ome of you are probably sitting up at this – where is Robert operating now? Tampa? Miami? Atlanta? Nome?

Nope, right down at our own Orlando N-Trak Clubhouse.

West Fork is the little switching layout Steve and I (mostly Steve) assembled. It runs on batteries (seemingly forever) and is interesting. Essentially you have a lead that can hold an engine and three cars. The main can hold five. The two sidings, three apiece. You’ve got eight cars to shuffle and need to get five (in the right order) on the main.

Index switching? How long could this possibly take?

Well, Greg and I sat down to run it today and our first go was 25-30 minutes. And this was on a layout smaller than Tuscarora.

We ran it for about 90 minutes or maybe a little more, and got four runs out of it. I think our best session took about fifteen minutes. Its a real puzzler, and given the small size, shows what you could do. Oh, you could scenic this up for a microlayout at home – maybe as a fruit shed switcher, a coal mine, an auto plant, whatever melts your choo-choo butter. For us, we need to leave the scenery off since this is transportable.

The final moves of a session. Random tokens determine the cars to pull (and the order to classify). Roofwalks denote the color. All in all, that method worked well. (Photo: Mike D)

But fun? It was a lot of fun. We can easily set this up at the club for some running sometime (if I can get the staging done for next week, I might pull it out and give it a go again). But it is enjoyable. And the overall plan is to take it to a show and let the public see just how much fun switching can be.

Oh, and Steve? The magnetic uncouplers never did uncouple a single car.

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P.S. And why is it called “West Fork”? Because you drill off the west (left) side of the layout, and the track arrangement looks like a fork.