Rick: So, let me check my understanding... 1. The yardmaster generates the yard crew switchlists from the master list of 1600 (2300?) cars or by reading and recording the individual car cards (waybills) left in the yard's arrival track "mailbox" by each arriving train crew. Or do the yard crews completing classification of cars, just take the car cards from the arrival track "mailbox" and route cars directly to the appropriate classification tracks (making the YM's involvement somewhat redundant)? 2. As the yard crew spots cars on the correct classification tracks, the classification job's engineer puts the car card into the appropriate classification track's "mailbox". 3. The local (or roadswitcher's) train crew picks up the car cards in their train's "mailbox" (or in the mailbox for the classification track the local's cars are spotted on). 4. For the convenience of the local's crew, the YM will use the Local's car cards to generate a wheel report of cars the local crew will be moving. If I understand everyone's job descriptions on your layout, there are two major tasks being performed in the midst of an operating session on your layout that, on my layout, I am performing during the 3 to 4 long evenings of preparation before an operating session: classification of all cars from the arrival tracks to classification tracks serving locals and roadswitching jobs; and preparing switchlists for the locals and roadswitchers. On your layout, all the local crew has to do is pick up the car cards and they know where their cars are going; on my layout, I have to set up the switchlists for 450 cars, so that, at the operating session, the local crews can just pick up a switchlist to work from. It is evident that once it is set up, the car card and waybill system is much more efficient than hand-writing switchlists for 450 cars. Rick: If I set up my car forwarding system as described earlier in this thread, how do you think that method would compare to the car card system, in terms of amount of prep time needed between sessions?
Dave, This is an interesting topic, I have still yet to decide on a operating system for my layout although it is much smaller than yours. I still dont have a great understanding for waybills etc but one day I will have to try and setup a system for my operations.
I will generate a list of each inbound train to the yard and have the appropriate cards with the list. The list will show each car's next destination, as determined by the rotationed position on the card. The yardmaster takes the "next destination" info, and assigns each car to the appropriate track in the yard for that classification. This list is given to the yard crew and they switch the train. The yardmaster sorts the cards at a rack on his desk. My trains will be 30 cars or 13 feet, whichever comes first. When the track has enough cars for a train, the yardmaster lists the train based on card order, and hopefully the cars are in the same order, and provides this new list and the cards to the outbound crew. Through train crews are only worried about having the right cars on the list and where the train is going. Just like on the real RR, the crew could care less exactly where they go, so they don't worry about info on the cards. Locals will be built based on customer needs as determined by me between sessions. Industry mailboxes will be updated so the crew knows what to do at each industry requiring a switch. So, prep time involves rotating the necessary cars and trains in staging, updating lists of trains coming on to the layout and updating industry work requirements. Here is the other catch; my waybill/cards provide 4 destinations for every car, plus the return trip "home", so essentially each car has 8 destinations on each card. As near as I can figure, if everything works as intended, the card and list cross reference will make it fall right into place. Timewise? I have no idea on mine since I am still building. My main yard has 8 receiving tracks and 21 classification tracks. I can tell you my friend Larry spends 8 hours prep time for a session. But he is restaging cars on the layout, prebuilding locals in the yard, and updating all the trains' paperwork on his computer. He has about 800 cars. Mine will pick up where we leave off. This help at all?
I believe the Dec 1961 MR is the one you might be looking for. I think Doug Smith's Card order operation is the one you're refering to. I've been using a two destination card order type operation for over 30 years of which 25 was on a 5-9 person operating session. My point-to- point HO railroad had 9 towns plus 2 active interchanges in route and 55 industries along with 6 interchanges so the system can work on more than solo type operations.
This is an interesting thread. Since it's a year old as of today I thought I'd bump it to see if others would add to it. I think I might like the paperless system for my small layout. I'll give that one a run through and see how it goes. Any other systems you guys use?
tab on car system i see that most talked about using waybills, straight substitution, or some sort of numeric system. there is another method that was used by john allen on his gorre and daphetid called the tab on car method. most cars would have an h shaped tab placed on top of the car or a ring placed on a small pin on the top. on each side of the tab two colors would be applied with one color having a larger area than the other. each color would designate a town or section of the route. a letter code would be placed in each color to designate a specific industry. during operations the sequence of big color, little color, turn over to the other side would be followed. operators could tell if a car was to be classified to a train or switched at an industry by the current location of a car and the color code on the car. thus if a train was in the classification yard (color black) and the tab on top showed a large yellow and small black, the yard operator would turn the tab over. now if the next side showed a large green designating the wayfreight's route it would be classified into the train for the wayfreight. the wayfreight would take its train out and check the letter codes dropping off cars at the appropriate industries. if the wayfreight only ran one way it would pick up any cars with a color code that routed the cars to a destination further along the route. a wayfreight heading in the other direction would operate similarly. a branchline train would also operate similarly. a more detailed explanation of the procedure can be found in the book model railroading with john allen. the advantage of this is that you do not have to keep a record of where each car is and do not have to spend a lot of time preparing for each operating session once the system is set up. if things get too repetitious then you can replace cars with a similar car or change the tabs between cars.
From a contrarian point of view On my last HO layout I just used a switch list for operaations, since I was modeling a freelanced shortline railroad. Most likely, I'll do the same on my N scale Arklatex Sub, since it's a secondary main line. I approach operations in a minimalist way- the less paperwork I have to mess with, the better. I have enough of that in my job as it is. But then again, I run a small railroad, so on anything larger, YMMV.
There have been a number of operating systems discussed so far. I have used Car Cards and Waybills, hand written switchlists, and computer generated switchlists. I worked from the original Doug Smith MR article on car cards and waybills. These were 2 cycle waybills. I used this system on 4 layouts for over 15 years. I expected my operators to turn over the waybills when they filed the car cards in the town card boxes. The operators were also suppose to move cards between the slots of the boxes. I found that there was an awfull lot for new operators to learn and I had a very low return rate of new operators. I also found that I had to run one or two way freights in each direction to clean up the car card town boxes. Althougth the system was self healing and suppose to be continuously ready to go, I found that it wasn't and it required at least an evening to reset the layout between sessions. After the advent of PC's, I entered Bob Fink's Traffic Automatically Generated (TAG) program and made several enhancements to Bob's original program including a manual routine that allowed me to work up switch lists. I have been using the program for almost 20 years. The computer printed switchlists seem to make things easier for the operators particularly the newer ones. The current layout has over 250 cars on it. I can check the siding status in about 30 minutes. I normally don't check the status of the cars in the yards as experience has shown it is normally not a problem. I am running 35 to 40 trains per session moving about 200 cars. The TAG program is old and car assignment must be made manually on the computer. It takes me about an hour to assign all of the cars. The printer then takes about an hour to print all of the switchlists, yardmaster reports, siding status reports. It then takes me about another 30 minutes to tear apart, organize and distribute the paperwork. On the old layout with an experienced crew, I would only check the siding status report every two or three sessions as the error rate was only about 1 or 2%. On the new layout, the error rate is currently running about 10%, but seems to be trending downward. Bottom line is I can prep the layout in one evening. If I would break down and replace my operating program (Ship It or Pro-Trak), I could probably cut my prep time by 30% or more. Checking the siding status report does not have to be done every session. Paperwork can be done several session ahead without any problems. I can run sessions back to back. I end up hunting cars or saying "Don't worry about that car" during the 2nd and subsequent sessions. The other alternative is to take a short break and do the siding status check. Hope these comments help!:tb-biggrin: Glenn Samuel Odenville, AL
