So what do we do with our trains?

A while ago I asked why we went continental and it drew a good response. As a beginner i would like to know 'what do we do with our trains?. There are times I envisage sitting on a warm summers night, glass in hand ,just watching and listening to the trains going round, but what else? does anybody have an operations plan? Or perhaps see how many trains you can run at once! Or is it just that layouts are never really finished and there is always something to do?

Please tell.

mikey

run um to death... depending on how im feeling that day, if im good to go, and the weathers playing nice, i run a few differnt trains, or if i feel like building something, a train will trundle round, while im working on something, even if im indoors(like now, )on da net, 1 still trundling round.... i can be fixing a train, upgradening a loco, coach, and still have something running, if im not so good, its a book, and sit watching a train going round.... 12 hour sessionms are NOT uncommon....

Working for a living, I run them as often as I can.
Probably amounts to about six hours a week in winter and about fifteen in summer.
I have no shelf queens.
They all run.
If, like this summer, the weather is abysmal every weekend, I sit in the garage mucking about with various little projects.

Mostly, I run them... roundy roundy, I confess. But at a prototypical speed, honest. Occasionally we run a freight which drops off or collects traffic. The H&DLR (Birkental division!) does have a full timetable which is operationally viable (i.e. trains cross at passing places, never two trains in one section). It is a hybrid based on workings from the Steyrtalbahn, Zillertalbahn and Geilenkirchener Kreisbahn. As such, it enables me to run a complete railway - something the H&DLR aspires to be, one day. I'd share it with you all for what it's worth but I can't see a way of attaching a pdf file.

Edit - here's a link to a picture copy of the timetable... Birkentalbahn timetable

I, Like Mike like to run 'em, so as I work in the garden one or two will be running around in circles! even if I'm in the shed I can hear 'em going round! I will have the live steam circuit finished soon and I can then run steamies round and round at the same time!!

I let them run, (when I have a track that works) I will have two continuous circuits and one auto end to end as I like to see them trundling around as I work on something else or do some gardening. I will have shunting areas as well so hopefully plenty of action. All I have got to do is get it all running next year.

Sometimes I run them and watch - there are three separate circuits if I wish to run three trains simultaneously.
Other times I "operate" trains - station to station, shunting, pick up goods - not a rigid timetable by any stretch, but something which has an imaginary "purpose".
I run whenever I can and every 2 or 3 months half a dozen G Scale mates come round for the day and we run all kinds of trains, eat drink and be merry type thing.

At times , if there are a few trains out, its fun to work out how each train can get to a given destination whilst allowing other trains to achieve the same thing in the opposite direction.

Night running is fun too.........I just need to fix up a few more lights at stations and in buildings.

All good fun

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