Waybills and car cards

[Anonymous]

Hello!!
I have one question. I was wondering, when you have your waybills, does the dispatcher go ahead and place the cards in the industries before the session, or do you have to carry all of them around and then place them in the industries? Thanks!!

[BentnoseWillie]

Where the cars go, the cards go. Each industry will need a holder for car cards. Train crews carry the car cards for the cars in their train with them, and deliver the cars (and the cards) to the destination on the waybill in each car card's pocket.

[Anonymous]

I made card holders for each area where there would be cars - yards, sidings, industry spurs. Some were one card wide while others were several cards wide with dividers to keep the cars separate for each location. Used dry transfer lettering on the front to identify which card holder was for which location. When a train is made up, all the cards for the cars in the train should be in the departure track holder. The conductor or engineer takes the cards with him when he pulls the train out onto the main. As each car is delivered, the card is placed in the appropriate holder. If a car is picked up, the card is pulled and added to the train's cards.

[dinwitty]

Its an open ended to whatever floats your boat, you can set up and load routings beforehand if you have a certain trafficing design for the crews to do, or leavem as they are for the train crews to figger out.

BTW as general procedure, you can have 2 people on any train crew, one engineers, the other is your conductor who technically rides the caboose, handles switches, gives hand signals to the engineer, and he carries the car cards with the "waybills", when a car is delivered, he drops the card in the industry slot, (maybe advances the waybill routing card)

The dispatcher can run around the layout pre-operation and check that the cars are set for the next run, or has to be held at an industry for whatever reason, or denote a car "derailed" and the crews have to work around it...

be creative.

I played a game called "Dispatcher" and it had daily circumstances cards, such as a broken rail, Washout by heavy rains, fog slowing trains, Signals not working, broken switch, whatever might throw a monkey wrench into the operations that make it fun enough.

[exPalaceDog]

01) A customer (assume on line) determines that he has or soon will have a shipment ready to be shipped. He requests that the RR deliver a car for loading. This generates the way bill.

02) The RR identifies a suitable car and assigns it to the shipment (way bill attaches to car card)

03) Optional, The RR arranges for any prepartion needed before load such as icing reefers. This may require tags or that the way bill be placed facing a certain way.

04) The RR routes the car to the shipper and delivers the car to the shipper's spur.

05) The shipper loads the car and notifies the RR Way card will be turned over to indicate the loaded status.

06) The RR "picks up" car and routes it to consignee. The RR may be required to weigh the car it route.

07) Assuming an on line consignee, the car is deliveried to the spur for the consignee

08) The consignee unloads the car, way bill is removed

09) The consignee requests the RR to remove the car

That is a very broad high level description of the process. Many of the steps may require additional details. Reefers may need to be re-iced in route.

For example in step 08
A) The RR may be required to collect payment in full from the consignee before the shipment is released for unloading
B) The consignee may refure the shipment

In some cases the shipper can change the consignee while the ship ment is en route.

Have fun

[Anonymous]

What do you do with the waybills that you just used? Do you use them again?

[exPalaceDog]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zachar

What do you do with the waybills that you just used? Do you use them again?

Depends

The way bills represent the output of the traffic generation subsystem.

If you want the shipper to ship a car load of X every Friday, the way bill goes in Friday bin. If the shipment is to be every two business days, the way bill would go in bin for two days ahead. If the shipment is to be made the first of every month, it would go in the bin for the next month. If the shipment is a load of freshly harvested potatoes, it might go in the October bin.

Have fun

[johncolley]

When setting up for an operating session the owner will usually have set up cards in boxes where cars are already spotted at industries. Most will be loads or empties to pull out and take the cards with you. A good setup will have some that are not finished loading or unloading, and will have to be re-spotted at the site by the switcher crew. Also occasionally there will be a "blue flag" car that must not be moved, such as a tank car or covered hopper that is in process of being unloaded and is connected to the building by a hose. You may have to figure out how to switch around it if it is a double ended siding. If it is a spur you have a problem if there are cars needing to go behind it. Sometimes you need to find a spot to leave them until that car is done. Hey, it's "real world operations", enjoy!

[dehusman]

There are two general ways waybills are handled. Some people use a 4 cycle waybill. The four position each have a destination (mty to ind A, load to ind B, empty to ind C, load to ind D) and the waybill is continually rotated session after session. The waybill is only removed maybe once every year or two. Otherwise the car continues to keep making the circuit time after time. If you have a layout with a couple hundred cars on it where it takes more than a couple sessions for a car to move from industry to industry, this system is very easy once set up and with so many cars the repetition isn't noticeable since it takes more than 8 sessions to repeat. Typically that's only one complete cycle every year or so.

The other way is to change waybills after every loading. You have a matrix of how many cars each industry requires (loads and empties) or some other way of assigning waybills and you draw that number of waybills, then your "agent" goes around finding suitable cars to bill. After the cas arrive at their destination loaded and are unloaded, the waybills are removed. I sort them by car type. I have a box I made of .040 styrene with pockets for the major car types I use (box, gon, hopper, flat, covered hopper, tank, other) and put the waybills in those to reuse. I also have "through" waybills for the overhead traffic that doesn't load or unoload on my layout, but just travels across it, from staging yard to staging yard or an interchange to staging yard.

The way I do my billing is to determine how many empty cars my industries will need to load. Lets say that's 6 gondolas, 5 boxcars and 2 hoppers. I go to the waybill box and select that number of waybills that have an inbound empty move to those industries. So if the steel mill orders 5 gons, I find 5 waybills for gons that have the first move "Empty to Steel Mill". I then go around the layout and find empty cars on the layout I can bill. i then go to each staging track and depending on what train it is, assign the rest of the empty waybills. Then I assign inbound loaded waybills or through waybills to the rest of the train. So the RW-1 runs from the staging yard at Reading, PA to the staging yard at Wilmington, DE, with a set out at Coatesville. So the RW-1 will have a block of cars on the head end for Coatesville and a block of cars on the rear for Wilmington.
Starting from the head end, I assign the empty order waybills I had left over to the cars in the first half or so of the train. Then I assign inbound loaded waybills to the rest of the cars in the frnt half of the train. Finally I add through waybills for Wilmington to the cars in the back half of the train. It takes about 5-10 min per train. When I am done I have properly blocked trains leaving staging. After the cars are unoladed or go into staging, I remove the waybills and sort them by car type or through and then put them back in the waybill storage box to be reused.

Dave H.

[dinwitty]

Lets explain a little something. NOT using Waybills, but using Car Cards, with WayBill insert pockets.

Each car has a card, then a small card with load and destination info placed in the pocket, the cards can be held something like a deck of cards.
You can arrange the cards in the order they are in the train.

When you finish a route (car has made its destination) you can flip the load/route card and re-use the route, or replace it with a different one, based on the type of car its for.