts. In fact, a working railroad is a marvelous example of distributed computing. Lots of separate nodes (employees) are each doing a job they know well, without paying excessive attention to what everyone else is doing. Miraculously, all those separate actions end up coordinating into an efficient, orchestrated effort moving millions of tons daily. In other words, countless people work on the railroad without ever having the supreme "point of view" that most of us try for on our model railroads. And if you imagine older railroads, in the days before cell phones, computers, or radios then you know that it was even harder then for anyone to see the big picture of the whole railroad at any one time. Well what does all that suggest about how we conduct operations on our railroad? I think it really suggests two alternatives. In the previous paragraph I referred to the railroad's coordination as "miraculous," but in fact it is the result of carefully constructed operating rules. Every job, from engineer, to conductor, to tower operator, to dispatcher, to road foreman has rules that govern how the employee performs. So one way to "operate" is to invest a lot of energy in constructing the rulebook, and then recruit a crew to carry it out, modeling a somewhat compressed version of the whole of a railroad's operations. This is the way most operators go, whether in big clubs or more modest home layouts, and of course it can be very rewarding. What's the alternative to this? Remember my premise that no one actually has the big picture of the railroad on a daily basis, but everyone sees a piece of it from his or her "point of view." So what if instead of trying to operate the whole railroad, you concentrate on the two or three jobs that interest you the most, and then design and operate your railroad so that on a given day you could have one employee's point of view. From that point of view you can be as scrupulous about operations as the big clubs are, but at a far more manageable scale. Let me give a few examples:
If you're intrigued by switching and freight forwarding then you might build your layout from a conductor's point of view. You focus on the movement of a single freight train, making lots of stops at industry sidings. You also keep the paperwork--waybills and train orders--up to date. Other trains make appearances at irregular intervals, with the primary function of keeping you on your toes as you keep your train from fouling the main line. The appearance of these other trains might even be automated, leaving you free to concentrate on your job. The whole railroad may not function like the prototype, but from your point of view you are a prototype conductor. The next session you could be an engineer. Give yourself a particularly difficult train to manage, one which requires attention to every change in grade, every slight curve. Try to make the train run as fast as possible without ever exceeding the speed limit, without ever derailing or stalling on grades. Again, other trains make cameos, all with the purpose of enhancing the reality from your (engineer's) point of view. If you model a particularly tricky junction/station/yard layout then your job might be managing the flow of traffic through that particular location. If you model a long mainline with several sidings. You can run the railroad from the dispatcher's point of view, keeping the trains moving as efficiently as possible but not paying as much attention to what's on each train. Heck, you could even run a layout in which your job is "rail fan." You wait at a given point for the appearance of trains whose arrival is never certain. You stay alert for signals that another train is due, and try to snap a "keeper" of a photo as the train rushes by. As I said above, a layout could be designed for more than one point of view, with you assuming any one role for a given operating session. It might not satisfy our desire to be supreme ruler of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, but it might turn out to be just as much fun, and a lot more realistic. Top of Page
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