Model Railroading > Track scale operations

Last week I posted a short video showing a switchman's eye view, taken from a footboard, of details of  a railroad track scale.

Here's more detail of how a track scale can provide unusual operations on a model railroad, without taking hardly any real-estate.

First, an arial view of the entire site, compacted a bit to fit my space.  There are four rails over the scale - two interwoven tracks.  The straight thru pair is the "live rails" rigged up to the scale mechanism and balance beam.  The offset rails are the bypass rails so trhat normal operations     A scale house for weighmaster and the weighing mechanism is off to the side.  Almost all scales do not have capacity to handle heavy locomotives.

Followed by the video.of weighing operations.

The first scene shows Minnesota Midland locomotive 32 with a 3 car pull-out, using the bypass rails to get to the the west of of my scale, then stopping past the bypass track switches.

The switches at both ends of the scale track are re-lined onto to live scaletrack, and the yard conductor brings his engine and cars toward to scale, spotting car DRGW 4254 on the live rails, setting the handbrake, and cutting off the rest of the cut and backing up to separate.  The car being weighed is separated to assure that there is no weight transfer between cars.

When weighed, the 4254 is shoved off the scale, separated from the cut, and the C&S 8402 is spotted, separated, weighed and shoved against the 4254.  Both cars are shoved off the scale and  SPC 254 is spotted for weighing.

The conductor gathers up his cars, pulls west of the bypass switch, realigns, and shovess his engine and three cars back to Wabasha Yard for the rest of todays work.

-LD



 

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Thanks for illustrating that.

Victor Baird



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/25 16:08 by wabash2800.

Very cool!  Excellent camera work.