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You’ve been asking for a updated operating plan for the new and improved Olympia Logging Co. On30 layout. In this installment, David not only delivers a scheme, but he also runs a few trains to demonstrate how it all comes together. As a bonus, MRVP subcribers can download a PDF containing the operation action cards David uses to keep the railroad moving.
Be careful with your back! It’s the only one you’ll have! Just finished “binge-watching” the Olympia 2 series! Thanks so much for keeping this old man happy! Good use of your brain to come up with the raised work benchette!
Thanks David. Great video! Btw. your awesome saw disc wall clock needs batteries. 😉
Very nice ops sessions David. Would be cool to see this layout at Trainfest 2019… if at all possible!
Hello again. For those interested, we’ve added a simple PDF download of the Word document that used for the operating cards. It is under the video player now.
Enjoy!
David
David:
Absolutely brilliant system. Is the PDF Word doc used for the Operating Cards still available?
Pls advise how to access same if it is.
Many thanks.
very nice, keep up the good work
Hi David,
Have a look into jewellers or watch makers work benches. They work on objects with incredible detail, somewhat like modellers and have figured out that a much higher bench height is required. The ones I’ve seen place the work surface anywhere from 36″ to 40″. Your box idea is quite good, and could evolve into a more permanent bench on bench idea. The bench on bench idea is getting good traction in the wood working community for fine detail work such as hand cut dovetails as it brings the work closer to your eyes and reduces the bending over required to see what we’re doing.
Great work and speedy recovery.
THANK YOU FOR DETAIL VIDEO ON OPERATION ON LOG CAMP
HOPE GET WELL SOON DAVID AS SORRY ABOUT YOUR BACK PAIN
Hey David, Have enjoyed this series immensely……Any Chance you could Post The Work List?
Mike.
David, sorry to hear about your back problems. Back problems are a common occupational injury among health care workers but I managed to get through 45 years with no problems but a number of friends an coworkers had back discomforts of varying sorts. I hope that you recover fully and soon. By the way, someday that might make an interesting topic for an MRVP video; ergonomics and model railroads. We often create reaching or bending situations that can cause or exacerbate problems. We create reach problems with our common desire to get more track or more industries into a given space. Perhaps there is a model railroader with a therapy or rehab background who could offer advice?
Watching the operating sessions I began to wonder about the caboose and whether it filled an essential role. It seems to add to the complication (although this could be intentional). I’d assume it is a prototypical safety feature traveling between Plate Junction, but is it necessary within the confines of the greater logging camp?
Hello all, thank you for the great comments this month, and thank you too for the well wishes.
Brooks, Charlie, and others:
I’ve had a standing desk at work for years, so I’m not sure why I didn’t come up with this sooner. The boxes have helped me stay somewhat involved. I’m looking into better options for the future, but for now, the boxes are doing the trick.
Caboose or no caboose:
I’ve seen a ton of logging railroad photos where they don’t use cabooses at all. I am fond of them, so I’m running them. I have a second Heisler now, and once I get it operational, it will most likely be stationed at Big Timber – sans caboose. The other Heisler will do all of the running between Cave Point, Camp 2, and Sand Creek with its caboose in tow, but then drop cars at Big Timber for the local crew to handle.
Whistle and Bell signals:
Andy Sperandeo covered the usage of those really well in his Operators series of short videos on MRVP, so I didn’t dig into that here. I was focusing on how cars move about the railroad. Yes, whistle and bell signals are important and serve to protect everyone – those on the train and on the ground. I use them during normal running, but with video editing, a lot of that was lost in the presentation here.
Plate Junction vs. Cave Point:
In truth, Plate Junction probably should have been Cave Point, and we could have done away with the hidden staging track altogether. But, it does give an operator somewhere else to run the train. If I built the layout over again, I’d probably just use the sector plate for all the fiddle-track work too and not have put in the staging track.
John, “Work” is described around the 14 minute mark in the video. And yes, Robert, the conclusion I come to towards the end of the video is to slow work down to one car in each location. I’m not sure who suggested it, I think it was Jim, but another good idea was that any car just spotted in that turn is not eligible to be worked – it has to wait at least until the next turn to simulate the employees “getting to it.”
Glad you’re all having fun with Olympia. I’m highly disappointed that I didn’t get the benchwork for the Sand Creek section of the layout built before the flight to San Diego in February, but it was just too cold to use my shop in the garage in January. Oh well, the new section will begin soon enough – and summer is a much better time to be outside building benchwork!
David
David,
Thanks for the update on the operating system. I am going to incorporate some of your changes in the operating system of my TCM Logging Railroad. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next! Keep up the great work and I hope your back gets better soon.
David, First of all, so sorry to hear of your back condition. I trust you’re back to ‘full speed’ in short order!
As it turns out, I began using a ‘stand up’ work bench while in graduate school…a long time ago!…and I have done all my modeling standing up ever since. Besides the posture advantages you identified, I find there are several others. First, it is so much quicker and easier to access tools and supplies that are just a little farther from your immediate work area, farther than an arm’s length from a chair…just take a half step. No pushing the chair back, getting up to get the tool, and then sitting down again. It’s also much quicker when you need to take a work-in-progress to the layout. Again, you’re already standing. Finally, it’s much easier to ‘inspect’ a model sitting on the work area…you can easily move side to side, look down on the top or step back slightly and put your hands on your knees to get a ‘ground level’ view. Just stepping back a bit for a ‘long view’ is much easier than from a chair. The higher work area is almost the same as layout height so you can more easily see what the model will look like on the layout.
I’m 5’11” and my work surface is 49″ from the floor. Like you, I built a plywood box with an open front which sits on a ‘regular’ height workbench. I added a trough for tools on each end which also keeps tools from rolling off, and a section of yardstick forms a barrier at the back and is handy for making rough measurements. A couple of holes provide places for nippers and a soldering iron. I store oft-used tools and a small box for waste under the ‘box’. I have a chunk of carpet to stand on and so even at age 71 I can work 1 1/2 to 2 hours at my ‘stand up’ bench. I couldn’t imagine working sitting down. I suspect you’ll not go back ‘to the chair’.
Brooks Stover, MMR
Hi again David. The Log Blog has been one of my favorite series, in any format, harkening back to the “Up Clear Creek” series in NGSLG (if I recall). One thought watching you switch: I know the original Olympia was designed as a show layout so the fiddling was in the back. Instead of moving it from the wall, perhaps the display case hiding the sector plate can be hinged to swing out to the left still blocking view of the fiddling and move the fiddle track storage over the sector plate.
Nice job.
Hi David — One thing that would be neat is if you put a camera on a loco (or car in front) as it went about it’s switching rounds? Great layout!
Great Idea!!! I really like the idea of just moving cars and not worrying about specific cars going specific places.On my Detroit, Woodbridge & Birmingham RR (DWBRR) I have several industries but it is an industrial point to point and this manner of operations might just prove the prize winner. So far my ops sessions have not worked out real well as it seems I have had too many cars and not enough space to put them all. So I am going to thin the herd so to speak and see how that works. I did not see any where, where you actually described the “WORK” activity or did I just miss it? Well either way I will be re-watching this episode several more time to catch all the great info in it. Thanks for doing this on small layouts. Most ops session videos use much larger layouts. Thanks Again!!!
David,
When I started working as a draftsman and designer at KPG Interdisciplinary Design back in 1987, we produced all our drawings by hand in the traditional manner with pencil on vellum or ink on Mylar. To help avoid back problems, the company invested in some excellent motorized drafting tables that allowed us to control the height and angle of the drafting surface.
By the turn of the century, CAD had supplanted hand drafting and the drafting tables were surplussed. I took one of them home with me, and it has served as my modeling bench ever since. The table has a 36″ x 60″ top which can be raised and lowered smoothly by means of a foot switch to any height above the floor from 30″ to 50″. I generally do my modeling while standing or seated on a high stool; I find it very helpful to be able to make adjustments in the height of the work surface depending on the size of the model and the task at hand.
Used drafting tables like this can be found on Ebay and Craigslist, and similar adjustable-height desks are available new. Considering how much time we spend at our workbenches and the very real risk of painful back injuries over time, the expense of an adjustable-height work surface is well worth it in my view. Ironically, back problems and carpal tunnel injuries suffered by CAD drafters led KPG to invest in new adjustable-height desks for all employees a few years ago.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery!
Charlie
Excellent, this look like a really fun railroad to operate.
Question, after all these videos on the original and expanded Olympia I do ever remember hearing anything about the operations as far as Whistle or Bell usage. Do these logging railroad follow the same rules as a standard railroad. Obviously there will not be many if any railroad crossings but things like start/stop/reverse and all the other safety type signals.
Fantastic video, David!
Seeing the process of creating operating scenarios is extremely instructive. Your “pick a card” system seems perfect for a smaller railroad. I’m learning a lot from your episodes on paper planning, and we’re always happy to get more “beauty passes” of the terrific Olympia 2.
Please take care, and feel better soon.
David,
Hope you’re back heals soon – I’ve been there and it’s no fun.
The tool holder (with all the holes) looks interesting – where did you get it)?
Thanks,
Thank you for this video we’ve really been wondering how you would change things up. Will you do a similar video, or perhaps even a full session when the third expansion is complete?
I like the idea of taking a “turn” with each card rather than detailed car cards for my one person railroad. I’ve been looking for a simple system and might try to implement this. A thought on pace of work. In your simulation you were placing cars and then loading them in the same turn, considering each action card one turn. You could slow the pace a bit by requiring cars to sit one or more turns before doing “work” on that car. This will simulate the time it takes to load or unload a car.
I hope you have a speedy recovery and avoid the surgeons. Unfortunately people, like myself, find that back pain isn’t at one joint L4-L5. It’s lumbar and cervical spine. The later is my particular problem at the moment and even an elevated workbench requires one to look down. The higher magnifications of an Optivisor does the same as do cell phones. Not sure what the answer is.
Brilliant demonstration. Watching the actions with narration is so much better than just reading. I noticed how dark it looked around the back.even you had to squint a little to read the cards and switch cars. Maybe a few leds on a dimmer switch would make it easier for a car shuffler to see at the rear.
Here’s hoping your back gets better quickly. We appreciate your continued dedication to producing high quality videos for us. This one, as always, gives us all a lot of information and ideas and shows that we don’t always need to rely on car cards and waybills.