How many of you are conducting operating sessions of varying complexity? Informally spotting a few cars, or are you running scheduled trains by a time clock? What sort of method are you using to generate your traffic flow? software generated switchlists like Switch It or its variations? Car Cards and Waybills? Descriptions and Pics please...everyone's will be different and I'd love to pick up some new ideas. How much switching do you like to do in an operating session? Minimal switching--all through freights, passenger service, and unit trains only? Lots of switching--road switchers and local industrial jobs, terminal RR switching? A balance or skewed slightly one way or the other? Do you have regular operating sessions? How often are they? How long are they?
Rail Traffic Management in Ops Sessions At the end of last summer, I started having monthly operating sessions on my layout. My layout is large enough to accommodate about 50 trains of 8 to 20 cars (but no...we've never been able to run all 50 trains in a single session). For operating sessions on previous layouts, I wrote an Access program that routed each of about 450 cars through 4 destinations in 4 sessions (a computerized version of 4-cycle car cards) and printed out switchlists for about 40 trains for each of the 4 sessions. The current layout has nearly 700 cars and a corresponding increase is industries, interchanges, and staging destinations, and I've never gotten around to entering all the new trains, cars, or locations into the Access program. Additionally, on the old layouts, I had problems after each session reconciling car actual location with where the computer said each car was supposed to be. That process took several hours on the smaller layouts and I'd expect more than triple the time on the current layout, if I were to attempt it...so I haven't. Instead, last fall I started making up switchlists for between 20 and 30 of the trains in the week or so before each monthly session. This was also time consuming, but since I made up the switchlists from cars that were already spotted in the yard or the industries, it didn't require much brain power to do the job, just persistence. Any cars moved between operating sessions (by friends or relatives who visited between the operating sessions) could be easily included or excluded from the new switchlist that was generated each session. But this system still took a couple hours to get set up before a session. More recently, I've used an almost paperless system to determine switching movements. This system, the Alphanumeric Car Movement System, was developed by Walt Gabehart, an N-scaler in Springfield Illinois. He runs trains along his point to point layout, and has cards next to each industry along his mainline indicating the types of cars that can be accepted at each industry. When the train comes to an industry it is scheduled to switch, the operator checks the card for proper car type to be accepted. If the siding is empty, then he finds the first car in his train that matches the industry car type and spots it. If the siding is already occupied, then he checks to see if he has a car in his train that is appropriate for the industry. If so, he compares the reporting marks for the car in his train with the marks of the car on the siding. The car with the road name initials that are first alphabetically, is the car that gets left in the siding. (Or, on other runs, the operator may pick to spot the car that has the higher last digit in the car number.) If both cars share the same RR initials (or last number), then neither car stays on the siding. At the next operating session, the car that gets spotted may be the car that is LAST alphabetically or has the LOWEST digit. His system is easy to learn, simple to operate, self-repairing (mistakes get corrected automatically the next time a train comes by), essentially paperless (no clipboards with switchlists, just cards on the fascia near the industries), and CHEAP!! I can testify that set-up time--even for 700 cars--is WAY shorter than setting up the switchlists or reconciling the computer printout with actual locations. What systems of car traffic management do you use on your layout? What are its advantages, its liabilities. What do you like about it, dislike about it?
Hello Dave, we are currently running a once a month ops session, typically 5 hours. I have a small layout, so we aim to run app 15 freight trains, most around 15 cars. (Once of the operators is my 11 year old nephew, and he is strictly into running the passenger varnish, so we have added about 10 passenger trains to th esessions). Trains are running in sequence, not by time. So far I have been limited by using DC, but this is chnaging as we speak: I am converting to DCC. Freight Car forwarding is very informal: The main yard just became operational 3 sessions ago, so we all are learning how best to run it. Switching is for local freights only. Through Freights are just that: Bridge trafic that passes through Every local is terminating in the yard Cars are pre-sorted for the departing locals based on a simple 3 step logic: 1. Cars for which there is only one industry goes to the local that delivers to that industry. Example: I have omnly one coal mine, so empty hopprs goes there. 2. Car ownership: All other cars go into a dedicated direction. NP cars goes north into staging, GN Cars goes east, etc. I am messing them up again before the next session. 3. All cars that can not be sorted stay in the yard, so I can take care of them between sessions. Our next step (after finalizing DCC) is to add car cards and to involve the through freights into some switching. I am planning to use the "kernel" system, that only a few cars in a through freight needs to be swithced in or out, and hence only a few cars will have a card. Otherwise I fear I will overburden the yardmaster and switch crew. Cheers Dirk
I've had some operating sessions with friends. Most time I operate my layout by myself. Then one session takes weeks. I run the transfer trains from staging yard to Westport. I do the switching job at Westport, classification and making up of the Extras to the industrial districts. And then I run those Extras to the industrial disticts. For operation I have Car cards and 4-position-waybills as well as a Timetable and Train sheet. If there’s a crew we have verbal Track warrants. We use a clock but when the work at the Westport yard is too much, we stop the clock. The clock is only for scheduled trains like passenger (we run them when there's enough personnel) and the transfer trains. Extras doesn't need a clock. The branchline extras have up to 16 cars, 8 cars for Third Street District with its own switcher 44-ton "Henry" and the remaining 8 cars for Harbor District. The train to Plywood District has up to 12 cars. That's a lot of switching! If someone likes we run through trains like a coal unit train or container train. Wolfgang
I have operated a number of home layouts in "round robin" fashion, and also operate at www.hotrak.ca set-ups. At HOTrak, the layout is usually fairly large, with a mix of double mainline, branchline (freemo style single main) and some industrial switching using a dedicated switcher. In this environment we run - locals/turns, through freights (no stops, just run your equipment), passenger (no real ops - just stop at every station on your route). The locals/turns take on different flavours - The Oil Can serves all the petroleum industries, The Castor River Turn and NTC Turn drop cars for further switching by local switchers, while others simply serve a variety of industries found along the way. Turns will often serve industries on the way out and on the way back to the yard. Locals operate more like one-way trains, where they switch on the way out and "return" to what is imagined to be another yard... We use car cards and waybills in this environment. I believe the jobs are computer generated, but I do not know for sure. At people's homes, I have operated with switch lists (both computer and "hand" generated), as well as car cards (also manually compiled). Andrew
Until dismantled and sold off, my 18 year old HO layout saw regular operating sessions once a month with a 4 hour limit. Needed 6 people (plus myself as train dispr) for best operation but could handle up to 10 without making any 2 man crews. Operation was the name of the game using color coded cards. A good nite saw 350 cars handled via 15 trains and about 95 industries spread over 8 towns. The railroad was based on the Ann Arbor railroad around 1964 Today I operate a garden railroad simulating a one train short line. Still use the color-coded cards
Where can you find more information on this system? Thanks. I use Ship It and usually operate by myself. The one great thing that Ship It does is give me an operating classification yard. A simpler car distribution system for locals and mainline manifests could be used. The thing is, if this computer dumps or I lose this layout, I don't know if I could ever create the Ship It system again. I am considering setting up a monthly operating system. I would like to involve other layouts in San Antonio.
Flash: Walt has a made a little booklet that provides a description and system map of his free-lanced Allegheny Northern RR, a description of his layout (two yards at either end of 2.5 scale miles of double mainline with industries and interchanges along the way), plus a short write-up telling about the car traffic management system. But there really isn't much more than what I've already described--it is an incredibly simple yet elegant solution for generating car movements. Walt has a small crew of fellow retirees that operates weekly. Trains run from one yard to the other, some straight through without switching, others switching trailing point industries and interchanges. All the operators need in their hands is their throttle and an uncoupling pick. The primary reason we have so much paperwork involved in our switchlists or car card/waybill systems is that we are trying to keep track of the NEXT destination for every car we pick up. Car cards list a series of 2, 4 or 8 destinations for a car; and computerized or hand-generated switchlists designate where a car starts and where it goes to. Such systems depend on elaborate paperwork (or software) to keep track of volumes of information. Walt's system succeeds in eliminating much of the paperwork of other systems by narrowing the focus to spotting the right type of car at each industry on the basis of its reporting marks. There is no effort made to keep track of where it is coming from or going to, so there is no need for paperwork recording such information. Instead of operators needing to carry the information on car cards or switchlists, Walt just posts a card designating what car types can be spotted at each industry and lets the operator refer to the actual cars in his train to determine what gets spotted instead of shuffling through car cards or switchlists (while juggling the throttle and the uncoupling pick) to find out which cars get spotted where. The downside of Walt's system is that it will not work for someone who wants to keep track of the commodities being shipped in each car to and from dozens of industries around a layout. And it definitely is not going to work if you want to be aware of loads or empties on closed cars. It also will not work if your goal is to model the correct movement of a single car carrying a specific commodity from one producing industry on your layout to another consuming industry on your layout. Other systems (and more elaborate paperwork) are needed to keep all that sort of information organized. When you consider the bare minimum of info needed to spot a car at an industry, it boils down to knowing the proper car type for the industry and some way of picking whether the selected cars go or stay. I've tried more complex ways to model the "proper" 4 cycles of car movement from producing industries (or staging) to central yard to consuming industries back to central yard and back to producing industries/staging, but it was just too complex and time consuming for this layout. So I tried to simplify by generating single-cycle switchlists (pick it up here and spot it there--generate a new set of switchlists with whatever cars were available for the next session). But even that was very time consuming. Walt's system provides a way to generate car movements without much paperwork (just the initial set-up of the cards by the industries) and almost no set up time (although I still take a little time making sure the types of cars that go into each train are of the types that can go to the industries served by that train). Although everyone needs to honor their personal preferences, for me, the negative aspects of reduced realism in movement between producing and consuming industries and the possibility that I might run a turn job out and back from a central yard and not drop off some of the cars, and the lack of knowing each car's lading information were easily counterbalanced by the positive aspects of dramatically reduced time spent in set-up before each operating session, the ease with which operators can learn the system, and the convenience of operating paperless.
Flash, I have had ShipIt! too. But I didn't manage to let the program work like I want. When it was nearly good I changed my layout and all started new. With my car cards I can all do. Classification is like playing with cards. You push the car into the class track and simultan you place the car card to the pile for this class track. :angel: Look at my blog "Operation - a day in the life of a boxcar". Wolfgang
I am not "operating" yet. I had thought to use car cards and waybills with a sequential schedule. Now I am leaning toward a sequential schedule with simple train instructions. Do Several laps clock wise... Drop off one box at industry B... pick up cars from industries A and C. Etc. I was wanting to simplify. I want a system that even a non model railroader can play with. That new system sounds very simple and easy to use. I may have to try it. I expect my layout will run three turns, and two locals, along with a passenger train. I'm not sure yet how long it will take to operate the layout for one session. I think maybe two hours of playing trains should be enough for me. I plan to have 2-3 operators, as that's all that can fit in my small layout room. Good thread BTW. thanks for starting it.
