Capacity Planning

Last week I decided I needed to determine the car capacity for each siding on my layout so I know how many cars would fit as I make up my trains and get my operations set up. I started to walk around the layout with a tape measure but then I came up with a stellar idea.

I created a train of 8 40' boxcars - the typical car on my layout and ran this train around the layout measuring the siding length. Of course, many of the sidings, as well as several tracks in the Irwin, East and West staging yards already had cars on them. So I had other engines pull those trains out of the way for the priority 1 CLC-1* train do it's job.

In a sense, I had my first operating session!

* Car Length Capacity