Revisiting this thread had me thinking again. Sometimes the greatest routes don't have to be the biggest and grandest of them all. My Gloucester Terminal Electric Railroad is a spin-off of George Fisher's Gloucester Terminal. I modified the original route quite a bit, put up trolley wires, and setup some trams running a circuit on the mainline alongside diesels pulling short trains for switching the various industries. I put the earlier version of this route up on the DLS, for anyone interested, however, that's not the point I'm making here. There are a lot of shortcomings in the original design, and the early revision has since been updated with a complete realignment in the yard to make it more useful, added a branches out to West Gloucester and one out to Eastern Point. The complete route is about 7.5 miles from West Gloucester to Eastern Point, or about 3 miles each direction from Gloucester yard!
The base operating session has trams run the circuit from Gloucester to Eastern Point, Inner Cove, a shopping mall, and out to West Gloucester along with trams running to and from the outskirts into the main crossover terminal. This keeps the local tracks busy. In the meantime there is the real, slight modified, Boston and Maine Rockport branch, which in reality has a 4-track passenger layover and a single platform at that end. In my version Boston and Rockport exist as portals from which I send out, about every 30 minutes in both directions, MBTA commuter trains and various freights. The freights, especially with their size, are fictional since there hasn't been any freight in real life along this line since the early 1980s, and even then it was a small local. In my version, there are long freights of containers and other mixed freights to add interest to the operation. Since this track is strictly point to point, there is little interaction between the trains on this line and anything else on the route. The passenger trains do stop at West Gloucester and Gloucester as they go from Boston to Rockport and vice versa.
All in all, there's probably about a dozen active AI trains going about their business pretty well, though sometimes they get a snit and decide to make things up and skip a track mark or station, which of course is frustrating and I've yet to find out who causes this.
So anyway with the base session going, I'll switch some freight cars and bring them to various industries. This process requires getting an engine or two from the engine terminal and building a consist. Every car in the yard is similar to one that is used somewhere on the route. It means if there's a CryoVac reefer, there's most likely one elsewhere on the route to be switched out and replaced with the one in the yard. The yard, I should mention, contains various boxcars, reefers, a handful of covered hoppers, some tanks, and a few flats.
Once I've setup my train, depending upon the consist, I'll head out on to the mainline. With the constant run of trams moving on the routes, I need to check the map (my dispatcher) to see if there's a tram or two nearby. I'll sometimes have to wait a few minutes or longer until these move along and out of the way before I pull out of the yard.
On to the mainline we go. In this case, we're going to the fish pier out on Eastern Point. This requires hogging the mainline most of the way and tying up traffic. The mainline has speeds up to 45 mph, which is okay for the trams, but these freight cars require a bit slower, maybe 20-30 mph all the way. The consist is all Alco powered with two former CR RS-27s leading the way along with a former B&M S4 behind pulling the a string of 4 boxcars. This doesn't sound like a lot of cars, but there are some tight curves and some steeper grades so that needs to be taken into consideration.
Eventually we get out to Wonnset Jct. and we can relax as we head out to Eastern Point. There's company along the line, but it's not as hectic as the rest of the route. Various seaports and industries now give way to trees, big fancy houses, and horse farms as we head through Southeast Harbor, which actually has a good spur there and takes more than a few cars.
Eastern Point its self has a trolley loop and a station as well as a rather rusty and decrepit, well more like less than maintained branch down to the fish piers. The train pulls into the old branch and the RS27s run around the train and wait up on the lead while the S4 switches out two boxcars at a time and brings them down to the pier. The track radius are tight here and it requires starting up the old Plymouth diesel to do the switching. Once all the cars are switched out, the S4 brings his small train up hill, and meets up with the RS27s to head back to the yard. If they are lucky, they can time the operation just right so the crew can stop for lunch at the diner before heading back to the Gloucester Terminal Yard.
The trip back to the yard becomes hectic again once they hit the Inner Harbor to West Gloucester and Gloucester mainline. This can get tricky and timing is of the essence here. If we hit the timing wrong, we get stuck in a parade of yellow lights all the way. If we hit it just right, we might get a single yellow and one red at Roger's Street where the big crossover line terminal and loop is located. After Roger's Street, it's home sailing to the yard lead and we can relax. Since these cars are full of fish and seafood, they are put up on the connection for a mainline freight to pick-up, or a local will leave the yard and head up to Rockport with a delivery.
How long did all this take? This operation takes at least 2-1/2 hours, and can be longer if we run into traffic, not counting dumb AI moves which need to be occasionally sorted. Sometimes after heading back to the yard, I'll make another switching run. This time it might be the LPG and oil dock which also has some other warehouses to service. There's a little switcher located there too to take care of the warehouse branch. Other times I'll do a short trip to the brewery located along the old Riverside Railroad branch. This means taking a good number of cars and a single switcher down to the yard there for the brewery then having their switcher do the work of switching out some tanks, boxcars and hoppers. There's usually another load of empties in that yard and that means I'll be taking those home as well.
A day with trips around the route can take up to 9 real hours of driving. Yes, that's a full workday of switching cars. This is what makes a route great.