Passenger traffic consisted primarily of commuter traffic between Hartford and Waterbury, with a daily roundtrip to Bridgeport, and another to Boston. Traffic increased starting in 1950, first with the reassignment of Comet, and then the Shoreliners. This was shortlived as passenger service suffered during and after the McGinnis administration. The station was torn down in 1956, and service discontinued less than a decade later.

Freight traffic, on the other hand, was in a steady decline until it temporarily increased due to the Korean conflict. The two major freight routes were Hartford-Maybrook and Cedar Hill-Holyoke and included LCL traffic from the freight depot at the Whiting Street Yard destined for the fast freight NE-1 known as Speed Witch. The Maybrook freights were discontinued in 1949 only to be reinstated in 1951.

 

Way (local) freights were minimal in New Britain. In some years where there are two daily round trips to Maybrook there is no way freight through New Britain. When traffic was reduced to one or no Maybrook freights, a way freight would stop on the way to and from New Hartford long enough to pick up and drop off cars at New Britain Yard. The switching itself was handled by the local switchers. In some years, the New Hartford way freight would terminate in New Britain instead of Hartford.

While I've got a nearly complete collection of passenger, freight, and employee timetables for the era, due to the nature of the layout I will not be running timetable and train order operations against a fast clock. Instead, trains will be run sequentially to simulate the actual operating day, but without worrying about meeting a particular schedule.

The entire layout is within yard limits, so no train holds superiority, although the passenger trains in particular must still meet their schedules. In reality, due to the relatively low frequency of trains in a branchline operation, the double-track mainline, and the way the railroad designed access to the industries, the two local switchers are rarely in the way of the mainline trains.

Operations will utilize a variation of the car card/waybill operating scheme. I'm not planning on using car cards as they are not prototypical, and also not needed on a layout this small. Almost every freight that passes through town either picks up or drops off cars. In addition, an REA car is spotted at New Britain station for pickup on one of the later passenger trains each day.

Throughout the session I will also add empty requests from various industries, and I'll note when cars have been either emptied or loaded and can be moved during the session, and a new car spotted.

I'm basing my waybills on actual New Haven forms, although I'll have variations for foreign roads as well, since the actual waybill actually depends on where the car was loaded. Eventually I might find enough of a selection of foreign road waybills to make more accurate variations for each road.

Pockets for the cars are designed into the fascia, and the waybills will be ready at the start of each session. I've also tried some software products, and Ship It! looks promising, but I'll be doing the paperwork by hand, at least initially. Although not entirely prototypical, I'll probably start with making waybills only for cars that will be switched in New Britain. The rest of the cars will probably be on several 'block' waybills, indicating their final destination, but not having individual waybills for each car. This is simply because there is no other switching beyond the limits of New Britain and there seems to be little reason to create or carry that paperwork.

Time will tell how much actual traffic will be switched in a session, but I'm guessing it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 cars a session.