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TIMESAVER
RULES & OPERATION
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Original
rules - Extended rules
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| The fact that John Allen's
Timesaver has inspired so many others to build identical
or very similar layouts based on his switching puzzle has
led to a certain variation of the "set rules"
on how to play this switching game. |
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| Original rules |
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The original rules put
forward by John Allen consisted of two components:
RULE A1:
"Switch the five cars to their destinations on
the layout."
RULE A2:
"Complete the switching as quickly as
possible."
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| On
the original Timesaver layout, John Allen
marked out the destinations for each car
before each game session and then set up
the cars in their "starting
positions", which also stayed the
same for every round of the game. Time
was a key element in the game (as the
name implies): you had to make the right
switching moves to get the cars to where
they were supposed to end up, but you
also had to do it as quickly as possible. This also meant that
apart from thinking ahead to do as little
switching as possible you also had to be
nimble with the controls for the
locomotive (which on the original
Timesaver operated with a set speed, so
you could only change the direction of
travel of the locomotive).
A game of
Timesaver was therefore set up this way
to provide individual players with
absolutely the same game configuration,
so that at the end of a game session
(perhaps an evening at a club, or even an
entire day at public shows) you would
have a winner: the operater who got the
switching done in the shortest period of
time.
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STARTING
POSITIONS
SWITCHING
ORDER (END POSITIONS)
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| Any accidents such as
derailments etc. would earn the switcher in charge a time
penalty. |
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In this illustration, five
distinct types of freight cars are used to make
spotting the car easier and the positions where
the cars are required to end up are marked down. Some
Timesaver layouts, especially those built for use
at public shows, have these destinations put down
permanently, i.e. they
never change.
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| Below
you can see all of these rules put to work on the
original Timesaver (together with its duplicate twin
layout in the foreground) at the NMRA convention 2000 in
San José. Orange colour tabs indicate where cars are to
be switched to, and the late Allan Fenton (right)
oversees the switching in progress with a stop-watch. |
Not all people, however,
appreciate the idea of having to operate trains
under the pressure of a clock ticking away, so a
variant rule emerged very soon after John Allen
first presented his original Timesaver concept:
RULE
A2 MODIFIED:
"Complete the switching with as few
moves as possible."
This obviously takes a bit of
the original challenge away, as it leaves the
operator with as much time to think about his
next moves as he likes - unless there is a set
amount of time for this (as in a tournament game
of chess) so that if you spend too much time
thinking to start with you will have none left
towards the end of the game.
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Picture by Franz Reichl,
used with kind permission
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| Also,
while it is fairly uncommon to have two operators
complete the switching in exactly the same time, there
are bound to be many draws if the number of moves is used
to determine how well an operator has done if a large
number of players try their hand at the game. |
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| Extended rules |
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| John
Allen's original Timesaver layout was conceived entirely
as a brain teaser and with the movement of rolling stock
as its one and only objective. Quite logically, the
layout therefore wasn't more than just a
"gameboard", and the track was laid out much
the way tracks are reduced to a schematic on control
panels. There was thus no scenery or decoration of any
kind, and industries were simply indicated by markers
next to the tracks. No fuss, no frills - just operation. |
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The twin copy of the
original Timesaver (on display at the San Diego
Model Railroad Museum)
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| Again,
as with the element of the clock, a number of modellers
liked the basic Timesaver idea but felt that a bare
layout had little visual appeal and that this aspect
needed improvement. However, by adding scenery and
structures, the entire locale as well as the
individual industries take on a more specific character -
the layout turns into "an urban industrial zone
served by the Southern Pacific" rather than just
"the Timesaver" and the spot on the layout
which says "boxcar goes here" turns into the
"Western Tooling Co." In other words: the
layout comes to life in the sense that it now tries to
portray a more or less realistic scene in model form -
almost like setting the stage for a theatrical play. |
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This
transition also tends to have an
influence on how stock is moved on many
scenicked Timesaver layouts. As the
layout's visual make-up becomes more
realistic, introducing more realistic
switching orders than the basic Timesaver
balances the layout's interesting scenery
with interesting operation. Most often,
the preliminary rule of such an
"extended operation" of a
Timesaver layouts is:
RULE
B1: "Switch
the five cars to randomly
assigned
destinations on the layout."
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| Taking
into account the fact that in real life it is highly
unlikely that exactly the same car would get switched to
exactly the same location over and over again, the
element of randomly deciding where the five cars are to
go is introduced. The switching gets under way once
the five cars on the layout have been randomly assigned
to the five possible destinations A-E. This
operation scheme is still very much based on the original
rules and still works on the "one destination, one
car" principle, meaning that every destination is
always assigned exactly one car. However, as there is
room for more than a total of 5 cars at destinations A-E,
additional items of rolling stock can be introduced:
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RULE
B1 MODIFIED:
"Switch a random number of cars to
randomly assigned destinations."
This extended operation
scheme does not stick to an equal distribution of
cars and may therefore assign more than one car
to a destination or none at all, making sure that
the maximum track capacity is not exceeded, i.e.
"D" cannot receive more than 2 cars.
Note that the numbers given
in the illustration below for track capacity
include the locomotive, i.e. there is no extra
length for the switcher.
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| Therefore,
if by chance two boxcars need to be spotted at both
industries "C" and "D", careful
planning is required as to how and when they are set out
- otherwise the run-round loop will become completely
blocked... There are numerous ways of randomly
assigning cars to destinations. With only five
destinations to handle, some very basic systems (such as
colour-coding the destinations and then using a dice
displaying these colours, or just giving the destinations
numbers from 1-5 and using an ordinary dice) will work
fine. However, some slightly more intricate systems can
add even more operational interest, especially if the
Timesaver layout is not seen as a self-contained system
(as in fact the original is) but connected to the outside
world, which then could result in some cars going
"off scene" while others take their place.
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In this
case, some form of card system is usually
introduced to put to work another
possible rule:
RULE
B2:
"Switching according to rule B1
/ B1 modified
is based on an operational concept
which determines traffic flow."
Above all,
this rule makes sure that the traffic
flow on the layout is purposeful and
prevents cars being assigned to
destinations where they wouldn't be needed
on a real railroad.
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| Therefore, customer A, who is a book printer
and receives paper and ships books by rail, will not be
sent tank cars and coal hoppers to his loading dock,
because rule B2 makes
sure that the specific types of freight received and
shipped by each industry on the layout are determined so
that only appropriate rolling stock may be delivered to
any given industry. Although this rule makes for
more realistic operation, it also adds to the complexity
of the whole system of randomly assigning cars to
locations (unless all destinations are defined as
receiving and sending goods using the same type of
rolling stock, i.e. all customers served only require
boxcars). Not surprisingly, therefore, Timesaver layouts
operating on the "extended rules" have often
done away completely with the aspect of switching against
the clock.
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| You
can get a first-hand impression of what it's like to
operate a "Timesaver" layout straight away,
thanks to Neil Machin's virtual
"Timesaver" switching puzzle, which -
amazingly - has been around since 2003. |
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Page created: 18/OCT/2002
Last revised: 03/OCT/2013
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