RPRC Seaver Yard Facelift
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 05:29PM A few months back, Richmond Pacific’ s Seaver Yard underwent an improvement project. Seaver is located between Harbour Way and Marina Way in Richmond. The satellite view below shows the yard as it was before the project with six tracks (406 at the top and 401 at the bottom) Tracks 401-403 were double ended tracks. (Note: Google may update their satellite photos at some point in the future to show as it exists today after the upgrade.)
Seaver’s Use
Seaver holds cars bound for industries located on the western side of the RPRC system around the port such as Sim’s scrap, the Cemex plant and the aggregate complex on Wright Ave. Seaver also provides a location to store cars to help keep the main yard at 23rd Street open and fluid.
Switch crews use Seaver to sort cars and collect empties as part of working the local industries, particularly in the evening.
Location Matters
If a switch crew needs to collect cars that are any distance from where they will be finally spotted, the travel time to get those cars can become important. Most of the RPRC’s track is 10mph or less with a lot at only 5mph. Each mile takes 6 minutes at 10mph and 12 minutes at 5mph.
Let’s say a crew switching the 8th street bypass near the port just west of Seaver Yard needs to collect cars from Safeway Yard which is about two miles away. The round trip travel alone could easily take 48 minutes: 2 miles @ 12 minutes per mile x 2 = 48 minutes. Add to that, the time spent switching at Safeway, as well as possible delays due to other RPRC or BNSF trains. All up, the time to collect those cars from Safeway Yard could end up being close to two hours! So it makes sense on low speed switching lines to have small yards located close to industries that need frequent switching to minimize time spent shuttling across the shortline to collect cars.
The Upgrade
In the recent work, the RPRC relaid part of the yard to increase capacity slightly and to better align the yard’s layout with it’s function. The old Seaver yard had a couple of through tracks on the south side and a couple of stub ended tracks on the north side. The stub ended tracks were often used to hold covered hoppers that are unloaded directly into trucks - a universal industry of sorts. These cars were previously unloaded in Parr Yard , a few hundred yards toward the port, but that yard was slimmed from three tracks to two earlier this year when the aggregate plant was built.
In the past, track 403 was used as a thoroughfare track. The choice of one of the longer tracks for thoroughfare rather than the shortest through track seemed unusual to me but was probably related to the state of switches and track on that part of the yard. Here’s a view from a couple of years ago after we had some rain. The thoroughfare track can be clearly seen.
Seaver Yard in flood
The New Yard Layout
RPRC’s new track layout for Seaver Yard
There is only one through track now on the south side of Seaver. It is newly laid with cost effective jointed rail seen in the picture below from the east end. A block wall was subsequently built to enclose the left side of this view.
Seaver through track, east end
There is a spur midway on the through track that is not presently used. Note the slightly shorter stub-ended track (402) due to the curve on the thoroughfare track at the east end.
The west end throat is much the same as it was before the upgrade though has been regraded, and the yard throat has been lifted six inches to avoid the type of flooding seen in the photo at the head of this post. Here’s how the west end looks now.
Seaver Yard west throat
The raised track on the throat can clearly be seen as track 402 (second from the right) drops down in from the switch.
Like most things Richmond Pacific, it’s a neat and tidy result, purpose built for the job at hand.
- Coxy
2009 - Year of N Scale Layout Construction
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 02:45PM I’m back after a long work-related hiatus. I want to thank you all for continuing to visit the site throughout. Surprisingly, the number of hits actually went up while I was off dealing with other things! But I’ll take that as a positive and do my best to post more often going forward. I hope you all had a great break over the holidays with plenty of railroading mixed in.
RBL Milepost 0.0
As the title of this post suggests, it is time to convert all my planning and analysis into construction. Here is where I start from…
This is my garage. Impressive eh! Parking space for the usual family and household clutter. Not quite ready to house a precision N Scale railroad. But look closely, and you can see potential! The view above is where the railroad space will be located. All the stuff will either go, get stored more efficiently or move inside the RBL space.
The Future
And here is my objective…
This clip is a very rough walk-through of the layout 3D rendering. It gives a pretty good overview of the space and how the layout fits into it.
The plan always has something that is being tweaked. For example, there are some fascias that I have removed that don’t show in the clip and there is a lot of track in the lower level that will be concealed in the final layout. Nevertheless, it captures the general layout of things.
What have you learned so far Grasshopper?
Many, many , many layouts do not ever reach the potential that they start out with. It is really easy to take on too much work, expense, challenge, time commitment and as a consequence, end up disappointed. I have lived this misery along with many of you.
Building the RBL layout will be a big job. It is a great idea to walk before running. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, once the layout space is complete, I’ll start by building some FreemoN modules to dust off the cobwebs from my modeling skills.
I’d like to begin work on the RBL some time later this year. This pilot project will help shake out the space itself, lighting, flooring, acoustics, heat management etc.
In any case, the real imperative for right now is to get the space created.
The RBL Layout Space Construction Plan
The high level plan is as follows:
- Junk removal from garage. Where the hell does this stuff come from? I did this already!!!
- Garage storage solutions - racks etc to compensate for the smaller floor storage in the remaining garage, more efficient (vertical rather than horizontal) storage to keep the family and landlord (wife) happy
- Move Automatic sprinkler control
- Plumbing - Move a tap that would be in the layout space to the outside
- Electrical - Install extra power and lighting circuit/breakers, outlets along two existing walls, lights for garage
- Install wall-mounted garage door opener
- Build stud walls (FINALLY!)
The first six items will take 6-8 weeks. So the beginning of framing is late February at the earliest. Fingers crossed and numerous offerings to the relevant gods, I should be okay. I can’t get there soon enough!
Cheers,
Coxy
Jackpot at Stege
Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 09:22PM Here’s a few tidbits of local operation for future reference. Last night, while coming home from dinner, we passed three light BNSF units heading toward Stege at Albany California on the #1 UP main track. On occasion, the BNSF will run light power from Oakland up to the Wye at Stege in order to turn the consist. This accounts for Oakland-bound light power occasionally running long hood forward. i.e. the consist is actually running in reverse back down to it’s next northbound assignment out of Oakland.
It’s an interesting move given the diminutive nature of the local tracks. I’ve seen up to five big units make their way around the wye, then head back down the Waterside track to re-enter the UP tracks in order to get back to Oakland. The whole move from Oakland to Stege Wye and back probably takes about an hour assuming they don’t get held either time through the crossovers.
But last night’s consist wasn’t all road power. The consist included a couple of the local blue and yellow 4-axle units and a trailing HII Dash-9. I suspect that the road unit needed some light maintenance, or would be used on a train originating out of BNSF’s Richmond yard. A local crew must have been dispatched from Richmond in the local units to go and pick it up from Oakland.
At the double crossovers, the light engines had a red-over-red-over-flashing-red aspect - Restricting indication. Just enough authority to move from the 70mph main track to the 10mph Waterside Drill track which is un-signalled. The light engines would proceed up the Waterside track and take the switch a mile up the line and diverge onto the south leg of the Wye which leads to RPRC rails and then on to BNSF Richmond Terminal. We drove on. It was 8:30pm and dark, and I had three non-railfans on board.
What was interesting was that at the Wye, a BNSF Stack train was easing out onto the south leg on the bridge over I-580, effectively headed for the north-bound light engine move on the single track Waterside Drill. Here’s a satellite view of the area
(If you drag the satellite view south along the tracks, you’ll see where the Wye track diverges from the Waterside track (lighter colored ballast) and further south, you’ll see the silver signal bridge and the double crossovers. If you want to see more detail, the Google view will zoom in one more level.)
To resolve the jackpot, the light engines simply would have taken the east leg of the Wye and waited till the stack train cleared. It would have then backed out and continued on it’s way on the south leg of the Wye. So why do it this way? Why not have the light power wait for the stack train at the crossovers, have the stack train cross over to the #2 main track, then have the light units move onto the Waterside track?
The main reason is that it is Union Pacific’s call. In general, the UP dispatcher would prefer to get the foreign moves off the UP and let them sort it out away from the UP main tracks that for the most part are pretty busy. It may be that the #2 track was already spoken for. It may also have been that the dispatcher needed the #1 track back. Were the light power to wait at the crossovers, both UP mains would be tied up till the stack train was fully clear, the interlocking had timed out and the light power had moved off the main onto the drill track.
So for me the take aways are several. Light power moves can add interest on the layout. Light power doesn’t always have to be road power sets from BNSF Oakland being turned. It’s highly desirable to have operating CTC signals on my layout. The UP likes to get the BNSF off it’s Cal-P rails. Two trains converging on the local tracks adds operational interest.
Brief glimpses of prototype action can be revealing.
- Coxy
