The railroad in this scenario is the Southern Railway, but with the fictitious Embreeville branch.  The branch runs from two points on the Southern Railway, from Meridian Junction to the Inman Yard.  All names (except for Blue Creek) are from actual locations on the Southern RY, but none are representative of their namesakes.  Leased or off-road power rarely makes an appearance.

The Meridian local originates from Meridian Yard, just South of Meridian Junction (represented by the staging), and switches out the industries where the car amounts are labeled in red underlined text, so it only operates out to the Blue Ridge siding.  The Inman local originates from the Inman Yard (represented by the staging), and switches out the industries where the car amounts are labeled in blue italic text, so it only operates out to the Clinchfield interchange.  Each local retrieves empty coal hoppers from the Clinchfield interchange, delivers them to the appropriate mines/loaders, and returns loaded hoppers to the Clinchfield interchange (while not necessarily in that order, which is up to the operator).  As in the other scenarios, the piggyback car is switched between the interchange and siding, and the rest of the cars originate from, and return to their perspective yards.

 

Motive power for this operating scheme can be found here.

 

An option for this operating scheme would be to run a through train taking cars from Inman yard to Meridian yard, and/or a through train from Meridian yard to Inman yard.  Since these trains don't need to perform any switching duties, they can be longer than the passing siding.  Since there are only two staging tracks, and due to the length of those staging tracks, there is no room for any of these extra trains in staging.  At this time, I will simply have to build these trains on the layout itself (no big deal).  I could also use a staging extension (see Track Plan) to properly "stage" those extra trains, or I could build them on an interchange extension (see Track Plan) instead of directly on the layout.

The rules in this scenario are:

1) No cars can be left behind at a siding, because the mainline needs to be kept clear for other trains.

2) Due to the high priority of the piggyback traffic, the local that is scheduled into Blue Creek first must switch the piggyback cars, and since the piggyback cars may need to be switched out more than once a day, subsequent locals need to check in for up-to-date piggyback car movements.

An alternative method of operating this scenario would be to have the coal hoppers and piggyback cars follow the same routes mentioned above, but randomly determine which yard the other cars originate from or return to.  This can be done with the following cards (black for inbound, red for outbound):

 

4-Kings      - Covered hoppers (2 inbound, 2 outbound)

2-Queens   - Tank cars

2-Jacks      - Box cars for warehouse (use more jacks if more box cars are being switched at the warehouse)

2-10s         -Misc. cars for C&O interchange

2-9s           -Box cars for Embreeville

2-Aces       -Misc. cars for L&N interchange

 

I will then shuffle the cards, and deal them out into two piles, one for each local.  It is possible that one local might have many more inbounds, and the other might have many more outbounds.  This might sound undesirable at first, but it adds to the variety.  The largest possible train that can result from this would be nine cars plus caboose, and that would only be for a short distance.  While running a nine-car train would be too awkward for the whole trip, one or two circuits would be a little challenge without making it too difficult as to ruin the fun.  All I would have to do is double up motive power, possibly including some leased or off-road power.  If I decide that I want to keep car counts even after all, I could either deal the black and red cards separately, or I could simply deal only one color of cards, and just have the locals pick up a car for every one it drops off.

 

Another variable that could be added would be other yard-to-yard traffic, either in place of, or in addition to the extra through trains mentioned earlier.  I could add any number of deuce through eight cards to the deal to represent cars to be taken from one yard to the other.  If one of these cards is dealt to a local, then that local brings the car from it's yard and leaves it off at some siding or spur for the other local to pick up (of course, depending on which local it is on, that car might sit until the next session), or the train could be required to make the complete trip to the other yard.

 

Down the line, I could put together a simple program (either a standalone or spreadsheet) which will perform the card functions (with options), the dice rolling functions for each of the operational schemes, and produce a switching list of cars.