dave1905

Looks good!

In most semaphore train order boards the post is in line with the train order office since the linkage that operated the blades was mechanical operated by the train order operator.    Rather than being out in the parking lot, the mast would be in front of the TO office in the depot.

The train order signals also varied by railroad by how many colors were used and whether they were normally at stop or normally at clear.

This looks like your signal, in service:

The shape of the blade, how it was painted and whether it was upper or lower varied by railroad.  There wasn't necessarily a "regional" standard other than an individual railroad had standards and operated in a region.

The height of the post varied, about the same as regular signal, tall enough to be seen over a train, so 15-20 ft.

If a signal is retired, they put out a general order taking it out of service and it doesn't matter which position its in.  They will cut the power to the lights so they won't light up and will generally remove the blades so that no-one will mistake it for a signal that is in service.  The only reason they would remove the lens is if they need them for another location, somebody took them as a souvenir or if the sun could hit them in a way they would appear to be lit.

If you are going to model an out of service signal, and remove the blade, then really what difference does it make whether its upper or lower quadrant? Its out of service.  If you want an upper quadrant signal, go to Shapeways and you can buy O scale upper quadrant  train order signals.

1960 (but there were probably stragglers that would extend that a year or two.)

https://www.liquisearch.com/atsf/paint_schemes_and_markings/diesel_locomotives_freight

Kansas City area isn't necessarily flat, there are some pretty steep bluffs in the area and especially on a small layout a 100 ft high hill will dwarf the layout.    When you get out around wichita  or southern Kansas, yes, its a pancake.  Wichita also has a significant oil industry, plus aerospace.  Kansas City has ANY industry you could want (except ocean going vessels).

There are numerous places that the ATSF was involved with joint facilities or terminal lines.  The Houston Belt and Terminal in Houston, Kansas City Terminal in KC, St Joseph Terminal in St Joseph, MO.  The ATSF had big junction terminals around Houston, Galveston, Ft Worth, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City, St Joseph, Topeka, Chicago, Denver, El Paso, LA and Oakland.  Those would have multiple railroads interchanging so there would be more chances to run other road's engines.

Really the decision is what other roads do you want to possibly want to use and do you care whether or not its prototypical.  Obviously, if you don't care it doesn't matter.  If you do then choose an area of the country that has those other roads.  For example if you want to include the Rock, Chicago (Joliet, IL), Kansas City, Wichita down to Texas would be a likely area.  If you want the UP (1970) then that means Kansas City, Wichita, Denver or California.

Guardrails in US parlance.  In slow speed applications in yards they often use the "self guarded" frogs like the one you pictured.  Higher speed frogs, above 10-15 mph, will have guardrails.  For lower speed yard and industrial applications, self guarded frogs are cheaper and require less maintenance.

Kalmbach published the "Diesel Spotter's Guide" which would be perfect for your era.

4 minutes ago, alastairq said:

I recall seeing an article about a typical eastern seaboard 'Union' station...seemed quite appealing. Basically consisted of 3{?} loops, and I think, IIRC, single track in & out? Middle of a town...It was the first time I noticed that some US trackage differed from recognised UK practise in that the turnouts didn't seem to have check rails?

I will conduct a search at some point...but if someone  here knows more, please interrupt?

I assume "check rails" are what we in the states call "split point derails" and no we don't generally use them on station tracks.  They are used before drawbridges, some major junctions and at industrial leads or junctions where the railroad wants to keep loose cars from reaching the main.

Mission creep.

You started with red and silver F units with stainless cars and are now at a waterfront theme.  Two completely different worlds that don't intersect.

If you want switching and war bonnets, I suggest Kansas City.  That would be a place that would have just about any industry and any passenger service you could want.  You can even have model railroad sized hills and river valleys.  Plus interchange with most of the midwestern roads (MP, CNW, UP, CRIP, CGW, MILW, MKT, NW, etc).

An iconic ATSF unit of the early 1970's was the CF7.  The ATSF had a gazillion F3 and F7 streamlined units.  They recylced many of them by cutting down the cab and removing the shell, replacing it with a beefed up underframe and a GP style long and short hood.  They were used as branch line and yard engines and continued into the 1990's and 2000's as short line engines.

The Aerotrains were GM's attempt to build a "universal" passenger body, the coach bodies were basically GM Bus bodies and windows on a heavy underframe with a "modern" (futuristic) looking power car.  They were not successful.

The big thing that killed the Rock was that it attempted to merge with the UP and held off a lot of capital projects waiting for the government to approve the merger.  However the bureaucracy at that time was so onerous that it took years and years for it to be approved.  By that time the UP decided it wasn't interested any more and the Rock was left high and dry.  That lead to the bankruptcy and sale of the Rock to many midwestern railroads (MKT, SP, CNW, (among others) and a gazillion short lines).  It also was so horrible a process that the US revised its merger approval process and changed its railroad supervision, forming the Surface Transportation Board to replace the Interstate Commerce Commission.

What killed the LV is collapse of the anthracite coal market (oil and electric heating and power generation).  By the 1960's 90% of its revenue was carried on 10% of its route miles.  Most of the other smaller coal routes were circling the drain by then too (LNE, LHR, CNJ, NYOW).

At one point in the mid 1970's the ATSF and MP looked at merging but decided not to.  That led to the UP/MP merger in response to the BN merger which in turn cause the BN and ATSF to merge, which then ended up with the UP/SP merger.

One thing you will find about US railroading is they weren't very creative with terms, they use the same terms to mean very different things in different contexts.  Don't know if overseas railroads are more specific.

Context means a lot in this discussion.  If you are discussing the building that the passenger buys his ticket in, where the agent or operator works, then there isn't really a difference between a station or a depot, station is a slightly more encompassing term and depot is in many cases used to describe a smaller station.    About the only place either term is "rigidly" defined is with respect to the rules.  The vast majority of rules define a station as a place named in the time table.  In that case a "station" isn't a building, its actually a sign, a name sign of the location.   Its possible that a station can have just a post with a name on it.  Stations are also used in billing.  Stations are defined in tariffs, and shipments are billed to a station, not a town.  A depot or town is undefined by railroads.  Context, context, context.  But the terms can be used interchangeably regarding structures, less so if its something that has to do with the operating rules, or billing or some other paperwork type thing.

If you really want to get confused, if you are at a location where there are two buildings a "passenger depot" and a "freight station", the depot will probably have the place name on it and the freight building would not.  That would mean, according to the rules,  the building not called the "station" (the depot) would be the station and the building named the station (the freight station) wouldn't be the station.  Clear as mud?  

If you really want to be confused, there are multiple uses and definitions of the term "block", it can means several different things as a verb, noun or adjective.

The Rock was a fascinating line because it was a scrappy "also ran", it had dozens of paint schemes and all sorts of oddball engines.  The ATSF was more of a standard railroad because is had the money to afford to "do it right".  The Lehigh Valley was another road that couldn't figure out how to paint its engines, it had odd little variations in its "as built" paint schemes.  One of my favorite quotes was a Chicago Great Western VP who described the CGW as, "A mountain railroad built in the prairie serving a traffic vacuum."

While you're at it, an American train doesn't have a "driver", it has an engineer.  

The Rock was in its death throes in 1970 and went bankrupt in 1975, finally died around 1980.  Its problem is it went the same places as other railroads, but by a longer route.

The "Choctaw Rocket" was operated in the 1950's with RDC's, becoming the longest RDC route in the US.  By the time they were downgraded to what was shown, I would imagine that they used an RDC because that what was on it but they RDC's were wore out, so they assigned an FP7 and conventional  baggage/mail storage cars to the train.  RDC were not designed to haul non-RDC cars, their drive systems weren't robust enough to do that on a regular basis.

The alternative is to do the ATSF area passenger service right after Amtrak.  Might let you throw in some odd cars from other roads (PC, SP, GN) and maybe an engine or two from another road (a ratty ex PC E-8).

23 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Ah! Re: Head-end switching, I may have caught myself out here.  I've been thinking in terms of 8 types of passenger train switching:

 

1.  RPO and Mail (the one which doesn't apply in the era I'm looking at).

2.  REA - which I thought continued until the early 1970s? 

3.  Express Reefers - not sure how long these continued to appear in passenger consists?

4.  Baggage cars - or do these remain with their coaches?

5.  Diners - needing a Commissary

6.  Pullmans - do these also go to the Commissary?

7.  Trains dividing into sections.

8.  Turning Observation cars (unlikely to feature in my thinking, but worth mentioning historically).

 

Thank you for the pointer on Sanborn maps.  I've seen them in the Layout Plans thread, but didn't know the dates.  A combination with Google for present day views would make for interesting research.  I'm not looking for anything specific - but it's always worth seeing how the reality looks.

1.  In 1970, RPO and mail was virtually non-existant, so don't have to worry about switching that.

2.  REA declined in the 1960's and was minimal in the 1970's, REA ceased operations in 1975.

3.  Express reefers by the 1970's, those that were still around were mostly not used as reefers and were mostly used as express boxcars.  By the 1970's ice cooled reefers were very rare so there weren't even many icing facilites to ice them, even if a railroad wanted to use them as reefers.

There are different levels of passenger service.  There are the name trains, the secondary trains, and commuter trains.  

4.  Baggage cars generally stay with the trains.

5.  Diners might go to a commissary at either end of the run.  In the middle, no.

6.  Pullmans would not go to the commissary, but would have to be serviced as far as cleaning, linens and bedding.  That would only be done in major terminals.  Pullman stopped operating  sleeping car service in 1968.  So any sleeping cars would have been operated by the ATSF, not Pullman.  The ATSF would have bought the cars from Pullman.

7.  Since you seem to be striking out on a lot of your previous ideas, this one would be available, sort of.  By the 1970's passenger travel by rail was down so much that outside of the NE  corridor (PRR) not only did railroads no need sections, they were combining name trains.  So you wouldn't be combining or splitting sections, you would be combining or spitting trains.  The train from Texas to LA might be combined with the train from Chicago to LA in New Mexico and vice versa.  One train would run out of LA and it would split into a Texas and Chicago train in New Mexico. (Hypothetical example, not sure if they did that).

8.  Where the trains still have observation cars, the would have to be turned.

There are two other  types of switching that might enter ito it.

9.  Railroad business cars.  Every so often the Superintendent or General Manager's business car might be tacked on the back of a passenger train to make an inspection trip.

10.  Private cars.  People who own their own passengers cars would contract to have their cars added to a train when they wanted to make a trip.  http://www.aaprco.com/

In 1970 the American passenger train was on its death bed.  The only thing that had been propping it up were the mail contracts and they were gone.  Passenger trains were losing money hand over foot.  The only reason they were retained is the ICC wouldn't let the railroads abandon all the service.  The law that created Amtrak was passed in 1970 and Amtrak was formed in 1971, so you are literally modeling the very end, the last death throes of the private railroad passenger train in the US.  In 1970 the ATSF was just doing the minimum it could to bridge until it could dump the passenger service off to Amtrak and be done with it.

As far as Union Station goes, yes it was modeled after the CB&Q station in Omaha.  It is now a TV station, KETV.  Here are some 2005, shots before it was renovated.

Maybe a clinic for next year.  

On E-bay you can find relevant special instruction pamphlets for various railroads.

Basically after 1977 the railroads standardized on 5 cars of cover for loaded cars, went to the diamond shaped, color coded  placards.  After 1983, the UN number placards started to be introduced and the plain placards were phased out for the most part (but are still valid).

The TIH/PIH rules gradually became stricter, they changed to be a placard on a plain white background, the concept of a "Key" train started in the mid 1980's (one or more TIH/PIH or 20 or more loaded placarded tanks) and then in the 2000's all the post 9-11 stuff (most of which doesn't affect a typical model railroad).

I gave a clinic on the Oct 25, 2020 OpSig (Operations special interest group) Virtual Meetup on hazardous materials handling rules for pre-1977 US railroads.  I have a link below to the handout for that clinic.  Might be of interest to some on this forum.

https://wnbranch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HazmatHandlingOct25.pdf

Looking at the Google map view it looks like the cars were in a switching move, since there is a auto rack loading/unloading ramp adjacent to the facility.

In the 1800's there were lots of accidents with trains hitting bridges and tunnels and sideswiping adjacent tracks as cars and engines got wider and taller.  Several tunnels on my prototype were changed from double track to single track to accommodate taller cars.  Bridges and tunnels may have been made 100 years ago.

It may be that that bridge is in a yard, so the TRAIN clearance process wouldn't have looked at it and in the past auto rack business was separated in dedicated trains, never passing through yards.  When the traffic dropped due to COVID and the tariffs, some dedicated auto trains went away as a cost saving measure and auto racks were carried on regular manifest trains, so auto racks went into the yard instead of bypassing the yard on the main.

I had a similar thing happen on one of my territories.  Railroad A and Railroad B had parallel tracks into a city next to each other.  The railroads merged and what was two separate mains, now became one "double track" main.  Unfortunately under one bridge Railroad B was 6 inches higher than railroad A and the Railroad A dispatcher put a train with double stacks on the "other" main and sheared the top off several containers.

On 15/09/2020 at 17:03, APOLLO said:

Yanks - All the gear and no idea !!!!!

 

(Old WW2 saying)

 

Brit15

For guys you say don't have a clue, they seem to have cleaned up a difficult situation in a short amount of time.

Today I gave a clinic on the OpSig Virtual Meetup on Trackage Rights Operations.

If you are interested in US trackage rights operations it might be of interest.

After the UP/MP merger a lot of the older SD40-2's, particularly the ex-MP engines were converted to B units, primarily by removing the seats in the cabs and relettering them.