I have some of the “Micro-Mark” Car-Cards and use them in switching sessions. Micro-Mark had ( has ) these blue Car-Cards which state “Empty Car Request”. I purchased a pack along with another order mostly out of curiosity. Now I see on the reverse side they are printed for two WayBills where the original are four WayBills. I printed out front and back of regular WayBill cards and same for the Empty car request cards in case some do not know what I’m talking about.
Am curious just how is the “Empty Car Request” side used? Am I supposed to ask for a special type car for some shipper?
I do like the Freight WayBill cards as I make them out ahead of time and I make four rounds for each car before putting it into a staging area.
Interesting, I’d assume they’re either using it to indicate when a shipper is requesting an empty car to be loaded, or using it as a way to route empty cars back to a specific interchange or shipper - like prototype cars stencilled “when empty route to ABC railroad”. Sometimes (especially with private owner / lease cars) they don’t want the car to be backloaded, but want it sent empty back to the starting point to be reloaded by the owner / leaseholder.
Usually the instructions will read when empty return to(say) Agent Little Rock Ak…Then we had “when empty return to(say) ATSF via reverse route”.Some times Return to(say) GN do not load.Some home road cars would read “When empty return to Columbus Pool.”
It is a little more ‘prototypical’ than the 4 side waybill. In the ‘real world’, a customer calls the local agent or the ‘800’ number and places a car order. This ‘Empty Car Request’ is the document that is used to route an empty car to the shipper’s loading dock. It is sort of a waybill to capture a perspective empty and get it to the shipper for loading. As far as the shipper is concerned, the only waybill he is interested in is the one that routes his load to the consignee.
Current railroading really does not have a lot of ‘paper’ following a car(it’s in the computer), and a computer generated list is needed due to issues like HAZMAT loads in the train. For modeling, you can choose what works best for you.
For my layout, I have a two side waybill. The first side is the ‘car order’, and the second side is the actual ‘waybill’ from the shipper to the consignee. When the car gets to the consignee, the waybill is removed, and there are empty car routing instructions on the car card(under the area that the waybill covered). Most of the instructions route the empty to a ‘Home Interchange’ based on the railroad who owns the car. For my Milw Road layout, a C&O car would be routed to the eastern staging(Janesville). A UP empty gets routed to the western staging(Galena). In the case of my Swift reefers, they are routed to the yardmaster in Sinsinawa to be accumulated for loading at the local Swift plant there.
I think if you can find one of Koesters last artices on his coal branch extentson he talks about this. Basically if the yardmaster knows that a company s going to need a certain car type or number of cars that card alerts him to the fact and allows him to retain the car(s) to meet the shippers needs rather then just get rid of them.
That would work with home cars but,with foreign road cars you would be stuck paying a late fee for each day that car sits.
A good yardmaster would keep a sufficient amount of home road empties to cover his needs and would request more empties when he saw his supply is getting low…
In Mr. Koester’s book, “Realistic Model Railroad Operation”, he talks about his use of these cards. Basically, before every operating session a stack of empty-car requests is given to the yardmaster, telling her what empties are needed to be sent out on the line that day. The yardmaster tries to find a car with the four-sided waybill that indicates it is empty and a foreign-road car that is heading in that direction already. This kills two birds with one stone - getting rid of the foreign-road car and making some $$ from the move. If she can’t, then she moves onto the home-road cars she might have stashed, as per Larry’s post. Anyway, that’s the way I read it. if Mr. Koester ever lurks on these boards, he can chime in himself!
