Role playing for operation

Whenever model railroad operating sessions are discussed, the topic of role playing usually comes up. By that, we mean fulfilling a role of a railroad employee, most visibly the engineer of a locomotive. And of course there are other roles too, from dispatcher to yardmaster to brakeman, and not least, conductor. And there are others. These roles are played during the session.  I’ve recently posted a blog about those kinds of roles (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/01/realistic-layout-operation-part-3.html ).

But awhile back, my friend Jim Providenza pointed out some additional roles that end up being played, before and after operating sessions. These too are railroad jobs that have to be done, every bit as much as those that are pursued during operating.

An obvious one is track maintainer. It is a rare layout indeed that does not require maintenance, repair, upgrade or even replacement of track elements between operating sessions. (We also clean track, which the prototype does not need to do, so I don’t mean that part.) I’m referring instead refer to the rails and their correct arrangement.

As a person who has, to date, written fully 14 episodes on a continuing series of posts, all titled “Trackwork wars” in part, I know this well. (To check on that series, you can readily find them by using “trackwork wars” as the search term in the search box in the upper right of this post.) And I know from talking to many a layout owner, I am not alone.

I recognize, in my own layout, that there are areas that have been perfect in operation for years, but there are also trouble areas that I know will need work from time to time. The scene shown below, with an ancient NMRA Mark II gauge, is all too familiar.

Another kind of role, of course, is car maintainer and locomotive maintainer. Most cars and most engines are fine in any given session, but a coupler may be pulled out of alignment, or truck screws get too tight for trucks to rotate into curves, and so on. Between sessions, they have to be brought back up to standards.

On my layout, and I think on many, a significant time-sink of an off-session role is that of clerk. All the paperwork for a session, from train line-ups to notices of all kinds, have to be prepared, and of course whatever system of car forwarding is in use has to be exercised to provide the right waybills, car cards or other documents for the session.

Hopefully, of course, we don’t encounter an immense amount of such paperwork, so that setting up an op session doesn’t require a prototypical force of clerks (SP yard office photo).

Instead, we work through whatever our system requires, as it’s been developed for reasonably efficient resetting of the layout for the next session. As often as not, I find myself setting the waybills against the cars to make sure I have every one covered, and the bill is correct for the session. (Visiting operators are discouraged from doing this except at the outset of a session, when all cars need to be identified.)

What is shown above is not so different from the yard clerk attaching route cards to freight cars in the yard, as in this Missouri Pacific photo (courtesy Charlie Duckworth).  

So as Jim observed, we do play some roles between sessions, just as we play them during sessions. It may be a different kind of “play value,” but it’s mostly enjoyable just the same. And of course the core of all this is that you choose to have an operating session at all. My own sessions on the present layout are about to reach 100 in number.

Tony Thompson