I have read with great interest the 13 tips for freight yard operation in the new issue and certainly agree with most of them, but one hit my "hot button" for personal reasons. That is Andy's tip number 3 using switch lists. (Sorry Andy). In the late 50's I was attending seminary in Enid Oklahoma and working summers for the Santa Fe at Enid yard. (thanks dad, for being a railroader). It was good pay, I worked the summers then resigned and returned to seminary, doing that from summers from 1954 through 1958.
Enid usually had a day engine and a night engine, my dad was a switch engineer and assigned at Enid. However, Enid was ranked third in the nation in wheat storage capacity, so the ever present wheat rush ran from June until ? Grain trains in, grain trains out. I was usually on the 3rd trick, 11PM to 7 AM and being a new hire each summer I got the dirty job, Yard Clerk. The yard office held 1. an operator, 2, a yard master (who never did much in my opinion), a car clerk who sat at the desk for his shift writing and typing wheel reports and switch lists for the switch engines (2 for each shift). Then there was me. At 11 PM, I reported, put ice in the water cooler and then headed up to yard tracks selected by the car clerk to be run and new switch lists made up. With my light, a long switchlist (2 parts) on a masonite board, and my pencil I walked the designated tracks writing up switch lists. Each yard track held up to 90 cars. Then I returned to the yard office, had coffee and then the switch engine forman would come in and and announce they had just switched tracks so and so, and so I was on my way out again to do a new switch list partly to verify what the crew had done, and to make sure all the numbers were right.
Oh, and I also had the assignment of calling the Rock Island or Frisco to read off cars that had been set on the interchange tracks, two places for Frisco and one for Rock Island. When either road had the nerve to interchange cars back, I walked them again and (yes) made more stinking switch lists.
Then there was the Champlin refinery down the track from the Enid 10th st yard. A crew would return from switching Champlin and off I would go. Champlin never understood keeping the place clean so many times I would step off into a pool of whatever laying along side of the track. then there were the assortment of hobos and like who would scare the devil out of me (good for a student preacher) to ask directions to town or a resturant. In those days they were pretty decent, but they still scared me. Oh and did I mention the Union Equity Elevators, there were several, and other grain elevators that needed to be checked and switch lists made? As summer and the wheat rush would end, I would be sent to work vacation relief until the end of August when I would resign and return to Seminary, vowing never to return to the railroad. But of course, I then began pastoring churches in Kansas after I graduated, and ended up in Topeka working in the Red Ball section of Car Services at the GOB on the night shift to supplement my church income. that led to IBM school and another career, but no more switch lists.
Now on my HO Santa Fe in Oklahoma, I have many grain elevators (recreating the good ole days area), I have switch engines, my date is 1989, I have lots of grain trains but no stinkin switch lists. The car cards are good enough for me, I don't want to see a switch lists. No way, no how, yeech. Sorry Andy, but those nice car cards, with those nice waybills are good enough for me. You can keep the switch lists.
Oh, Andy, did I mention the fun of the two part switch lists when it was pouring down rain, especially in those spring monsoons? Oh, and Andy, I also had the fun of calling road crews, some of who slept really hard in the waycars on the caboose track, and the ones who stayed in boarding houses and I had to wake them at 3 AM? Yeah, I love operating, but only in HO.
Bob
As with most aspects of running our little trains, there is always some degree of selective compression and it doesn't have to be associated with scenery. Everyone tends to squeeze out the more mundaine things for more interest, - who wants a pike thats a chore, an unpaid chore, actually a chore that seems to cost more money?? I would say you should try the switchlists, since you have experience and could probably greatly simplify the process to make it less of a chore . Think about it, you have choice of shifts, can shirk it at times, can deligate to someone else, won't step in any goo that you didn't see (unless you have a rude dog) , and can always be on coffee break. On the other hand it sounds like you've been ruined for life because of past experiences, kind of like me with liver n lima beans.
I, too, use car cards and waybills. If the cars and the cards are kept in the same sequence, the result is the same as a switch list.
I, personally, wouldn't use a separate switch list unless it was computer generated - and my computer is an outdoor walk away from my layout.
It seems to me that the Thirteen Points are aimed more at club or group operations. The only way I could assign more operators to a yard would be to clone myself - and one of me is all that I can stand!
Chuck (Lone wolf modeling Central Japan in September, 1064)
Bob,I can relate..I started on the PRR as a student yard brakeman and seems to me every time we turned around we was handed another switch list...When we stop for coffee or lunch our work was pretty well caught up-a heads up crew can flat switch several hundred cars in 8-12 hours by kicking the cars.Thanfully 11 months later I bid on and won a brakeman's job on a urban local and worked that job for several months before being bumped and reassign to the yard pool..
Still I like using switch lists or waybills because IMHO it adds realism to operation.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
tinman1 As with most aspects of running our little trains, there is always some degree of selective compression and it doesn't have to be associated with scenery. Everyone tends to squeeze out the more mundaine things for more interest, - who wants a pike thats a chore, an unpaid chore, actually a chore that seems to cost more money?? I would say you should try the switchlists, since you have experience and could probably greatly simplify the process to make it less of a chore . Think about it, you have choice of shifts, can shirk it at times, can deligate to someone else, won't step in any goo that you didn't see (unless you have a rude dog) , and can always be on coffee break. On the other hand it sounds like you've been ruined for life because of past experiences, kind of like me with liver n lima beans.
Yep, as far as switchlists, I am ruined, I also hate liver, don't get me started. But the point is, switchlists might seem railroady to the modeler, to the guy that had to work with them outside, they were a pain in the lower southern exposure, but, that is the way we did them. I suspect any railroader today would quickly throw up his hands using them. But that was all we had then.
In defense of my postion, I did try them to be all authentic and railroady back on my first layouts in the 1960's, but fortunately I was rehabilitated after a bad evening of operating (yes we did it in the 60's, you guys haven't discovered anything new).
Another thought, on my layout which is fairly large, aisle space can still be tight in places, and on my layout, there is a nice long aisle running the length of Enid yard, and it isn't extremely narrow or anything, but on the other side of that aisle is Guthrie OK on the top deck, which sees some switching, open running on the middle deck, so good so far, and then the Waynoka staging area on the bottom deck and people are moving back and forth, so better to have one operator for me at Enid working from car cards than to have an engineer, foreman and a yard clerk in the aisle.
Bob,I sort of have the opposite problem. I operated at my old club for 8 years where we used 3x5 car cards and 2x2 waybills. We had approx. 400 cars on the RR at any one time. All our waybills were handwritten. I never want to do that again.
On my current layout at home (250+ cars), I still use 3x5 cards and 2x2 waybills, but they are done on the computer using Excel. Instead of writing them by hand, I copy, paste & print. Much faster, much easier on the hands.
At my new club layout, we're going to have well over 400 cars on the RR....possibly as many as 1000 (I'm guessing). There's no way I'm going to use car cards and waybills if I can help it. Switchlists are what we use now, and while I do end up typing them by hand into Excel, they will be computer forwarded at some point.
As far as handwriting switchlists? Um, no. I think the article is a little too real for me on that one. I like operations, but there's a fine line between a hobby and a job and I think that would cross my line.
Paul A. Cutler III
Paul, I agree with you. I use the waybill cards, but, over half of my car fleet, notably the grain cars, are in captive service. There are a total right now of 14 grain elevators, mostly large ones on the layout. So that means that the majority of the grain car fleet will be moving between these elevators and the staging yards. So a fixed number of those cars are assigned to the Union Equity (Farmland Elevators) in Enid, those cars come with a adhesive letter designating that they are UE cars and they run from staging in empty grain trains to Enid where they are given to one of the UE elevators, or, moved loaded to Texas or Kansas staging. Of course there are other "brands" of elevators, so some cars are assigned to them, like Pillsbury, General Mills, etc.
Then I have a group assigned to the local pool, which means they move empty to rural elevators on the Enid district for loading, and when loaded, they will return to Enid to be added to Texas bound grain trains. It sounds more complicated than it is. The use of unit grain trains to carry the cars off stage greatly reduces the "paper work".
I also have a fleet of freight cars of various kinds that are designated as "through cars" and they are added as fillers to various through trains and don't hit local industries, thus we don't worry about desinations for them. With a total car fleet of just over 1700 cars, it seems to be a real task, but some cars are always on the shelves and rotated between op sessions so that a much smaller number are on the railroad.