I just had my first operating session which was nothing more than a test of my operating scheme as well as track and equipment. I haven’t settled on whether to use car card/waybills and/or computer generated switchlists. My layout has loop staging at either end with one major town and classification yard and two smaller towns with a few industries each. I’m considering a scheme in which roughly half my freight car fleet is dedicated to bridge traffic which will shuttle back and forth between the two staging yards with blocks of this traffic being transfered to the various freight trains traveling in either direction from the classification yard. The rest of the fleet would use individual car cars to route cars to and from the various industries around the layout. The bridge traffic would be blocked together in the rear of the trains while the cars to be switch would be at the front end of the trains.
To me, this seems like it would be a hybrid system between just running trains back and forth and one which would reguire me to handle a car card for every freight car on the layout. I’ve never read about anyone using such a hybrid system but I can’t believe someone hasn’t thought of this and done it before. Does anyone see any reason why this wouldn’t work.
I use car cards, but found that my operators really need a switchlist, as they struggle if you ask them to sort out on their own what needs done based soleyl on interpreting the car cards. So for ops sessions, I make up switchlists. When I operate netween formal ops sessions, I just use the car cards.
I just recently went to a new system, but still using the car cards and switchlists. Cars assigned to service between or to industries on the layout are coded with a “T” for traffic marker boldly on the car card. Cars that travel through the layout, but aren’t destined for industry on it, are marked with a big “OH” for overhead traffic. They show up regularly, but only by way of passing through on either locals or other trains on the layout.
Car Cards without any bold markings are simply free range. Home road and neighboring road cars can cycle through as needed, even if not in assigned service. I have several through trains that either don’t switch on the layout at all or have very limited work, such as dropping a block of cars for one of the bigger industries.
One reason why this works for me is that I have a large number of cars that reside off the layout in storage drawers. By sorting them out into these different categories, I have easy access to those that appear regualrly, the “T” cars; those that appear less frequently, the “OH” cars, and those that appear at random, the unmarked ones. Depending on the train, they get a mix that reflects their work. Through trains tends to be unmarked car cards, with a good balance between foreign and home road cars. Locals tend to be made up of “T” and “OH” cars, with a good helping of unmarked home road cars randomly sent to appropriate industries.
There are more details and I’m still sorting this out. But the overlapping schemes – car cards, switchlists, and the letter designations – work together or separately quite well, dependin
It sounds like what you are doing is similar to what I had in mind. Each of my staging yards represents 3 different destingations. Let’s call the towns in the east staging yard A,B,C and the west staging yard X,Y,Z. I will have two through trains in each direction traveling from A to Z, with a stop in the main yard to drop and pick up blocks of cards. I have out and back trains for towns B,C,X, and Y. All these trains will have both cars destined for layout industries and blocks of bridge traffic. For a train terminating in the yard, the bridge traffic block will be broken up into three seperate blocks for destinations at the opposite end of the layout. For example, a westbound train from B will terminate in the main yard. The cars destined for industries on the layout will be on the front end and will be sorted according to their destination. Then the block of bridge traffic will be broken down into blocks for towns X,Y, and Z and will latter be switched into the appropriate trains for each destination. The cars will be switched but rather than a car card for each car in the block, I’ll have one card for the whole block and it will simply designate the number of cars to bei in that block. I can comfortably run 20-25 car freights so let’s say the last 12 cars are designated as bridge traffic. That train from B to the classification yard would have a B-X block, a B-Y block, and a B-Z. The number of cars in each smaller block could vary from session to session, but the scheme would remain the same. Naturally the process is reversed for the opposite direction.
I see an added benefit to this system. Most of my industries use either boxcars or reefers with only a few tanks, gondolas, and flatcars being used. The bridge traffic will allow me to include more of the latter type and give me more diverse consists.
Yellow - Wilmington, Wilmington-B&O (staging), Wilmington-PRR (staging), Wilmington-DRE, Wilmington-King St
Grey - Coatesville, Coatesville-PRR
Blue - Birdsboro, Birdsboro-PRR
Green - Reading (staging)
White - Local
Cars are blocked in trains by major block and blocked to locals by the detail block. A train going to Wilmington would have all the Wilmington cars of any detail block mixed together. When it gets to Wilmington the switcher classifies the DRE’s, King St’s, industry and interchange blocks out. Through cars move between Reading and the interchanges (staging to staging).
Through freights carry up to 3 blocks (Wilmington-Coatesville-Birdsboro or Reading-Birdsboro-Coatesville depending on direction).
I provide list forms for people to make their own switch lists but very few people use them, 95% just use car cards.
I use a computer program to keep things random. It also tells the operators what cars they need to pick up at the various locations instead of having to look at all the cards at every location or industry they go to or pass.
That should work and help cut down paperwork. I actually thought of just doing away with car cards (on my standard gauge, which is what I’ve been discussing, as my NG will stay car cards for a variety fo reasons.) Thing is, I still like to use car cards myself and can keep track of them (mostly.) I can’t really do away with car cards on some rolling stock and not on others. How could I tell if I didn’t just lose a car card?[X-)]
On the other hand, many of my highest traffic industries really don’t need car cards, just X or Y numbers of cars at a time. So your idea makes sense, esepcially with the sizable number of cars you can accomodate. My trains are limited to around 12 to 14 cars. I also have what is a secondary main/glorified branch situation. Off layout means either East or West. So I’d say the fact that you have N>2 off-line destinations and a fairly commodious train length add additional incentive to use your plan.
I use a system of ‘car packets’ and ‘route slips’. The car packet is a small envelope, cut in two to form a packet. The car type, road name and number are written on the packet. This can be a single car or a block of several cars. The route slip is a 3x5 card with one destination on the top and another (up-side down) on the bottom. The ‘destination’ information is a direction (North, South, East, West), destination yard name (off-line) or town (on-line) and then the specific industry track for on-line switching. There can be multiple industry destinations in the same town on one card (eg. FREIGHT HOUSE (door3), CLEAN-OUT, ELEVATOR, SCALE).
On my layout basically the east-west Northern Pacific (NP) interchanges blocks of cars with the north-south Montana Central (MC). The route slips for that traffic will typically have one destination on the NP and one on the MC. Because of staging length constraints, I run fixed length (24 car) trains on the NP. So, if there are 6 cars to be picked up for a westbound NP train, I’ll set out the first 6 cars and they will each have some destination on the MC. On the return trip the cars will each have an NP off-line destination east (Laurel or Northtown) or west (Pasco or Auburn) that go to east or west NP staging yards. When those cars are picked up by the NP they will be placed on the rear of the train (where they slowly work their way forward and are eventurally dropped off again after several cycles as overhead traffic.)
Don’t know why that would not work! Sounds workable to me. Go for it.
Through the years I’ve operated on many many layouts. NONE are exactly the same. Everyone has taken the basic schemes and modified them to uniquely match their own roads. It often takes a few years of operation to determine what works well for a given track plan. Don’t let the text book operating schemes be a limitation but more of a starting point.
Initially I planned to use software to generate switchlists but had a bad experience with Ship-it and have recently downloaded JMRI which I am trying to get up to speed on. Which program do you use?
I’m still not sure whether I will eventually use car cards, switchlists, or both so I’m exploring all options.
JMRI is free so that’s a big plus, and it will produce useable switch lists. If you really want computer switch lists, I would recommend it.
A lot depends on how prototypical you want to be. Most model software is a reasonable approximation of a modern “work order” used by crews to do industry work. Very little model software is set up to handle classification switch lists or train lists in a prototypical manner (Pro-Trak is the only one that comes to mind).
I played with JMRI to see if I could get it to replicate my current operation and after about 8-10 hours playing with it got something that did most of what I wanted. i did it mostly as an excercise to see it I could make it work, which it mostly did, I will still use CC&WB or handwritten lists for my actual operating sessions.
That’s good to know about JMRI. It makes me feel I’m not wasting my time trying to learn it.
If it matters, I am a lone wolf operator. I will be operating from a script rather than a schedule and fast clock. To me, simpler is better. I don’t want this becoming work. If it meets that criteria, I won’t be too concerned whether or not it is prototypical. I’m just looking for something that will route my freight cars in a logical manner.
For a low volume sequential operation focused on local work, JMRI should work well. There is a learning curve and there are some fairly specific rules but most of them are outlined in the documentation. There is also an active JMRI Yahoo group and some of the developers participate and are helpful.