My Take On Operations "Game"

[Russ Bellinis]

I noticed that you mentioned "manufacturer to industry deliveries" and "industry to industry switching." Our railroads are generally so small in actual scale mileage that most moves form manufacturer to industry or industry to industry switching would actually be accomplished by truck in the real world. That doesn't mean that you can't do it on your layout, but most of your freight will either originate on your layout to be delivered to a distant location off layout, or it will originate off layout at a distant location to be delivered to the layout. The most common exception to this would be, say, a boxcars that comes in loaded to be delivered to industry "A" and is then moved as an empty to industry "B" to be loaded for another move to a distant location off layout.