I want to try this once to see if it gains interest or flops.
If you are the type of person that works every puzzle in the newspaper then you may fancy yourself as a switchman and/or a whiz conductor on the local. I am grateful that there are railroad people on this forum that are far more experienced than myself, and in the genuine interest of wanting to pick up a bit more knowledge, even though there is no chance of me ever handling a real switch list again, I want to pose this scenario to see how many moves it takes to build your train:
Conductor Yeargan is a great fun loving guy and it is a pleasure to fill vacancies on his crew, yet he is prone to set out the work on his train in order to get over the road. He relies constantly on the "next man" to get the switching done. In order to make the upcoming grades he feels as though he should set out some tonnage, so at Mustang siding he sets out 3 boxcar loads for the Rock Island at Chickasha-4 loaded tank cars for the refinery at Cyril-and 4 mt 2bay covered hoppers for Dolese rock plant at Fletcher. In your train you have the same cars on the headend and in station order. When you approach Mustang siding to pick up Yeargan's slop how many moves will it take you to get your setouts together?
With "SAFETY being the most important discharge of duty", and assuming the least number of moves is the safest way to go about this, how will you perform this pickup?
Rules: From a complete stop each motion forward or backward counts as a move. No kicking (although we used to do this all the time). Dangerous cars need to be buried 5 deep from the locomotives.
Show us your stuff, and later I may offer my solution.
BTW don't all siding have switches at both ends.
