Hi Scott.

Basically, Virtual Interchanging is a way of receiving and sending traffic between geographically separated layouts, by some sort of reporting system. Maybe an example would be best:

I currently virtually interchange traffic on a regular basis with a number of layouts located in the US and Canada, and one of them is the SE&CV, an N scale layout representing a Pennsylvania based railroad. If I want to send that railroad some cars, I inform the owner of that layout what types of cars, car numbers, commodities I have sent to customers on his layout, and arrival dates for those shipments. Once the arrival date rolls around the SE&CV layout owner then uses some of his cars to complete the delivery to the customer on his layout. The cars numbers / reporting marks, etc don't have to match between the interchanging layouts. Neither does the era. The SE&CV is a 1950's era layout, mine is 1970's/80's.

There is a Yahoo Group set up through which I forward all the interchange reporting for virtual interchanges I do. They have documents on the group which act as a guide for virtually interchanging traffic. If your interested the group is at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MRICC/

Basically, virtual interchanging is a way of interchanging cars on 2 or more layouts of any scale, era or location, without actually physically delivering those cars to the destination layout.

Hope that makes sense!

James