08-04-2014, 01:03 PM
I think Andy Sperandeo's column in the August MR is also pertinent -- it seems to me that if you're talking about an ISL, you should also be talking about operation. I think randomly moving cars around a layout like this is likely go get boring -- cars come and go from somewhere else. That means you should be thinking about staging. You have enough room for the layout to be able to replace some of the random industries with some kind of staging, and then think about how to operate the layout in some sort of systematic way: cars come from interchange or off-layout yard, they're switched and delivered, other cars are picked up and returned to the off-layout location. The"interchange" on the sketches above aren't really interchanges, they're just another industry. Staging is where a whole train (or group of cars corresponding to a whole train) comes from "offstage", with all the cars having specific on-layout destinations.
My own view is that people use the term ISL without thinking through what they really mean to do, or even want to do. What sort of prototype activity do you most want to model -- or have you given much thought to that?
My own view is that people use the term ISL without thinking through what they really mean to do, or even want to do. What sort of prototype activity do you most want to model -- or have you given much thought to that?