I have been posting our modeling adventure in the HO forum and posting some pics in the Photography forum, but a recent experience made me want to re-post some items here to see if I can get some perspective from some of you operations folks.
This past weekend, I went to a local yard and saw some amazing switching going on which I don't know is typical or not. If it is, I never thought that was how various cars were moved onto sidings. I'll copy some of my post from the other forum and see if you guys can give me some insight. Here goes..................
Saw some really fun activity down at the yard today.
A very large grouping of UP engines were hooked up to a relatively small number of cars and were moving up and down the rail switching the cars onto various tracks. I've never seen this type of operation before -- the engine group would move forward, then a guy would jump off the back of the train and throw the switch, then the engine group would back up, literally unhook and throw off the back four cars, which would go careening down the track un-attended, and they would slowly stop in EXACTLY the right place, just on their own rolling power pushed off previously by the locos.
Forward they would go again, then manually throw the switch, and 6 hopper cars would roll down the rail to a resting place.
These guys worked the rail for about a half hour until all of the cars were gone, then the 5 engines went down the rail to rest. WOW. Many of you must have seen this many times, but this was a first for me!. Really showed me how operations in a yard work -- I never would have thought they would just "throw" those cars off down the rail like that.
Sorry for the stupid question, but is this how all yard switching works? I always thought that they would back the cars up into position, unhook, then move forward, switch tracks, back the cars up into position, unhook them, etc, etc.
I am amazed to see the engines gaining some limited momentum, then literally pushing the cars off the locos onto the tracks free-wheeling. I'm not sure how they unhooked them -- maybe they unhooked them before they started backing up then stopped the engine all of a sudden which would send the cars rolling on. I'd be curious what others have seen around their yards.
This past weekend, I went to a local yard and saw some amazing switching going on which I don't know is typical or not. If it is, I never thought that was how various cars were moved onto sidings. I'll copy some of my post from the other forum and see if you guys can give me some insight. Here goes..................
Saw some really fun activity down at the yard today.
![wave.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/wave.gif)
![eek.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/eek.gif)
![thumbsup.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/thumbsup.gif)
![biggrin.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/biggrin.gif)
![eek.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/eek.gif)
![eek.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/eek.gif)
Sorry for the stupid question, but is this how all yard switching works? I always thought that they would back the cars up into position, unhook, then move forward, switch tracks, back the cars up into position, unhook them, etc, etc.
![rolleyes.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif)
![smile.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/smile.gif)
![smile.gif](http://www.the-gauge.com/ubb/smile.gif)