Operations

Crews typically depart from the yard with a single four-axle locomotive, five cars, and a caboose. This is by design – track space constraints limit the amount of cars that the yard job can shove out to the main for a local crew to pick up, and the amount of on-line business and complicated switching moves means that even a five car train is a full day’s work for most crews. Six-axle locomotives may occasionally be substituted at the discretion of the division superintendent, following adequate testing on the main line curve exiting the yard (the tightest curve on the branch).

The main crew operates as train WHLI-20 (W = Wayfreight, H = Harrisburg Division, LI = Linglestown, 20 = Job Number), which goes on duty at the yard office at 16:00. If traffic is light, this crew will do its own switching to build its train in the yard before departing for the branch. On heavier traffic days, a second crew (WHLI-20X) may be called at 17:00. If there are two crews, a yard crew will often be assigned to build both trains, and they will sometimes build another set of trains for the following day’s work if the paperwork is made available.

If only WHLI-20 is operated, it will conduct all switching along the branch before returning to the yard. If WHLI-20 and WHLI-20X are both operated, the WHLI-20 will typically serve the industries on the east end of the line closest to Paxtonia (grain silo, brewery, scrapyard, paper mill, and food warehouse), while the WHLI-20X will serve the general warehouse, cement plant, and customers in downtown Linglestown.

There are two runarounds on the line. A lengthy runaround stretches from the brewery to the paper mill, allowing a locomotive to run around a train of about nine cars in length. Another runaround exists near the warehouse and cement plant, with just enough space to run around a single railcar. Crews generally avoid using this runaround, as it often requires moving a car out of the way that is spotted on the warehouse siding. The single-car runaround is typically only used by train WHLI-20X if both WHLI-20 and WHLI-20X are in operation on the branch at the same time, as each train will require the use of a runaround to perform their switching duties. Each train is required to depart and arrive at the yard with a caboose on the rear of the train.

Crews receive a computer print-out switch list when they depart the yard. These switch lists are generated by a custom-built Excel file, which contains a spreadsheet of every car on the branch and its current location. The yardmaster manually selects cars within the Excel spreadsheet to be spotted, respotted, or pulled from customer sidings and assigns them to either WHLI-20 or WHLI-20X. There are typically about 15 total cars assigned to a job on any given trip – five leaving the yard, five on-line or respot moves, and five returning to the yard. The yardmaster then clicks a single button to run a custom macro and generate the switch lists for both jobs. At the end of an operating day, once both jobs have returned to the yard and confirmed that all of the assigned work was performed, the yardmaster can simply click a different button to run a different macro, which moves all of the assigned cars to their destinations and sets up the spreadsheet for the next day’s operations.

There is no dispatcher, signaling, or any kind of train orders on the P&L Branch. If there is more than one crew operating on the layout at any given time, all crews are required to be aware of each other’s positions and communicate with each other as necessary to avoid mishaps.

As the branch is in an area of the Conrail system that evades the prying eyes of supervision, Rule G is unofficially suspended during normal operations. However, all incidents of a suspect nature will be investigated, and those operators found to be unable to complete their duties will be relegated to selecting their beverage of choice from the Coke machine at the yard office.