Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you.

Thank you very much Martin. These videos are fun to make too!

Thanks Jeff. I always try to put something new in every video.

Thank you! We do run Santa Fe trains between Rice Yard and South Denver, so you'll see the ATSF in a future video.

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! I know Berthoud well -- next town north of Longmont. Just a bit too far for my basement. :-)

Thank you! That is dual gauge... standard and 3-foot narrow. The switches in Boulder are hand-laid. Fourteen switches and 28 frogs. Some switches have one frog, others two, and others have three!

@@CSRYfan will we ever see any narrow gauge action?

I hope to have some NG action in the future.

From your pen to the algorithms eye (ear?). Thank you!

Yah, a bit of a hiatus while finishing the Boulder Depot. Glad you are enjoying the series!

Actually, that was a "cross-dissolve" between clips to imply elapsed time and keep the video crisp. I inadvertently made the cut between clips so that the first mail car was superimposed on itself, which made it look like the engineer did not stop. That was an error on my part. There were actually minutes between the clips as that pick-up was a bit down the track. You can see its position in the scene when the Shoshone arrives and passes the station. So the engine and first mail car had to "go deep" to get it. I'll get better at this!

Thank you Peter!

Nah, no DCC decoder people. They're DC. ;-) Glad you enjoyed the video!

Thank you! And just a bit of weathering makes them perfect. :-)

Thank you! It does take a long time... for me anyway.

That's the plan! And thank you for your support!!

Thank you -- glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Yep. C&S Ry was absorbed into the Burlington Northern in 1981, and went into the BNSF when the BN merged with the ATSF in 1996. The C&S Northern Division now carries BNSF traffic between Denver and Cheyenne.

Thanks Tony! Model train operations need to be complex enough to keep it entertaining and engaging -- but not any more than that!!!

Rough translation from Google Translate: "Hello, this is Rainer from Germany, I think it's great how realistic your railway operations are, it's just wonderful to hear and to see, keep it up, have a merry Christmas and pleasant holidays, warm greetings from Erfurt in Germany." Danke Rainer! The same to you and yours this holiday season.

I do too. :-) Thank you!

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And the communication details are part of what makes operations fun.

The RY Coaling Tower was guestimated from photos, on-site foundation measurements, and an 8x11" 1948 C&S Ry drawing of basic measurements I found at the Colorado RR Museum. My July 2004 Model Railroader article describes how I built the animated model, and includes the scale drawings I created. This iconic structure is in a ton of locomotive photos from the 1950s, so no depiction of Rice Yard is complete without it. It was well worth the effort!

@@CSRYfan awesome! July 2004, gonna have to pick that one up. I've always been more of a UP guy and I'm still learning all the sources for Q/C&S reference material. I have a 902 just begging to be photographed and this scene seemed perfect. photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-mKp9JS3/3/O/i-mKp9JS3.jpg

Yep, that's a famous (among C&S fans) photo by M. C. Trent. No. 902 is under the coaling tower on the night of November 21, 1958. This photo was used on the album cover of "All Steamed Up".

That's a great town, with a nice C&S Ry station. I've taken a few photos there.

I'm glad you enjoyed it and found it helpful.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you. They are a good crew, and they really make these videos special. I'm lucky to have them.

Yes, but usually only if there is a forward and back. For example, No. 46's crew was probably out of time to get to Valmont before No. 45 was due to leave. Without train order no. 16, No. 46 would have to pull out to clear No. 23's departure at Niwot, and then back in to clear the arrival of No. 45. THAT is a saw by.

@@CSRYfan Thank you for replying. That's not what I learned in John Allen's books on realistic operation. In fact, if I recall the illustration in Track Planning for Realistic Operation correctly, the short train pulled into the siding and then long train went around it. Your example at Niwot was an interesting alternative. One could imagine a line where all the trains in one direction are longer than the sidings but not the other, such as when a steep grade limits train length or most short trains are going in one direction and the long trains are empties, such as on the Minnesota Iron Range. Making one empty train from two formerly loaded trains could be a great way to cut crewing costs. If you don't have dynamic braking, such as when using steam power, taking an extra heavy train down a steep grade, like the 2% grade down to the Lake Superior ore docks at Duluth, MN, could be unsafe.

Ah yes, figure 3-5 in John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation. I had to look it up. :-) I'm not one to argue with the Dean of Model Railroad Planning, so I'll concede to his definition of saw by. :-) I will say that which train goes on the siding is operation dependent and subject to change by the Dispatcher. In the case of the meet at Niwot, the short train was No. 23, a first class passenger train. 23 took the main track, as the superior train. It also had a scheduled stop for passengers, and the depot is on the main track. Standard operating procedure for No. 23.

@@CSRYfan That's fascinating, especially with the wrinkle of having a passenger train making a scheduled stop during a meet. I hope your videos help more people realize that operating model trains realistically is fun.

Thank you! I don't know Mark -- sounds like another modeler following his hometown railroad like me.

Glad you liked it! Thank you very much.

Thanks Steve -- will do.

Thank you very much!

Good idea for a link in the video. The good voice sound is from individual mics on the cast and the video editor I use: DaVinci Resolve. There is a great sound editor -- Fairlight -- in DR.

@@CSRYfan I looked for mics on your people and did not see them, either I'm going blind or you hid them well :)

You are not going blind. :-)

Thanks Roger. The Mainline is 210 feet visible, and 40 feet through staging and helix. See the layout website at csrailway.com for lots of photos, track plan, operating documents, and more.

Thanks! Awesome!@@CSRYfan

Thank you very much!

Joe, that's an original Broadway Limited Heavy Mikado. I bought and modified three as soon as they came out: Nos 805, 807, and 809. That was about 20 years ago I believe, or more. The big changes were scratchbuilding oil bunkers and adding feedwater heaters: Elesco on the 805 (not in this video), and Worthington on the other two. I believe everything else was just paint and decals for lettering. Art Mitchell had a great article in Railmodel Journal Oct and Nov 1997 issues on creating No. 807. I did not go to the length that Art did to build his beautiful and faithful rendition, but he really shows you how to do it! Look for No. 805 in a future video.

These are wonderful. You did a absolutely beautiful Job. I have wanted to do a Burlington 2-8-2. And do a Burlington 2-10-2. I have a proto 200 Colorado and Southern 2-10-2 and was gonna kitbash it and turn it into. Burlington 2-10-2. But upon further examination on the Q's 2-10-2's only a few had southern valve gear. So I am on the fence for it

Thanks!

Yep, and we'll need a dispatcher in a future video soon enough...

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you. The time table reading is shown very quickly and briefly in the video to keep viewers interest. In reality, when crews receive their orders and clearance, they typically take a few minutes to check their assignment against the time table. So don't be impressed with the speed of the timetable reading in the video -- that's just Hollywood. The time table design helps with the reading. As noted in the video, scheduled trains that have to meet each other are shown in bold. So there are no "gotchas" hidden in the schedule for first, second, or third class trains. In the video, train No. 41 reaches the Prospect register at 9:24 am or later. Any superior (first or second class) train that has a time at Prospect during the 12 hours before 9:24 am -- which would be 9:24 pm to 9:24 am -- must be on the Prospect register before No. 41 can leave. To figure out which superior trains meet this criteria, I find it helpful to think of the face of a clock (analog clock for the young at heart). The trains of each class are shown sequentially from the center of the time table out, so I follow that order. For example, checking Northward Trains, No. 31 is at Prospect at 10:33 am -- not between 9:24 pm and 9:24 am, so not of concern. Likewise, neither is No. 23 at 5:33 pm. But No. 29 at 9:43 pm *is* in that interval -- just barely. BTW, I find it easiest to figure this out at the register, checking as I go. And this is not something I can do as fast as presented in the video -- as I said, it's just Hollywood. If you continue, you hopefully come up with the 5 first and second class trains listed in the video. If not, I made a mistake! I hope that helps.

@@CSRYfan I will review the video again tonight. Thanks

And to make it easier, print out the time table from the link in the description. Print both sides on one sheet of paper, and then fold in half to make the time table the crews use in an operating session.

@@CSRYfan I do a double fold "TT"/ Job description for my layout. I just have not got to to the actual time table part. Mine is folded one more time after the 1st fold to make it into a small slim booklet. Thanks. 23 for 2023? I have mine set up that way too. Thanks for the copy it will help add tom my ETT on my layout.

Yep, the C&S rolls through little towns that have grown to become home to millions along the Colorado Front Range. Still plenty of trains, now the BNSF, between Denver and Cheyenne.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you. A good time was had by all!

Thank you very much! More to come...

You're very welcome. I really enjoy the added fun of TT&TO operations.

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. The Utah Jct interlocking is controlled by an automated circuit. As an approaching train is detected, the circuit randomly, decides whether to clear for the train or hold it for a random period of time -- up to two minutes of real time. I plan to have a future video on Utah Jct and the Rio Grande's North Yard.

Thank you Tim!

Thank you -- more to come.

Glad you enjoyed it!