Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway

        Chillicothe Subdivision

                        Chilli Sub Operations:

The BNSF Chillicothe Subdivision is part of a PHYSICAL INTERCHANGE SYSTEM, based in central Ohio. We actually bring cars to each other's layouts, stage and route cars with in our interchange group. Our group is not a club, but just a close knit group of friends in Midwest Ohio. The cars are carefully packed with foam dividers after each operating session and transported to the next layout within the cars journey. Once delivered, cars are automatically routed back to home layouts or are forwarded to their next destination, via a simple color coded tag and card system we've devised. We route and track hundreds of car movements with no computers required!

It was started about 20 years ago by a group of modelers located in the Springfield, Ohio area. They got the idea to actually exchange each others cars through different divisions or staging yards on a couple of layouts that were designed as "Bridge Routes", which basically tied the entire network together. In 1989, myself and a friend, Garth Shiflett, were invited to attend an operating session on the largest bridge layout in the system at the time. The layout was owned by Rendel Schetter of Mechanicsburg, Ohio. In about 20 minutes of observation of how the cars from 8 different owners were staged, tracked and moved, I was hooked! In a matter of just a couple of operating sessions, we were both invited to participate. By interchanging cars with local layout owners, this meant that I did not need much more than a switching layout or a large car fleet. By means of a clever waybill system, all cars are routed and kept track of every step of the way.

In 1992, the entire system almost came to an end when the group lost  it's main bridge route because was Rendel having to move. We were faced with quite a dilemma. So, Garth and I got together and I designed a Union Pacific layout to fit Garth's basement.  It is based on the UP's Marysville Subdivision and closely followed the geography of Rendel's old layout. We were back in business in about 10 month's of construction! In the next couple of years, we improved the waybill system and made more user friendly and installed and "idiot proof" system of automatic home routing. To date, no cars have ever been lost in about 150,000 car movements!

When I decided to start construction of the Chillicothe Subdivision in1997, little did I know how important the layout was to become to the "Ohio Interchange" as we've become to be known as. I designed the layout to have fully functional crossing or "diamond" at a location right outside of Chicago, called "Nerska". This is where the Belt Railway of Chicago and the BNSF Mainline intersect. This means I have (4) main staging yards, plus (1) other at IHB Xing, near Mc Cook, IL., bringing the total train staging capacity up to 57 trains. My layout has assumed the "Bridge Route" role of our interchange group. In a typical operating session, between 750 and 1100 cars are transported across the Chilli Sub, in 35 to 50 trains! It's important to note, that the layout is loosely based on the prototype line and is basically free lanced to prove a broad industrial base for all of our interchange participants. It's worked out to be the best of both worlds!

Due to our interchange system, no train ever operates twice, there is no re-staging, no backing up of trains and duplication of train consists is almost impossible. With nearly 5000 cars in our pool within seven participating railroads, mathematically, you'd have a better chance hitting the lottery than seeing the same train twice in our interchange system!

The above photos and sidebar appeared in the Great Model Railroads 2007 issue. This is basically how the interchange works. If you have a group of good friends in your area that model roughly the same era, give it a try. It's a great way to add variety and different equipment to your layout without breaking the bank doing it!

                        Chilli Sub Statistics

Above is a spread sheet that I put together to show some record of train movements beside the Dispatcher's Train Sheet. The total car movements do not include all Belt Railway moves, which can easily add another 100 or so cars to this total.

A Typical Chilli Op. Session requires a minimum of  (1) Dispatcher, (1) Tower Operator, (1) Yard Master and (8) Engineers and 90 locomotives. A typical schedule includes about 45 trains and takes about 4 - 5 hours to complete. Recently, Galesburg/Willow Springs and Willow Springs/Galesburg locals were added and have proven to be quite effective in handling the heavy traffic being delivered to the Chilli.

The most unique aspect about our interchange is never knowing how many trains or how many cars will traverse the system!