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Operations question

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Operations question
Posted by AltoonaRailroader on Monday, March 26, 2018 10:07 AM

I'm starting to get into running as-real-as-I-can operations on my small 9x9. My layout is mostly coal oriented in which coal cars come from the mine, to a classification/transfer yard, to the power plant and off-site power plant at an imaginary endpoint which is my under table staging.  

Question- When I make car cards and waybills do I include the classification/transfer yard to the waybill destination or just from/to City/Industry? 

I hope that made sense. What I'm thinking is that any car assigned a destination either on the layout or off will "pass through" this classification/transfer yard. It's a step yard, not a pass through yard. Big Smile

 

Thanks. 

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Posted by Colorado Ray on Monday, March 26, 2018 1:04 PM

A transition era prototype waybill would show the propsed junction routing through to the destination.  This wouldn't necessarily be the closest classification yard, but would be the interchange point between railroads.  Can't speak to modern waybills.

Most model waybills wouldn't go this extreme.  However, the Excel program I wrote for my future SP Ventrua Sub includes a complete junction routing for each of over 1000 waybills.  For inbound waybills it also includes the junction stamps with railroad logos.  Waybill dates are estimated based on travel time based on distance from origin to destination and load/unload time.

Ray

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Posted by AltoonaRailroader on Monday, March 26, 2018 1:16 PM
Thanks Ray, in the time since I've posted this I've resorted to Google searches and Youtube to answer some questions. ARR
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Posted by mlehman on Monday, March 26, 2018 5:29 PM

Coal is one of those commodities where there sometimes wasn't a set destination. The N&W exported a bunch of coal and other ines did, too, but in smaller quantites. My understanding (and the coal experts here could correct or fill in the details) was that coal was often shipped to tidewater for export. There it wuld be collected as it was shipped, then dumped to fill shipload orders. Brokers handled much of the transaction of this trade and what they needed was mass quantites of various grades of coal in order to transact such export business.

Thus, you could bill many cars through to final destinations, but with others it might be a matter of forwarding those loads as blocks of cars to a holding and classification yard that serves export docks.

Depending on the number of mines you have, you can also work in returning MTs to the mines in operating a consolidation yard as you described sending loads to. I recently operated on a largish layout that incoprated mine runs from a yard serving several of them. The interaction of demands between moving MTs in and loads out kept crews on their toes. If it is only a single mine, then this is kind of overkill, but if you do find room for expansion, this would be one way to usefully complicate it by adding another mine and servicing them both with MTs from the same destination you'd like to use for shipping loads to.

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

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Posted by BroadwayLion on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 9:57 AM

Here is the TRAIN REGISTER of the LION.

Lion runs lots of daily trains.

 

ROAR

The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.

Here there be cats.                                LIONS with CAMERAS

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Posted by cv_acr on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 11:07 PM

BroadwayLion

Here is the TRAIN REGISTER of the LION.

Lion runs lots of daily trains.

 

ROAR

 

 

How is that remotely relevant? The topic is about freight waybills.

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Posted by cv_acr on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 11:09 PM

AltoonaRailroader

Question- When I make car cards and waybills do I include the classification/transfer yard to the waybill destination or just from/to City/Industry? 

No. The industry is the destination. Any yards that the car passes through with or without being transferred between trains and sorted is simply part of the journey and the process of getting to the industry.

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Posted by AltoonaRailroader on Thursday, March 29, 2018 7:59 AM

cv_acr

 

Thank you, that's what I was looking for. Yes 
AltoonaRailroader

Question- When I make car cards and waybills do I include the classification/transfer yard to the waybill destination or just from/to City/Industry? 

 

 

No. The industry is the destination. Any yards that the car passes through with or without being transferred between trains and sorted is simply part of the journey and the process of getting to the industry.

 

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Posted by Colorado Ray on Thursday, March 29, 2018 1:19 PM

cv_acr
 
AltoonaRailroader

Question- When I make car cards and waybills do I include the classification/transfer yard to the waybill destination or just from/to City/Industry? 

 

 

No. The industry is the destination. Any yards that the car passes through with or without being transferred between trains and sorted is simply part of the journey and the process of getting to the industry.

 

Let's be clear.  Modeled waybills don't usually consider the routing.  Prototype waybills did.  Transition era waybills (only ones I have copies of) had a space for junction routing from origin to destination listing each railroad and the junction interchange.  There was also a check box for who determined the routing (shipper or railroad).  At each junction, the delivering railroad would stamp and date the waybill as acknowledgement that the car was properly interchanged.

Ray

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Posted by dinwitty on Friday, March 30, 2018 6:20 AM
your train operators should know the railroad and know where to route. Thats a testament to your knowledge. Our club cards had 2 sided load cards, the empty route to the load and the load route the final destination. Remove the card is printed, Empty Car, Return to yard.
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Posted by AltoonaRailroader on Friday, March 30, 2018 7:35 AM

Thank you everyone for the input. Here's some more info from my end. Small 9x9 around the walls shelf layout, so it's just me operating. Pics coming soon.

Coalmine to power plan on layout- From my understanding now, these waybills would just be from shipper to receiver without putting the classification/transfer yard on the waybill?

Coal mine and other industries- These are off site industries in staging that is Janesville junction. Lumber yard, machine shop, printing company all send and receive these industries from Janesville. This, I assume is a yes to put on waybills because they're going somewhere off the layout??

 

AAR

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