Layouts and layout building

hello all, im not new to model railroading but i want to take it to the next step, i would like to start an operating session? I have aprox 17 industries, and they all work or sevre each other in some way or form, now i just finnished reading mr planning 2009 and read an article on using playing cards for operation? can anyone help me out with how this works, or is it garbage and or is there a better method to learn on

thanks kevin

17 industries are good, but it takes a little more to have a good operating session. Ideally, the layout would be planned with operations in mind. For instance. Do you have staging? a yard? an interchange track? Where do trains originate? How do outgoing products get off layout?

Is it possible to post a plan of your layout? Once we see what we are dealing with, it will be easier to come up with a system that makes sense for your layout.  

They aren't really "playing cards" they are called car cards and waybills (CC&WB).

On a real railroad they would generate a piece of paper that would be the "ticket' for the car (in very very rough terms) called a waybill.  The waybill had the car number, the shipper, the destination, the route, the commodity, the weight and the freight rate on it.  It traveled with the car (at least up to the 1970's or 1980's). 

On a model railroad, one (of many) operation scheme is to make up a very basic "waybill" to tell the crews how to move the cars.  Early on they realized that a model railroad uses the ssame cars over and over and the more or less the same shipments over and over so they decided to set up a system so they didn't have to keep rewriting the saem information over and over and over.  So what they did was to separate the car information and the routing information.  The car information went on a "car card" and the routing information went on a "waybill".  When the two parts were put together you had essentially duplicated a prototype waybill.

There are dozens of variations on how this can work and I suggest you do some reading on operations before you start to give you a better chance of success.

This link has many useful articles on operations:

http://www.gatewaynmra.org/library.htm

In addition to CC&WB you can use lists (what the real railroads actually used for switching), hand written or computer generated, tags on the cars (coded tags or objects placed on top of the cars) or any number of other variations to route your cars.  Whatever works for you is great.

In addition there is the Operations Special Interest Group (OpSig) of the NMRA which has a discussion group on Yahoo Groups (Rwy-ops-industrial) and there is a CarCards Yahoo group plus almost every software package for lists or car cards has its own Yahoo group.

Enjoy!

Hi Kevin,

Yes, those really were playing cards in that article in Model Railroad Planning 2009, but in fact a car card and waybill system isn't hard to set up and will allow you to do several kinds of car movements more realistically. The May 2009 Model Railroader has an article, "Operate the Beer Line," by my colleague David Popp and me, that's intended to introduce readers to operation on a small railroad. It may be just what you're looking for. I'd also recommend Tony Koester's Kalmbach book, Realistic Model Railroad Operation.

Good luck with your operations,

 Andy
 

Not too long ago, I wrote a page on my website about operations on my layout (http://chatanuga.org/WLMRops.html).  It is a lot more fun giving my trains a purpose rather than running things at random and having the same train showing up over and over.

Kevin

wow ok thats a start well i have some reading to do and i will start to educate myself on operations, ive joined the yahoo groups so if i have any more questions, i have lots of experts!!! thanks again to everyone, and i will let you how im doing!!

thanks kevin

Personally, I think the playing cards thing was kind of hokey, but that's just me. Car cards and waybills, on the other hand, work well, are easy to set up, and have at least an element of realism.

I posted an operations web clinic here a long while ago:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/46614/590152.aspx#590152

The car card and waybill discussion starts somewhere toward the end of the first page, I think.

If one is interested in operations, a membership in the Operations SIG is the best value in model railroading. Just 5 bucks a year for memberships with electronic delivery of the quarterly magazine. OpSIG Ops Primer

Byron

 I've used a few variations of car card/waybill over the years. 

The earliest was a combined car card/waybill with sequential routing. Use simply moved the car governed by the list on the back of the card.   I used a paperclip to indicate the current location:

Now I use a scenario cards to generate demand:

And pull the required cars from the deck of car cards. I have a deck for each car type:

The information is recorded on a switch list, so the car cards don't clutter up the layout.  The on spot car cards go into boxes on my desk instead.  The pulled cars' cards go back to the bottom of the type deck.

I used an industry matrix to develop the scenario cards:

Nick

 I've added a web site about car cards & way bills. It shows 4-position waybills and single waybills.

Wolfgang

Hello, Wolfgang, I am in the midst of the process, having done all the car and engine cards. My stumbling block is "do I face a tremendous amount of research to make the waybills realistic for routing and destinations, or do I just make up plausible destinations to get the cars off the visible layout? Any suggestions? John Colley, Port Townsend, WA

johncolley:

My stumbling block is "do I face a tremendous amount of research to make the waybills realistic for routing and destinations, or do I just make up plausible destinations to get the cars off the visible layout? Any suggestions? John Colley, Port Townsend, WA

That is your choice.  Keep in mind one thing, its only paper.  Especially if you "roll your own" waybills.  If you use a database or a spreadsheet to create your waybills you can always research the real destinations at your leisure and upgrade/replace the plausible destinations you used to start operations.

It is permissible to let your system evolve.

I vote for using whatever information you need to get started and add more detail later.  For example lets say you are shipping steel shapes in gons to a location via east staging.  If you are using commercial forms you might just want to fill in the car type, commodity and via lines. (GON, Steel shapes, East).  Then at some time later you can .fill in the blanks with real industries and locations, such as:

GON, Steel shapes, Erection Tool Co.,Trooper, PA

(real company, sold scaffolding, but it wasn't rail served).

johncolley:

My stumbling block is "do I face a tremendous amount of research to make the waybills realistic for routing and destinations, or do I just make up plausible destinations to get the cars off the visible layout? Any suggestions?

As Dave said, just fill in the basics now, go back later (if ever) to fill in the rest. I like lots of info on my car cards, some folks don't care. But in any case, it's no reason to wait to get started operating. Go for it!

I found something that I felt could be helpful to newbs reading this thread, especially since I'm finding it challenging to finalize a trackplan that would provide a decent amount of switching operation opportunity.

 Check these out:

 http://www.westportterminal.de/operation.html