So where does the industry keep the empties?

And when a customer of the industry orders a load, I guess as long as the industries own cars are available, they would use those for shipping the load?

What if all the industry's cars were in use? Where would the needed empties come from?

Would the indutry's cars typically be in captive service?

Let's say we have a shortline that has a small fleet of boxcars. We keep the empties on a storage track near an industrial park that we deliver cars to. In the industrial park, we have a customer R who receives goods by boxcar, and customer S who ships goods by boxcar.

Goods were delivered to R in a foriegn road boxcar and now the boxcar is empty. S is needing a boxcar for loading and the load needs to be shipped back to the foriegn road. Our shortline has empty boxcars on the storage track. Would we take the foriegn road boxcar over to S for loading since the load is going back that way anyway or would we use one of our shortline's empty boxcars? Would we get more revenue by using our own car?

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I'm interested in purchasing the Athearn Nscale Challenger but my layout has 11 inch curves. The Athearn website indicates it will run on 11 inch radius curves due to their split frame construction, but other Nscale retailers indicate the engine will take a 9.75 inch radius, which would imply the engine will run on my layout with little problems.

Anyone who has this engine (or knowledge of how it runs) know what the effective minimum radius might be?

I have recently finished a word doc regarding my building experiences with numerous structure kits. How can I copy that doc to this forum re: product reviews?
Thx
Eric

..but it's a start. I'm actually getting some work done on my soon-to-be layout. I have finally got the supports done, and just as soon as I varnish the floor beneath it, I will anchor everything down.        
The top will be 23 1/2 inches wide, by 5' long, by 32" high, from floor to top of benchwork. Like I said, it ain't purty, but it is functional!!

In my rush to get my trains up and running for my club's trainshow, i've noticed an increasingly irratating problem. the Bud cars in my train, specifically a grill diner and a Dorm/lounge car, tend to jump the tracks repeatedly in the same places, but i cannot see the problem.

There are no obvious dips, gaps, or other track issues i can see (usually derailments happen in the middle of flex track).

the dorm lounge tends to derail near the top of a long nearly 4% grade, and there are no gaps in this spot. it is ALWAYS the rear axle of the truck on the "forward" end of the car (relative to train movement). If i flip the car around, this seems to be temporarily negated.

I've tried to adjust the truck tightness/loosness, but the situation never changes, no matter how i make the cars go.

THe grill diner tends to also derail on a curve, but only on a section of level track. while there is a grade ahead, the grill diner is nowhere near it. Once again, i see it just jump in about the same spot.

the only solution to either seems to be to remove cars. The dorm car will always derail on that spot if there is more than 2 (of 4) coaches on the train, but it is unnacceptable to remove those cars. Right now, i've removed the dorm car, MHC, and Express Boxcar that was part of the train, and that seems to have resolved any issues with the rest of the train. Still, i do not understand what the problem might be, and i'd like to run the full train.

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