After the recent influx of hopper cars, I sat down and worked out the different sources and destinations of coal traffic that can be reasonably represented on my layout, and set about the task of writing waybills to establish the flow of that traffic.
I set up a business card format on the computer that allows me to print out 4-cycle waybills, then typed up the different possible moves, I then copied and pasted those moves into the format, and started printing.Each sheet nets 10 cards, so it didn't take long to print out the 100 or so waybills I need.
So now, instead of having a string of empties that runs obliquely west, and loads that run eternally east, I have blocks of cars that are destined for Baltimore, some headed to the export pier at Port Covington, some to Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. Other blocks will run northeast to Bethlehem Steel at Allentown. It turns coal ops into an elaborate game of chess...
Coal comes from the Thomas Sub, where my two on-line mines are modeled, plus from Elkins, which currently exists as staging. Another source is the Laurel Valley, my fictitious operator of the B&O Johnstown Branch from Rockwood, over which the prototype WM had trackage rights to the coal fields around Somerset, PA. Likewise, empties have been sorted to return to these destinations.
And like the real deal, some of the empties returning from Port Covington aren't empty at all, but rather partially loaded with manganese ore imported from Venezuela and shipped to the hungry furnaces of Pittsburgh. (They are partially loaded since the ore reaches the weight capacity of the car before it fills the available volume)
Once these were printed out, I assigned each car a load... pretty randomly... then last night I spent a happy couple of hours drilling the yard and blocking the cars. It worked out pretty well. The blocks can be either assembled into full trains of coal (up to about 20 cars) or set out to be inserted into other east or westbound trains.
Ultimately, I will build a separate yard at Elkins, and a smaller one at Bayard where this blocking can be done without clogging up the main freight yard. On the prototype, these two yards were used to do some coal marshalling, but the lion's share of that work was done at Knobmount near Cumberland. Also, once I build to the point where I can finally install my Chaffee branch module, I'll be adding 2-3 more tipples. Currently I roster about 120 hoppers, and I figure once the layout is at full strength, it'll be able to handle closer to 200 cars. If I ever build out the Connellsville Extension and Laurel Valley in the next room, that number could increase by another 50 to 100... Voof!
Anyhoo, a couple of months ago, I was fretting about whether to expend the effort to really organize car cards and waybills, but now I think I'm going to enjoy the layout a lot more once that's up and running.Sure, it takes a little discipline, and there's always the problem of a train's paperwork falling into one of Andy's toyboxes never to be seen again... But one of the things I find enjoyment in is working the yard, and having those cards in order really makes it fun to work the drill track and sort things into blocks.
Next I have to work on the rest of the freight movements...Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Lee,
Good write-up. I'm about at the stage where you are now, only my trackwork is substantially complete. My coal traffic is a much smaller percentage of the overall business, but still enough to run dedicated coal trains on the standard gauge. I have an empties in-loads out arrangement that handles most of this volume, along with some dual gauge that feeds the industries on my narrowgauge line.
Breaking the traffic down into blocks works very well for my standard gauge traffic, avoiding the need for individual cards for every car. My narrowgauge coal cars do get individual cards, because those customers mostly take single carloads.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Johnnny_reb Once a word is spoken it can not be unspoken!
My Train Page My Photobucket Page My YouTube Channel
Here's what my waybills look like.
Any moves that involve local placement on the layout are highlighted to aid with sorting and blocking. I print a full sheet, then rotate it 180 degrees and print the back. You'll note that the outer cards are the same, as are the second row. The middle one is a single that prints back to back. I can e-mail you a copy of the word document that has the text boxes all set up if you'd like one.
Someone smarter than me could probably set it all up as a merge document and run the information out of an industry database, but my simple English Major's mind hasn't sorted out Excel to the point where I can make that go. So I type up an entry, then copy, paste and edit each text box.
My car cards are simple 3x5 index cards folded to make a pocket, and sealed with a 1x4" Avery Label, printed with the car information from my roster data base.
This is the 1.0 version which was stapled, but you get the idea. I like to put the car info at the bottom on the pocket as it makes it easier to riffle through the cards to locate things.
Lee
That's the way I operate my railroad. And it's fun!
Look at my operation site, there's even the excel file for waybills and car cards.
Wolfgang
Pueblo & Salt Lake RR
Come to us http://www.westportterminal.de my videos my blog
It works for you, have fun. I use the commercial car cards and waybills, with around 1500 freight cars, either in staging, in operation, or on shelves in the molehole area of staging, it is a lot of cards and a lot of effort.
I use the computer to keep the car and diesel data bases, but don't want a mixture of cards on the layout, so stay with the commercial ones.
Bob
Excellent!
I will post mine at some point in the future when the chemical works are completed.
wedudler wrote: That's the way I operate my railroad. And it's fun!Look at my operation site, there's even the excel file for waybills and car cards.Wolfgang
I must admit I am using the car cards and waybills Wofgang developed and it has made operations much more enjoyable.
Thanks Wolfgang,
I started using car cards and waybills not long after the first description appeared in 1960 () and have since added a few frills that go beyond usual. (I will spare you the details, since they are layout and rolling stock specific, like tonnage ratings and embargoed track on locomotive cards...)
To my way of thinking, having a fully implemented documentation scheme is what changes 'running trains' to 'modeling a railroad.' Our prototypes don't simply run trains to watch the wheels roll. Every car movement has a justification that has a direct impact on the bottom line. Car cards and waybills (and special operating instructions, and clearance cards, and train orders...) allow us to simulate that, which, for me, is the essence of the hobby.
To simplify my life, I actually have three subsets of 'car' for which there is only one card in the train crew packet:
The category 2 and 3 individual cars have individual car cards (which include their pedigree and maintenance history) but those are stored separately. The conductor doesn't have to juggle them during operations. All he has is a single card with all the car numbers on it, and a single waybill to authorize the movement of the entire cut (or train.)
One area of my system which most people won't want to follow is the use of car cards and assignments (waybills with a different purpose, not driven by the car's lading) for passenger cars and locomotives. (The locomotive 'waybill' is actually a schedule card, keyed to the master timetable, with the train number on it.) I find them useful, others might consider them overkill.
An interesting side effect takes care of a problem mentioned in the thread on under-layout staging. When I park a train in staging, the paperwork for that train goes into a slot for that specific staging track. One quick glance tells me which tracks are clear and which aren't.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Train assignment cards are also useful for those of us on DCC.... I include the consist address along with the train number and locomotive numbers.
I've thought about running coal in blocks, it would probably make sense to do that. I think I'll run with individual cards until my need for blocks clarifies itself. Some of my loaders will have different capacities, so I don't want to be tied down to 4 or 5 car blocks, if one loader has two tracks that each hold three cars...
TrainManTy wrote:I've been using car cards and waybills for the past 1 or 2 years now, they've worked perfectly for me. I would never consider going for switchlists now!
Uhhh, what do you think your car cards and waybills make up? A SWITCHLIST.
You have all your cards together giving you the data of where they go and what they contain. That's all that's really on a switchlist. Initials, number, commodity / last contained product, car type, and destination.
The only difference is that most "car card" systems don't keep track of all the cards in one "list", but moreso people just hunt and peck for the right card in their grouping for the specific station or industry.
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GraniteRailroader wrote: Uhhh, what do you think your car cards and waybills make up? A SWITCHLIST.
Actually they make a stack of waybills.
Depends on what you mean by a switchlist and the era. If you are talking about a switchlist used in a yard in pre-computer days the list probably only had the sequence and next track number, or maybe the car inital and number and next track number.
The critical part, the next track number isn't on the car cards.
If you mean an industry spot-pull list when you say switch list, then its alot closer to your analogy.
Most list systems I have seen don't maintain what real railroads call a "PICL", perpetual inventory of car location (pronounced "pickle"). That is keeping track of which cars are in which track in what order. They lump all the cars in a yard into one group and generate lists based on the outbound train. Real yard switch lists are organized by track and by the standing order of the track. So if the list is E-W and you are standing at the E end of the track the top car on the list will be the car closest to you and the last car on the list will be the furthest car from you.
Maintaining the standing order of cars is critical in a yard and relatively easy to do with car cards.
The challenges with car cards come in industry work. On a real railroad the industry work is organized by station and the current location of the cars to pull (and spot) is shown on the list (if known). Many industries don't maintain PICL. There are two general ways to organize car cards for industry work.
You can have a set of 3 or 4 boxes for the station, for off spot, loading/unloading/hold, to be pulled. Cars that are ready to be pulled have their car cards placed in the pull box. The local crew then knows what to pull but not necessarily where it is.
The alternative is to have a box for each track and then go strictly by the waybill. If the car is at its destination then it is spotted, if its not at its waybill destination then it is to be spotted or pulled. The local crew knows where the car is but has to review all the cars to find what to work.
I have operated on layouts with both methods and they both work, purely owner preference.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
By the way, I have a new version of my MS Access car card and waybill generator program posted in the files section of the CarCards and Rwy-ops-industrialSIG Yahoo groups in the CCGv7 folder. Its free, it makes car cards, waybills, inventories your cars, engines, track components, structures, electronics components, and library and generates some reports.
The one catch is you have to have MS Access to run it.
DH - Agreed, you still have a stack of waybills. Can't contest that.
Looking at it from the operations point of view though...
You're taking the train down the mainline, keeping mental notes of what you have in there. This equates to your "switchlist" or "work list" for various set outs at towns and industries on the way. The only difference is that while keeping mental notes of what you have, you don't have the physical work list other then the cards in your hands.
Locally, at least for me, the only notation of what order cars are spotted is taken by me as we roll by. The computer generated list only tells me what cars are at each station and sorted by track. Oh the joy for not taking advantage of the RMI software and all the features it offers...
PS: Trying to get access to your Yahoo groups, but there are some issues with the verification process right now. It won't verify the codes.
Here is an online car card generator that lets you add pictures.
http://www.dallasmodelworks.com/interchange/carcard.asp
GraniteRailroader wrote: Locally, at least for me, the only notation of what order cars are spotted is taken by me as we roll by.
The computer generated list only tells me what cars are at each station and sorted by track. Oh the joy for not taking advantage of the RMI software and all the features it offers...
What's "RMI" software?
DH - Referring to the software from "Railcar Management" such as "RailConnect" and "ShipperConnect".
If I can't roll by and see the placement (which for most of the industries is not an issue) I will keep track of where I place cars myself so I can plan the work for the next night on the way down.
I use car cards and waybills which are kept in train order by and for train crews. When a train arrives in the yard a switchlist is jotted down like they used to do on the WP at Oakland. It would look something like this - SP97644 5-13 1-4 3-13 - which means, starting with car SP97644 five cars go to track 13, next car goes to track 4, next three cars go to track 13. The yard crew knows the function of each track and files the cards and waybills in order with each track.
Rob
I've been in the process of getting car cards and waybills made for my layout. I've gotten the cards for all of my rolling stock except for a few locomotives and a caboose or two. I'm still finishing the 4-cycle waybills for the freight cars, but for the ones I have finished, it's so much more fun to be switching cars and running trains with a "purpose".
I've even done something similar with my Amtrak trains. For each train that I run, I have 10 "situation" cards to choose at random. Each card tells how many baggage cars, MHC cars, coach seats, diner, lounge, single bedrooms, double bedrooms, and roomettes are needed for the consist. When putting one of the Amtrak trains together, I then get a different consist with each run rather than running the same exact train each time.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
I had the capability in my car card & waybill system to do something like Darnaby proposed in MR many years ago, to have a "waybill" that would give the passenger "demand" and you would add cars to meet that demand. But the more I thought about passenger service, the more I decided that it ran more or less on fixed consists. You can buy books that tell you what individual cars rode on which trains. So i decided there was less variation in passenger trains.
My new system would just use an "activity" card that would say something like "Set out this car at Birdsboro", or "#6 pick up this car".
wm3798 wrote:With the extra time I find myself having, I have undertaken the task of organizing my operations a little... well a LOT more...After the recent influx of hopper cars, I sat down and worked out the different sources and destinations of coal traffic that can be reasonably represented on my layout, and set about the task of writing waybills to establish the flow of that traffic.I set up a business card format on the computer that allows me to print out 4-cycle waybills, then typed up the different possible moves, I then copied and pasted those moves into the format, and started printing.Each sheet nets 10 cards, so it didn't take long to print out the 100 or so waybills I need.So now, instead of having a string of empties that runs obliquely west, and loads that run eternally east, I have blocks of cars that are destined for Baltimore, some headed to the export pier at Port Covington, some to Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. Other blocks will run northeast to Bethlehem Steel at Allentown. It turns coal ops into an elaborate game of chess... Coal comes from the Thomas Sub, where my two on-line mines are modeled, plus from Elkins, which currently exists as staging. Another source is the Laurel Valley, my fictitious operator of the B&O Johnstown Branch from Rockwood, over which the prototype WM had trackage rights to the coal fields around Somerset, PA. Likewise, empties have been sorted to return to these destinations.And like the real deal, some of the empties returning from Port Covington aren't empty at all, but rather partially loaded with manganese ore imported from Venezuela and shipped to the hungry furnaces of Pittsburgh. (They are partially loaded since the ore reaches the weight capacity of the car before it fills the available volume)Once these were printed out, I assigned each car a load... pretty randomly... then last night I spent a happy couple of hours drilling the yard and blocking the cars. It worked out pretty well. The blocks can be either assembled into full trains of coal (up to about 20 cars) or set out to be inserted into other east or westbound trains.Ultimately, I will build a separate yard at Elkins, and a smaller one at Bayard where this blocking can be done without clogging up the main freight yard. On the prototype, these two yards were used to do some coal marshalling, but the lion's share of that work was done at Knobmount near Cumberland. Also, once I build to the point where I can finally install my Chaffee branch module, I'll be adding 2-3 more tipples. Currently I roster about 120 hoppers, and I figure once the layout is at full strength, it'll be able to handle closer to 200 cars. If I ever build out the Connellsville Extension and Laurel Valley in the next room, that number could increase by another 50 to 100... Voof!Anyhoo, a couple of months ago, I was fretting about whether to expend the effort to really organize car cards and waybills, but now I think I'm going to enjoy the layout a lot more once that's up and running.Sure, it takes a little discipline, and there's always the problem of a train's paperwork falling into one of Andy's toyboxes never to be seen again... But one of the things I find enjoyment in is working the yard, and having those cards in order really makes it fun to work the drill track and sort things into blocks.Next I have to work on the rest of the freight movements...Lee
makes all the difference, eh?!
I worked on trafficing for the club I was in and worked on a computer program to generate switchlists. The general aura however is in the era computers were not used, so, maybe it didnt work out, but learned a lot. My proggie could figger out interchanging.
But too much computer, not enuff human interaction I guess.
I would prolly rework it to generate car cards or its data.
Gets very interesting when you learn you can or have to direct a car certain directions, a reefer has to get spotted first for the icing platform then sent along to the shipper, then the destination, then returned to the reefer yard.
A flat car may get multiple uses as do box cars.An LCL car may have multiple stops/drops.
mix it all up and the operations get very interesting.
Absolutely. Following the Western Maryland's coal traffic is an ops session unto itself! Coal came from every which way, and went every which way. No simple "Loads east, Empties west" for them!
Thanks for all this great feedback!
dehusman wrote: I had the capability in my car card & waybill system to do something like Darnaby proposed in MR many years ago, to have a "waybill" that would give the passenger "demand" and you would add cars to meet that demand. But the more I thought about passenger service, the more I decided that it ran more or less on fixed consists. You can buy books that tell you what individual cars rode on which trains. So i decided there was less variation in passenger trains. My new system would just use an "activity" card that would say something like "Set out this car at Birdsboro", or "#6 pick up this car". Dave H.
In my case, a lot of passenger consists either pick up or drop cars at Tomikawa. While the car types and order might be the same every day, the exact car pulled out of passenger storage probably won't be.
Depending on the time of day and day of the month, there may be anywhere from none to four ordinary coaches parked at Tomikawa. When it comes to train assignment, they are interchangeable parts.
A really great software package for Carcards/Waybills is available from Shenandoah Software at http://members.aol.com/Shenware/index.html Allows creating and printing 4-sided waybills and carcards in various formats.
I've used the software for (5) years creating approx 1000 waybills and am very pleased with the product. There are (2) programs available. MiTrains for inventory and carcards; and Waybills for waybills. Many extra features are built-in such as including 6000+ actual U.S. industries using 600+ commodities to choose from. Print programs allow easy printing and can include rolling stock photos.
There is a 30-day free download available for trial.
Gale
With my old layout I used car cards, but on my new layout. I bought a computer program that picks the cars and builds trains and routes the cars to industrial tracks that they belong on. The computer does all (There is a manual over ride, in case I want it.) and prints a manifest or switch list for every train. Each siding has a list of car types that it should accept in the computer. Once the data for every town, route and train has been entered, the computer does the rest. I just print up a switch list for each train and go to work. The computer decides how long the car will stay at each industry and where it will go next. There are not just four sides to a card; the car can go to as many possible sidings as I have designated. The computer keeps track of where each car is and won't overfill sidings, etc. I love the program. It is called Rail-Op.
I want to Operate Trains not "play cards" The pin system is much eaisier and better!
But hey if your trains are just going in circles cards may be the way to go.
northernsubpcrr wrote: I want to Operate Trains not "play cards" The pin system is much eaisier and better! But hey if your trains are just going in circles cards may be the way to go.
If, by, "The pin system," you're referring to Ed Ravenscroft's thumbtack routing system, the fact that I'm NOT just running trains in circles makes it totally unsuitable for my needs. Japanese freight cars are usually black, and I've never seen a single one with a multi-colored manhole cover on the roof.
Nor have I ever seen a thumbtack with the weight of lading or special operating instructions on it - things which are standard entries on my paper waybills.
If you like the totally unprototypical and unrealistic appearance of thumbtack routing markers, by all means use them. Just don't be disappointed when I (and a bunch of other folks) don't follow suite.
(My favorite thumbtack photo was a composite in MR, two young ladies in bib overalls and engineer caps standing on a boxcar roof holding a four foot diameter 'thumbtack.')
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with paper car cards and waybills)