Timesaver layouts

[Happy Hippo]

Richard - the time needed to add or remove 5 cars and a loco (in the original version) is surely infintessimal compared to the pleasure gained by doing something you enjoy

Sorry Jack,

 

It was written somewhat tongue in cheek. Perhaps I should have inserted a smiley type character? Any railway modelling gives far more pleasure than the time and effort expended on it...perhaps that is part of the mystique of the model railway?

 

I looked at the sample plan from the link given by the OP Five wagons and a loco would get lost on that.

 

My mind is still blighted by my exhibition layour which was only 12 x 14 but used 1.75" gauge track to represent 2 foot gauge. It was big and heavy, as were the locos and rolling stock.

 

Erection and knockdown at a show took about 2.5 hours each. I felt like crying when the N gauge blt would arrive about an hour before the show opened and was packed up and gone 15 minutes after the show finished.

 

Regards

 

Richard

[M Graff]

I wasn´t really refering to my layout as a timesaver per se, but it was to make a point here that if I was to follow the article in MRH I can´t really call it a shunting/switching layout. Because then it would need to be after a specific prototype (or at least made to the same specs) .

As I said earlier, there is a point to be taken regarding the layouts built to a linear design with a prototypical arrangement, BUT they have limited attraction to a lot of model railroaders out there. Mostly due to an extensive crew required (if you don´t use computer to run all other traffic), and that running a train that follows the same practices that a full size does would be a really repetitive task.

Sure, Trains in real life ARE repetitive, but that is why there should be some margin for "Hollywoodization" in it when we model it.

Tony Koester wrote a few years back that we should allow for some creative thinking in the way we run our trains, because otherwise it could be more of a job than a hobby...... I´ll stand for that!

I have also followed some threads on other Forums regarding track planning, and when they have almost finished their ideas, they make sure that they have enough places to traffic to make it interesting. Even if they model after a specifik prototype!

I remember one in particular, where his linear track plan was almost possible to apply onto Google maps , but he still decided to add some tracks and industries, as he otherwise would have made the schedule in no time!

[Glorious NSE]

I think there's an element of apples vs oranges in some places in this argument - plus another element where the UK side of the hobby probably isn't coming from the same place as he's writing from.

 

For the first of those - Taking the diagram on this website (near the bottom, on the right) as a strict definition of "what a timesaver is" - and reading the OP's original link then he's spot on - a Timesaver is a rubbish design for a yard.

Now, having said that It's not bad as a basis for an industrial switching area (i'd still argue against putting in the kickback if you can help it - unless the point is to make it take longer to work) - but an industrial switching area isn't the same thing as a yard. That's the Apples/Oranges thing.

 

His thoughts on yard design there are superb BTW, if what you're trying to design is a working yard you could do much worse than following those.

 

Now, to the "coming from a different place" bit...

 

His other page deals in terms of using a Timesaver as an "LDE" as part of a bigger layout - *especially* as a town that is part of a main line - and I think he's spot on again if you look at what he's saying!

 

We have a module (Oakdale) which is very similar in track plan - effectively it's a timesaver plus an extra siding, if we use it as a switching layout in it's own right, or as a location at the end of a branch line it's a nice challenge to take a local to and switch. That would be using it appropriately.

 

If however we use that module as a "town" on our main line the result is we stop the whole railroad from functioning every time we switch - it takes you probably 30 minutes to switch all industries, all the while you're blocking the main line. What's the result in terms of operating the layout? Either we stop switching those industries or the layout spends lots of time idle whilst it happens. Neither is a good outcome.

 

Now, if you were to knock that kickback out and decide to only serving trailing industries I think would become much more user friendly and a better fit to being a "town" on a main line - but i'd agree with his comments that the design as drawn is a bad, bad idea to use in that scenario.

 

It's probably harder for that point to come over in the UK though where most layouts are small "one LDE" affairs rather than "multi LDE" affairs - for most of us that distinction will always be a bit abstract as the timesavers built over here will rarely ever have a chance of being used in such an inappropriate setting.

 

 

So to sum up, what he's saying is that the timesaver has it's place - that place isn't trying to be a yard (which it's clearly not!) - that place isn't trying to be a "town" on a main line, where the track arrangement would result in stuffing up the main line.

 

In it's place, as either a switching puzzle, a small layout in it's own right or maybe a branch line it has value, knowing where not to use it is the key, and that's what he's suggesting many folk often don't realise.

[2ManySpams]

Well said G NSE

[br2975]

.........the time needed to add or remove 5 cars and a loco (in the original version) is surely infintessimal compared to the pleasure gained by doing something you enjoy

 

Exactly; possibly the most enjoyable layout (to operate) I've built was a 7mm 'timesaver'.

 

Built using Code 100 FB rail, spiked to ply sleepers, with No.4 turnouts, it was based on one single industry.

 

IMHO one thing that tends to spoil some US based layouts is having your factories, industries ets the same size as a boxcar (I know there were some, but not all in the same micro-yard.

 

As a result, I built an engineering factory or tinplate works, which would receive opens, vans and the odd specialist wagon, but wherever possible stock was kept to 1x SLU in length.

 

All the 'spots' were within the same factory yard, which gave the layout a bit more credibility.

 

All in 6'0" x 1'9".

 

I have but 4-5 Polaroid shots of the (unfinished) layout somewhere.

 

Let's not forget "there's nothing new under the sun" and "there's a prototype for everything".

 

Brian R

[shortliner]

I took some photos of the late Mike Scott's last layout, Enigma Yard, at Newcastle last November. It was one of his timesaver layouts with the coloured pins, but managed to look like somewhere in time and space, rather than just a shunting/switching platform

I think the sense of realism comes down to how you make the scene look like part of something larger by using prototypical view blocks at the layout ends and suggesting more

 

Jon

 

Jon - do you know what became of this, and Mikes other layouts after his death? I had the good fortune and pleasure of meeting him a couple of thimes at Glasgow - once with another of his timesavers, and once with Los Car Quays with the big radio controlled locos and the ferry in the watertank - fabulous

[Jon Grant 4472]

Jon - do you know what became of this, and Mikes other layouts after his death? I had the good fortune and pleasure of meeting him a couple of thimes at Glasgow - once with another of his timesavers, and once with Los Car Quays with the big radio controlled locos and the ferry in the watertank - fabulous

 

Los Car Quays, the Gauge 1 layout with the car float is owned by a large group of modellers, some of who are in South Shields club as well. I think Mike would have just been helping out.

 

I made some enquiries about what had happened to Mike's layouts, as I would have been keen on buying one of his 'Little Switch' versions - it was his original 'Little Switch'which started off the American thing for me. So far I haven't found out anything yet.

 

I do know his slide collection was donated to the NMRA and was sent to the USA for cataloguing. I also picked up one of his freight cars at the NMRABR convention. I'm not sure what has happened to the three-stage layout which included Ellison as one of the stages.

 

 

 

I'll ask John Wright if he knows anything about what remains of Mike's collection, as he regularly sees the South Shields club members.

 

Jon

[shortliner]

I know he completed Cascade and Ellison, but don't know if he finnished the trilogy - I remember Little switch in both its forms as we did them in SMT - Thanks for the info

[BG John]

I've been studying the Timesaver trackplan, and dug up this old discussion. It struck me that it is, as suggested previously, similar to stations like Ashburton. I'm thinking of building a small EM gauge layout, and thought I could combine the shunting puzzle with a GWR BLT. I've got a Scaleway 3-way point kit and a couple of standard turnouts lying around, and managed to squeeze it into 5ft x 1ft, plus fiddle yard. Like this (with the fiddle yard at the left end):

 

 

I've stretched the loop to take 2 coaches, and added a goods shed and (invisible!) loco shed to two sidings, so there would be a few places where parking stock would be banned when in Timesaver mode:

1) In the goods shed

2) On the track between the 3-way point and goods yard point

3) The platform road where the ruler is

4) In the invisible loco shed at bottom left

but I don't think that would be a problem.

 

When using the layout as a Timesaver, I suppose it wouldn't matter about unrealistic operation, but one option for 5 wagons could be:

1) General goods wagon to goods shed road

2) Cattle wagon to a cattle dock at the corner of the station building

3) PW wagon on the main line

4) Loco coal wagon outside loco shed

5) Brake van outside station building

 

At other times, it could be operated with 2 bogie coach passenger trains, or several 4 wheelers, and a with few more wagons in the yard.

 

Any suggestions for improvements, or other comments (nice or otherwise!)?

 

Not quite overseas modelling I'm afraid, but it could be set on the other side of the Bristol Channel!

[federant]

Many small terminus stations in europe have a timesever-like track plan: a round loop plus many spurs to serve a freight shed, and sometimes an industry.

Having such track plan does not mean that they're used as the original american timesaver: there is a traffic from and to somewhere, and this traffic is not a part of the original timesaver game!

Moreover, tracks aren't in real stations as short as in the timesaver game, even if in many light railway and continental steam tram systems they were very short, indeed.

In my domestic layout the main station is a double gauge station, and the track plan for the standard gauge one is very similar to a timesaver: a round loop, a spur for a small industry, another one for coaches, one for freight shed (double spur) and one for narrow gauge "rollwagen".

When the freight train arrives in station, shunting activities are quite similar to the timesaver aim, because freight traffic is regulated by a car-card system, that means that every freight wagon has its own destination.

So I think that timesaver track scheme is good for a shunting layout, without track dimension limits of original one; otherwise timesaver "game" is just a joke, not a model layout!

Antonio Federici

[switcher 1]

Does anyone use couplings other than Kadee on their 0 gauge sceniced timesaver type layout?

[dullsteamer]

John Allen, who built the original, did so as a game, to use in the coffee-break ,between operating sessions at his meetings of friends...Because of his "cult" status, many US layouts incorporated the design into their basement empires...

 

Allen's "cult" status has always mystified me. I could never understand why his work was so highly regarded.

[dullsteamer]

In response to the "prototype for everything" brigade, in a 38-year railway career over two countries - and many visits to many others - I've never seen anything like a real Timesaver. None of the examples quoted earlier in the thread meet the definition either. What I have seen and worked were a number of quite awkward-to-shunt sidings or small yards, most of which would make the Timesaver seem quite tame by comparison. These were places where the railway and industries had been shoehorned into restricted urban sites, or the yards had been substantially altered to served new roles. They weren't awkward just to provide train crews with an intellectual challenge.

 

The thing that I personally like least about any so-called shunting puzzle is that they're all predicated on the operator planning and executing their moves looking down from above, as if they were clattering about in a helicopter. Real shunting takes place on the ground, not in mid-air. And the unrealistic emphasis on speed gives me the sh*ts too. Even when you're on long hours, and your relief has been called, rushing to finish the shunt is just asking for trouble.

[shortliner]

Dullsteamer said "Allen's "cult" status has always mystified me. I could never understand why his work was so highly regarded."

 

More than anything, it was his scenery and photographs - and the sheer scale of his modelling, with mountains to the ceiling and canyons to the floor for aisleways that caught the imagination of the US public, together with his scratch builds and conversions and operational ideas in an era when most stuff had to be made by the modeller, and was NOT in anyway RTP - there were some kits around, but most things had to be built - buildings etc - from wood. An example of his innovative ideas was his "Hotbox" car, with a vertically-curved track inside supporting a large steel ball-bearing - similar to those in pinball machines - a rough-shunt caused it to roll up and off the end of the track,  completing a circuit and a red light underneath came on showing everyone what you had done. (it may have made sounds as well.) The miscreant then had to take the lid off the boxcar and fish the ball out to reset it, in full view of all the other operators (who would be taking the mick) - I believe he had several bodies for this car, which were swapped between sessions - so that operators didn't know which car was "booby-trapped"! His modelling was advanced for the time, and that was why he was venerated.

[Jack]

Its unprototypical and to use his words "evil"

 

 

Full appreciate some people don't like Timesavers, and that on the whole they are unprototypical, especially in the artificially short sidings and loop.  However, "evil" ... not sure that word should be banded about in model railway circles, after all, it is a hobby ... and quite an inoffensive one at that.

 

Does anyone use couplings other than Kadee on their 0 gauge sceniced timesaver type layout?

 

I use 3-links on Gough's yard.  I haven't had any problems with them, even running through the Marcway 48" radius pointwork.

[dullsteamer]

More than anything, it was his scenery and photographs - and the sheer scale of his modelling, with mountains to the ceiling and canyons to the floor for aisleways that caught the imagination of the US public...

 

And that's the bit that mystifies me. I never found his scenery convincing in the least. Spectacular and dramatic, no argument there, but I've always been attracted to the everyday rather than the extraordinary.

 

To be honest, the "hotbox" car just strikes me as being a silly gimmick. But to each their own.

[switcher 1]

Just thinking aloud, but if you allowed for more cars/wagons, would it still be classed a timesaver?

[5050]

Hi, the well know spelling mistake here - Paul Gittins.  I originally built my 'Peforia Narrows' layout to give me somewhere to run an expanding selection of US stock in the limited space I had available at the time.  It was only after I built it that I realised it could become a 'puzzle' - and it is certainly not a 'Timesaver', either by track plan or operation!  Ask some of the people who've been 'offered' the chance to have a go.  My 'Enigma Engineering' layout was built as an excercise to see if the same thing could be done in British outline and, with smaller points and addition of a brake van to the consist, it can.  I know neither of them are in any way 'prototypical' (very few layouts of any size REALLY are) but they offer an entertaining few (or quite often, many) minutes of relaxation (!) for the operator and the viewers.

 

I may now even build a European version to add to the collection.

 

As an aside, I didn't know about Mike Scott's 'Enigma' layout.  Which was first?  Or is it just an example of Great Minds etc. etc.  The truth is that the name 'Enigma Engineering' was originally thought up for a lineside industry.  Company motto - 'What We Make is a Mystery'.

[alastairq]

As an aside.....many decades ago, in either MR or RMC, I forget which, I found a sub-article on roundy-roundy suggestions involving the timesaver arrangement.....and not just 'straight through' one end to t'uther!

 

Some quite useful 'station' arrangements could be had.