FREIGHT MANAGEMENT by Rik Bennett

Do you run trains for fun, or do they have a purpose? Rik Bennett explains how he operates to a timetable.

When I run a full operating session on the Peckforton Light Railway (see Garden Rail, September 2020), I enjoy the challenge of running reasonably realistic trains, with passenger services following a timetable that is based on the Southwold Railway timetable from 1923. However, I see passenger trains as a bit of a distraction from what I really enjoy, and that is the transportation and management of goods on the railway.

At the start of each full session, which represents a typical day’s running on the railway, I use a computerised freight management program that I have devised to generate manifests for the movement of goods wagons on the railway for the two daily mixed trains and pickup goods. The manifests are then printed out and when time comes for those trains to run, the make-up of each train and destination for each wagon is decided for me. Although the algorithm used by the program is weighted to ensure only plausible movements are generated, it sometimes throws up some unexpected transfers, which I would never have considered without its intervention.

The underlying principle for my freight management program is that each wagon on my railway is given a percentage weighting that it will travel from any one destination to another on the system. So, for example, the weightings for coal wagons are that they could travel from the main terminus, Beeston Market, to any other station and back again. The stations which serve larger communities have a higher percentage weighting for coal wagons than smaller communities. Coal wagons are then highly likely to return to Beeston Market once they are empty. Closed vans could travel anywhere on the system, but there is a greater chance they will travel to Bulkeley, where they are needed for conveying soft fruit. Timber wagons are more likely to travel to and from Peckforton where the sawmill is located and wagons containing beer barrels are heavily weighted to travel to and from Beeston Castle where there is a brewery.

The various screen-shots and example print-outs hopefully explain how the system works.

Although I first described my computerised freight management system in the June 2012 edition of Garden Rail, the program has been completely rewritten and enhanced. This version was written using a freely downloadable programming envi

ronment called Livecode. Livecode is based on a package called Hypercard, which was once distributed free of charge with Apple Mackintosh computers many years ago. It uses a high-level (almost conversational) programming language called HyperTalk.

As the name suggests, the original Hypercard program took the concept of a card-index type of database and added features to it, thereby enabling cards to contain interactive objects such as buttons, sliders text-entry fields and display fields

– as evidenced by the screen-shots. What makes this programming environment particularly versatile is that once a program (or “stack” – as in a stack of cards) has been created, it can be exported as a stand-alone program for others to use. Having originated on Apple computers the exported programs can be created to run on Apple computers and Windows PCs (and also Linux). In addition, it is possible to create Apps that can be run on iPhones or Android phones and tablets.

I have made this stand-alone freight management program freely available via Dropbox in both Apple and PC formats should anyone be interested in using it. I haven’t yet got around to exporting it as a phone or tablet app as that would require some re-working of the screens. One day, I might get around to it. In the meantime, I have created a cut-down version, which runs on my rather antiquated Psion pocket computer that enables me to operate a similar system out in the garden on the fly. You may have figured out that I feel a lot more at home with older technology than new-fangled gadgets such as smartphones.

My freight management program is based on a system, which I devised for my indoor 00 gauge railway in the days when one computer needed the whole floor of an office block. That system used punched cards, a six-sided dice and a knitting needle. Each wagon on my indoor railway has its own card with six holes punched across the top. To determine which wagons will depart for the fiddle yard from the station, I roll the dice and pass the knitting needle through the relevant hole at the top of the stack of cards for the wagons presently in the station. Wagons that travel less frequently have several holes snipped through, whereas those that travel more often have very few holes snipped through and hence are more likely to be skewered by the needle. Cards that are hooked are then shunted onto the train.

For those unfamiliar with the Peckforton Light Railway, it is a 45mm gauge, roughly 15mm scale model representing a hypo

thetical three-foot narrow-gauge railway that might have existed primarily to serve the copper mines located in the Peckforton Hills in mid-Cheshire. The mines actually existed but were never particularly profitable, despite an optimistic survey conducted in 1906, which predicted the mine could yield copper ore to a value of at least £1.1m (approx., £130m today)!

My theoretical history of the railway assumes that this potential was exploited, leading to the discovery of further rich seams that have sustained the railway ever since. Furthermore, the railway supported the communities it served despite competition from road transport and survived the Great Depression due, in part, to the patronage of the local landowner, Lord Tollemache who (in reality) was keen on technology and, though not relevant to the railway, croquet and bridge.

My model shows what might have existed in the year 1932. There are five stations on the line – two termini and three intermediate stations, plus the Copper Mine at the end of a branch and a Mill Siding (similar to that on the Southwold Railway). There are several lineside industries that have become dependent on the railway including a brewery, sawmill, sand quarry, soft fruit farms and a boneworks for processing animal carcases and manure into fertiliser and gelatine. As a consequence, goods traffic on the line is extremely heavy – hence the need for a system to keep the operations manager on his toes!

My freight management program certainly adds a lot of interest for me when running the railway – I gain great enjoyment from the logistical puzzles of shunting the wagons off and on the trains at each station - and I do enjoy watching a mixed freight train meandering through the foliage!

There we have it, remote control, no long runs of wiring to go intermittent and very low cost. Why not give it a try?

I then generate possible manifests for the day’s goods train movements. Depending on the weather forecast and demands on my time, this, as a minimum, will be the pickup goods (maximum eight to 10 wagons) and either one or two mixed trains (maximum four wagons). The program shows each possible set of wagon movements for each train and I can decide whether or not I like the look of them. In this example, we see that I have used the system to create a possible Down pickup goods train. Before clicking the ‘Create Train’ button, I enter the name for the train, its length, how busy I want the service to be (when it’s quieter, only very urgent goods are sent – ie wagon transits with a high level of probability – and vice versa) and whether unloading time should be allowed before the wagons are included in a future train. In this example, the program has suggested a train of seven wagons, with Timber wagon 2 travelling from the Beeston Market to Bickerton and timber wagon No. 8 travelling from the sawmill at Peckforton to the Copper Mine with a load of pit props. Once I click “Accept Train”, the wagons are assumed to have travelled to their intended destinations and so I am committed. I can then print out the manifest for the train.

The program is fired-up on my laptop and I print out a list showing the location of each item of goods rolling stock on the railway. I have five stations and three additional sets of sidings (the copper mine, the flour mill and the sand quarry) where goods rolling stock will be found at the start of a session. The program ‘remembers’ where each wagon was left at the end of the previous session but because I run ad hoc trains in between full sessions, stock can sometimes become misplaced. Hence the need to ensure all wagons are placed where the program expects them to be.

Once the wagons needed for Beeston Market have been parked in their sidings, the wagons for Bulkeley and Beeston Castle are taken delivered. Wagons for Bickerton and Peckforton are stored in another set of storage roads at the other end of the line. The redistribution of the stock usually takes about a half to three-quarters of an hour.

The goods wagons are removed from the storage sidings at Beeston Market and moved to their locations at the end of the previous session. In most cases, the wagons will have been grouped in the storage sidings according to their positions on the system when the previous session ended and so redeployment is simply a reverse of the storage process. The eagle-eyed may spot that I use camouflage netting to hide the less salubrious corners of my garden!

When it is time for the train to be shunted, the manifest is consulted to determine the consist. With mixed trains particularly, wagons are positioned fore or aft of the coaches, dependent on whether the intended sidings face Up or Down the line, to ensure there is minimal disruption to passengers while the wagons are being shunted at each station.

As you can see from this print-out, the manifest shows not only what wagons are needed to depart from each station, but also the wagons that need to be shunted off the train and into the sidings at each location. If you look at the entry for Peckforton Station, we can see that it will be sending the pit props wagon to the Copper Mine and receiving two wagons from Beeston Market.

The train winds its way down and up the line, shunting wagons off and on dependent on the requirements of the manifest. Here we see ex-Southwold Railway Manning Wardle loco No. 4 Bulkeley passing the Copper Mine.