Coxy's N Scale and Railroad Blog

This is the last shot of the empty coal move. The two units are about eight cars from the crossover. You can just see the crew member standing by wearing an orange vest. The orange colored stuff under the blue and yellow 1268 is bauksite.

My thoughts on completing the move

I had to head over to my daughter’s school at this point, so I’m guessing about the order of events for the remainder of the move. Even though I didn’t see it, I’m interested in the operational aspects used to get the job done.

Here’s my best guess… Having moved the first fifty cars to the Waterside track, the two units will return for the remaining forty or so cars from the 23rd Ave Yard and repeat the move in the photos, going north up the waterside track then shoving the cars onto the Waterside track through the crossover. With all cars on the waterside drill, and clearance from the UP dispatcher, the two units will shove the cut south along the Waterside drill past the signal granted by the UP dispatcher to the other side of the junction ready for collection by the UP.

My big question is how many empty coal cars can 2400hp move? if 90+ cars is too many then they would obviously make two shoves to the other side of the Stege Jct but this would require 4 signals from the UP dispatcher, instead of the two with only one shove - one going south and one going north after dropping the cars off. Let me know if you happen to know what they actually did.