Three car card operations questions

[Erik]

Setting up a car card system was very helpful to me.  My (smallish branch line 40 car) railroad now has a purpose :)  Three questions.  1. Do you have a three slot card box for the yard? I have an industrial area in the same town.   2. How often do you swap out actual offline cars in the offstage staging yard vs just changing out waybills 3. If I have an industry (say a furniture plant) if they get an inbound boxcar of lumber, then would they reload the same car for outbound furniture while it is at the plant?   

[Fazby]

1. I am not as formal as many others.  I have a few homemade boxes. Each location has two slots: to be switched and been switched.  Easy visual.  Arrange the boxes in any way that works for you.

2. I tend to swap out cars whenever I finish a "cycle" meaning that it is not time to rotate/flip the 1-2-3-4 routing cards in in the car cards.

3. I'll yield to greater minds who can speak to prototype practices.  However, since it is your industry and your layout, you can do whatever works for you.

[owen w in california]

Erik: My responses:

1. Yes for the local switcher work (Pickup/Setout/Hold), but i also have a second set of boxes which correspond to the number of classification tracks in the yard. These allow the yardmaster to build trains for destinations on each track and keep the cards in one place. I do not label the boxes, instead i have an oversize piece of styrene with the names of destinations (staging, furtherest west town, etc) on the ends (back and front) and use this to make the boxes more flexible. Building a train for Delhi? Put the Delhi label in the box with the cards as you build the train.
2. My layout gets operated every month or two by a group of guys. I rarely swap out the cars (take them off the layout). However, if we operated more often, i might be tempted to do that to ensure guys aren't seeing the same cars all the time. Month to month, no one remembers.  2(A): I turn waybills at the end of a session. (PS: I operate in N Scale, and have photos of the car on the car cards).
3. It depends. My operating schemes assumes that empty cars are sent on their way, empty, regardless of what was in them. This increases the number of moves. But I suspect that depending what was in the car, the industry might clean it and re-use it (but i don't know).

Joel (New York, Ontario and Western - 1954 in N)

 

[Fazby]

Waybills... Yes, that's the term.  (brain cramp - sorry)

[tomikawaTT]

1.  My yard box has a slot (vertical pigeonhole) for each classification track, for the two interchange tracks and one for local working spots.  The local slot has dividers controlling which cars will and won't be moved at a given time.  Dwell times are marked on the waybills.

2.  I might change out two or three complete local freights, all containing open top cars that need to be either loaded or unloaded.  My swapout system involves cassettes, two of which are specifically configured to allow dumping loose coal.  Normal freight staging can't be reached for fiddling.

3.  My system is driven by car requests.  If there's a waybill waiting for a clean boxcar when a loaded car arrives at the furniture factory it will be 'captured' to accept the load.  Otherwise, once unloaded and swept out it will be returned empty to the JNR.  OTOH, any gon that arrives at the main colliery with a load will leave full of coal.

My waybills have dates (! through 30) on which they become car requests.  They get matched to cars as empties become available, then run their cycle and end up going back into the waybill file until the same date next 'month.'

One thing I have that isn't standard.  Waybills for open-top cars are mated to actual loads - coal, but also crated machinery, drums, boxes, ??? under a tied-down tarp...  The fancy loads stay with the waybills, just as the car cards stay with the cars.  Coal gets dumped and returned to the car loader at the big colliery.

Some cars can't be spotted at any of the on-layout loading/unloading points.  They just shuttle from Up staging to Down staging, occasionally being switched from a through freight to a local or vice-versa.  That includes auto racks, superspeed container cars and anything in captive service between points in 'the rest of Japan.'

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - TTTO, 24/30)

[Nickel Plate Road]

This a very interesting post - I keep reading "operating your layout" special ed from MRR. This is what I wonder about, I am modeling a freelance of the New York/Michigan Central Lines and what I wonder about is wjay happens to through frieghts from other lines -  does PRR drop off freight for NYC to take it up to northern Michigan? How would one do that through Way Bills?

[wp8thsub]

Erik

1. Do you have a three slot card box for the yard? I have an industrial area in the same town.

 

Nope.  I use one box per track.

Here's one of my yard boxes when first installed.  It's separate from any industry boxes, although the slot at far right is used for the piggyback ramp bills.

2. How often do you swap out actual offline cars in the offstage staging yard vs just changing out waybills

I rarely change the bills, instead just flipping them to the next side.  With four cycle bills, and not every car being re-used every session, it takes some time for cars to return to the same industry.

3. If I have an industry (say a furniture plant) if they get an inbound boxcar of lumber, then would they reload the same car for outbound furniture while it is at the plant?

That type of movement isn't very common.  Car usage rules sometimes allow for a car to be "captured" like that, but normally the inbound and outbound shipments would use different cars.  For example, the lumber car may be in more or less assigned service, and its owner may want it back for the next lumber load, and/or its interior wouldn't be optimal for furniture shipments.

[wp8thsub]

Nickel Plate Road

I am modeling a freelance of the New York/Michigan Central Lines and what I wonder about is wjay happens to through frieghts from other lines -  does PRR drop off freight for NYC to take it up to northern Michigan?

Blocks of cars are exchanged between roads.  Sometimes this can be with a train that is turned over in one piece to the next road, in other cases it can be blocks set out at an interchange track, or swapped between yards.  There are lots of possibilities depending on how and where the roads meet.

How would one do that through Way Bills?

Again, there are many options.  For off-line interchange, I just bill cars to the foreign road.  For on-line movements, you could have the car billed to the town and industry, and provide instructions for the crews on how to block cars for those destinations, perhaps including the road on the bill for emphasis (like a "via" or "routing" notation).

Example:

To: Anytown

Receiver: Grocery Warehouse

Via: NYC

 

Or:

To: NYC Anytown

Receiver: Lumberyard

[Nickel Plate Road]

wp8thsub

Example: To: Anytown Receiver: Grocery Warehouse Via: NYC   Or: To: NYC Anytown Receiver: Lumberyard

Thanks Rob

[kasskaboose]

Thanks for starting this thread.  I hope others much more well-versed in operations than me can provide insights about car cards.  They sound somewhat complicated and hoping that this type of discussion can clarify some challenges. 

[dehusman]

I hope others much more well-versed in operations than me can provide insights about car cards.  They sound somewhat complicated and hoping that this type of discussion can clarify some challenges. 

They can be as easy or as complicated as the owner wants them to be.  The nice thing about them is there are lots of variations so you can mix and match, there are few if any hard rules.  On the other hand, the more "typical" the format and system, the easier it will be for people to understand.

A key concept is that the combination of a car card and waybill represents a prototype waybill document.  People get hung up that its a two piece tool and not one piece of paper.  The reason the car info and the shipment info are separate is to allow cars to receive different destinations/shipments without having to re-write or re-print stuff.

A common format is to have a "4 move" waybill.  Nothing requires you to use all four moves.  The majority of my waybills (when I was using the traditional CC&WB) had only 2 moves (empty in-load out or load in-empty out).

A "move" is a destination for the shipment.  The destination should be someplace the car loads, unloads, interchanges or is stored.  A typical 4 move waybill pattern would be move 1 load to customer, move 2 empty to shipper, move 3 load to customer, move 4 empty to shipper.  But nothing says you HAVE to move in that pattern.

You can put as much or as little information as you want on the car card (CC) and waybill (WB).  The minimum is whatever is needed to know that a specific car is going to a specific place.  Beyond that, most of the info is there to help the crews know what to do with the car or is eye candy to create or simulate a more prototypical appearance.  For example on my CC I have the car type and the color.  They are there to help people find cars.  Finding P&R 80636 at an industry with 25 cars would be a little work, finding a black hopper car P&R 80636  is easier.  On the waybill some people want to know where the car came from (handy if all you have is a "PULL" box), some people not.  Some people want to know the car is loaded and the commodity, some people don't care.  If you have train or hazard placement rules, the commodity can be handy.  If you spot cars by commodity, knowing the commodity is necessary.  Just depends on the level of complexity you as the owner wants.

Some of my descriptions are in the past tense, since I have modified my CC&WB system.  I found that my prototype in my era actually used a "car ticket" that was roughly the same size as a CC&WB and had more or less the same info as a typical CC&WB (so if somebody says unequiviably that car cards aren't prototypical, they are mistaken).  I have modified my CC&WB to resemble the car ticket and rearranged it so the shipment card has the pocket and the car info is the smaller piece that fits in the pocket.