Sketching An Operations Plan

This week, while I could not work in the train room, I spent some time working on ideas for operating the train.I have been thinking about some of the limits of a circular track plan and at fist I thought this would be much more difficult than the last layout which was linear and staging on either end. But soon I realized it would be pretty straightforward.
First I determined the track capacity.I used a 40' boxcar as the a standard measure since all other cars (hoppers, gondolas, and ore cars) are smaller than this. I also determined what cars would be routed on the spurs. For example the mine tracks will only have hopper cars (H) while the industries in East McKeesport will only have boxcars (XM or XF). I use a rather simple AAR car code designation which I will describe in a later post.

Track capacity of the yard, all spurs and 2 hidden tracks

Next I considered each town on the layout - Irwin, Uniontown, Herminie and East McKeesport and how to best work the spurs whether from eastbound or westbound traffic. Once I had given it some thought, I realized that both Uniontown and Herminie should be worked by eastbound trains and East McKeesport would be served westbound. This follows the map geography as well. I had considered making one of the spurs on the left side Greensburg (LAS Fabrics) but as I worked through things I realized this would not fit.

Trackplan with the cities noted

Next step was to set up an alternating eastbound and westbound plan. Initially I do not intend to run completely under TT&TO (timetable and train orders) but I wanted something that would keep 2-3 operators busy for 2 or so hours. So I started working through the options. Herminie is too constrained to pull cars and drop off new so I would need to have a train do a pickup (p/u) and a second actually do the setouts. Hermanie was pretty easy as there is plenty of lead track except there are a lot of cars to move so at least 2 coal trains and a separate one for the P&LE Interchange.

Initial train list and their duties

Once  I saw I had 4 trains eastbound and only 2 westbound, I decided instead of having the city represent Greensburg in the east and East McKeesport to the west, it would just be East McKeesport with traffic going from Irwin Yard westbound with 2 trains, one servicing LAS Fabrics on the northside (back of the tracks) and 1 train servicing the south tracks on front of the layout.
Add 2 trains coming out of staging and I have a start. Hoping to have some time this weekend to actually go through the paces and see how it works. Wish me luck!