SW4 pushes a string of empty hopper cars toward the mill for loading with woodchips.
THE BEARPAW LUMBER COMPANY ROUTE is a simple switching layout designed to demonstrate the workings of Trainz dynamic industries. You may find it addictive.

The small but elusive city of Bearpaw is an attractive tourist destination along the Canadian Pacific mainline through the Canadian Rockies. Its main industry is the thriving Bearpaw Lumber Company, which operates around the clock, turning logs into lumber and woodchips. The company manages to keep a Canadian Pacific switching locomotive busy moving empty hopper cars and flatcars loaded with logs from the sidings alongside the main to the mill, and returning the flats loaded with lumber and the hoppers loaded with woodchips.


Plan from TrainzMap.

The square layout is built on four baseboards each about a half-mile on a side. In the center is Bearpaw Lake, shaped something like a bear's paw and hence the name. The CP mainline wraps around all sides of the layout, disappearing in both directions into portals, which receive and dispatch trains. Four trains are dispatched randomly at 9-minute intervals in the counter-clockwise direction, and five are dispatched randomly at 13-minute intervals in the clockwise direction. Logs are brought in by counter-clockwise trains; empties by clockwise trains. Loads are shipped out in both directions. The train mix includes passenger trains in both directions, which stop at the Bearpaw station to load/unload passengers. There is also a group of locomotives deadheading in the clockwise direction. This enables you, the operator, to swap the switching locomotive for one of the deadheading ones if you like.


F7-led passenger train stops at Bearpaw Station.

Operations

As operator, your job is to keep the flow of empties and loads moving. The mill has certain capacities, which you can adjust. When those capacities are reached the mill shuts down. You might want to check the Waybills from time to time to see what the mill's needs are.


Unloading logs from flatcars.


Loading woodchips into hopper cars.


Loading lumber onto flatcars.

Incoming trains have a minute or two-minute layover before continuing on. This is a good time to take control of a train, if you like, in order to pick up or drop off cars. To take over a train, select it by clicking on the locomotive or by selecting its driver and issuing the "Stop train" command (hold down the control key and right-click the locomotive to bring up the menu of commands). When you are finished with the train you can just send it on its way and it will eventually be consumed by the portal.

Be careful when switching cars. An incorrectly thrown switch can easily derail a consist, effectively ending the session. Switches can be thrown inadvertently when you click on a distant locomotive. Instead of selecting the loco you can end up throwing the switch without realizing it. At times like these you will be glad if you remembered to save the session at some convenient place during operations.


GP9's in the thick of things.

Continued

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Article and screen shots �2007 Alfred Barten. All rights reserved.

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