Free Flow Operations: Yardmaster's point of view

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Hello folks. I’m trying out an operating scheme, in hopes of pitching it to the NWR club. Right now, the club is using a “swap” system, but it feels too much like free-run night, we want soul, and prurpose. Since I had the loudest mouth, it’s my project, and I need some experts in the sounding board. The problem we have, is that the NWR is an open club. At any time, day or night, members are allowed to run trains, so we can’t track cars, because they may move twelve times betweeen Ops sessions. So instead of making some huge deal about tracking car loactions, I want to take the Swap System that;s in place, and whack off the physical swap part for a true switch list. In the process, I also want to cut out some extranious paperwork, but at the same time, I’m re-usung what was already made.

First post, I’m going to address the Yardmasters. Ideallt, I want to square them away before we get to the road guys in a separate post/thread. Since you are all new to the layout, you’ll be perfect, because you’ll ask the questions new yardies will ask as well.

What I know to give you, is as follows:

  1. Max train length: 12 cars, plus engine caboose
  2. I’m giving you a timetable of trains and train numbers, of trains going from your yard. You as a yardmaster must fill those trains. Some trains have a specific time, others are left blank. All the blank trains may be run multiple tiems as locals, using the same number (but obviously not consecutively). There are two times on the timetable, because we may start at 5 on Saturdays, or 7 on the weekdays. If we start at 5, we CAN re-run the train on the 7 times, but it’s not a requirement. Obviously, if we start at 7, we can’t run the 5:30 train. There are also additional floating numbers we can use, that will be assigned by the Dispatcher in that case. since he’s using a magnet on a board.
    (Note, I plan on just giving the yards the trains they care about, but
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You better start the yardmaster way before the rest of the crews. The “timetable” doesn’t really tell me anything I need to know as a yardmaster other than departure time. Which jobs serve which industries? Which jobs move cars between yards? How are the trains blocked (what order do the cars for the various towns ride in the train)?

Have you considered a 'tag on car system". You put a small tag, pin or chit on top of each car with a color or alpha numeric code on it for the destination. One group uses a dot of of the non-marking sticky adhesive under the tag to hold it on the car.

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If you haven’t operated much at other layouts, you might want to explore that first before starting with this system. There are alternative ways of operating yards that might be a lot less cumbersome to begin, especially if the club is made up of others new to operations.

The Operations Special Interest Group is inexpensive to join, a great resource, and offers opportunities to visit operating layouts. Experiencing successful operating schemes and adapting one of them might be more productive than starting from scratch.

In developing operating plans for several model railroads (including clubs), I’ve found that it works best to start with the bare minimum of complexity, then add challenge as time goes on and the crew’s experience and comfort grows…

Best of luck,

Byron

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The OPSIG pages and discussion group contain a wealth of information but it does take time to absorb. If all of the NWR guys are absolute beginners, you will want to start ops as simply as possible and let the expertise build.

I would suggest that you treat the schedule as simply a sequential timetable. Release trains at specific intervals and run the whole layout on “visual flight rules” with crews looking ahead and working out their own meets. Don’t worry about fast clocks and meeting schedules.

If cars are free-running, a switch list is a good idea but will take time to set up.

An alternative are printed “train instruction” cards, or whatever you want to call them. They should include directions to the conductor and engineer governing what the train does. One for the "NWR

Limited East might say " Run from A to Z. Make 5-minute station stops at C-H-L and R. Drop full baggage/mail car at H. Pickup dining car at R." Then write a second card reversing the direction for the NWR Limited West.

Through freights can be handled the same way.

For a local, peddler, sweeper, patrol, or whatever you choose to call freights that work stations between terminals, list the industries to be worked, and leave a blank line to fill in the number of cars to be picked up or set out. That way you can vary sessions without paperwork for individual cars.

For local switchers tied to a particular area, do the same thing, then instruct them where to set out cars for mainline freights, and where to pick up cars.

This, at least, will get you going, and car cards, waybills and so on can be added as crews gain skill.

Assigning crews in pairs – yardmaster & yard engineer, conductor & engineer, will make operations more sociable and crews can share information. It’s also helpful to draw numbers or something to rotate jobs, to avoid one person working Jackson Yard every single time. Rotating jobs gives you more information to improve the way the railroad i

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For a layout that is always in flux as yours is, a Tab-On-Car system would work best. John Allen was a popular supporter of it and used it for his G&D RR. I also have used it for the same reasons your club has.

I modified the system and used large Plastruct I-beam material cut in about 3/4 inch lengths. They sit on the cars fairly well.

The sides were colored according to the types of cars they went on. The inside was colored for the town the car went to. Written on the inside color were a couple of letters that indicated the industry the car was to be delivered to in the town. The top edges of the beam were either black or white. White edges if the tab indicated a load, and black edges if the tab indicated an empty. Both sides of the tab had the same information but for different towns and industries, and one side had black colored beam edges and the other side had white colored beam edges.

They way it worked was as follows:
A tab was selected at random from a jar. The tab was put on the proper type car with the black bars up (empty car). This car was taken to an industry that loaded it, and the tab was turned over with the white bars up by the crew that delivered it. Then the car was delivered by the next train to the yard to be classified and delivered to the town and industry indicated and unloaded. The tab was then taken off the car and returned to the jar by the crew that delivered the car. Cars with no tabs were forwarded by any train to the yard. The yardmaster would then pull tabs from the jar and put them on the proper cars for the trains that needed cars.

If a car was “lost”, the tab told where the car should be going, and could be collected by any train and either delivered to the industry, or taken to the yard for classification.

Blocking the cars was fairly easy because the yardmaster blocked them by color, then by industry letters. If time was sho

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Time to setup? Fill out I agree, but I’ve always imagined the switchlists like a Poker game. The cars that are in your yard when you walk in, the cars that ended up there after the last person to run trains, is the hand you’re dealt. If you can use them for your industries, use them! If you don’t have a use for car X, then find out which yard needs it. Or, jsut dump it on some poor living soul. That first move of each car is your chance to put whatever laod it is, either empty, or something another industry needs, like empty bottles to a bottling plant.
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My plan, was to use a through train to familiarize a new crew while the YDs got started up, all it did was loop so you could get to know the towns. No job, no stop, just a tour train.

As to the other thing, we have a sheet of a train, with the entirety of the inustries it served, that was for road crews to kno what they could or could not set out at that indusrtry from the swap system, but that’s an entire sheet, and trying to juggle all that paperwork I felt wa sextremely combursome. As to industries, the layout is of such a size that a train to Cementville handles all the industry in cementville, and everytghing from Naptown to. (which in that case there’s only an icehouse) I can modify the TT to put towns served on it, then YD can cross-reference train to Cementville with the industry list for Cementville.

As I see it, it’s better for a YD to

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Here’s what I would do if I had to have switch lists.

I would build a switch list for each train/local/switcher in Excel with a section for each station and a line for each spot at each industry served by the train. The sheet would have two groups of columns, the left for spots and the right for pick ups.

For each line on the spot side of the sheet there would be two or three cells where the type of car used could be noted. So on my layout, WJ Pratt Co. a coal and building supply delaer, would have 3 lines, the first two would take car types H and G (hoppers and gons) and the third would take types X and F (boxcars and flats). That’s 2 spots over the coal dump and one spot for the building supply shed for lumber and building materials.

In addition each spot would have a cell with a formula driven by a random number generator that would randomly generate a mark in the cell.

Step one would be to generate a list for each train/local/switcher. Then before the train runs/before the session, the "agent’ would walk around to each industry on the list and write down all the cars at the industry on the switch list. The agent would then mark which of those were "pulls’ and which were “holds”. Since the agent knows how many cars the spreadsheet is going to tell the yardmaster to send to the industry (the mark in the random cell on the spot side), the agent can balance the pulls so the industry won’t get overloaded.

Once the agent is finished, he hands the list to the yardmaster. the yardmaster picks the appropriate car type for the lines marked in the spot cell and writes the car number down in the space on the spot side.

So if the lines for WJ Pratt had a spot mark in one line of the coal dump and the supply shed, I, as yardmaster would switch a hopper or gon into the local for the coal dump and box or flat into the train for the supply shed.

The local takes the switch list and spots the appropriate cars and picks u

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While I’m not the pro operator many of these other guys are, upon reading the constraints in your original post, a tab system was the first thing that came to my mind as well. I’m really not following the logic here. First you state you don’t have the manpower to keep things moving and that switch lists get bogged down by having to fill them out, then the next paragraph you state you don’t want a tab system – you want the YD to fill out the switch list.

At work we’d call this an over constrained problem. Let’s see:

a. No way to track cars/cards between sessions because they free roam. b. No tabs allowed. &n

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[quote user=“jmbjmb”]

At work we’d call this an over constrained problem. Let’s see:

a. No way to track cars/cards between sessions because they free roam. b. No tabs allowed. c. No car cards allowed.

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Perhaps I’m reading it wrong, but it seems manpower (lack thereof) is a contributing factor. Please correct me where I’m misinterpreting. It sounds like you want the YD to assemble trains by randomly selecting cars to make up train X, then write the reporting marks on the switch list for train X, then assemble train Y, at random, again writing the reporting marks, and so on.

If that’s the case, assembling one train at a time randomly is pretty inefficient making it hard for the YD to keep up with the road. Then adding the task of writing the reporting marks on the same person (at least it reads like you intend for the same person assembling the train to fill in the paperwork) puts a lot of load on each yardmaster.

If I’ve totally flubbed this up, please tell me to go jump in the Smoke river (well actually the river isn’t there yet, just an empty space between two sections of benchwork, but I need some incentive to get started on it. [;)] )

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Not completely random, yes, they’re pulling whatever cars they have in their yard, or requesting them from another Yard if they don’t have them, as opposed to having a movement history, but once they are selected they have a purpose. And more likely, they shoul dbe building multiple trains simoltaniously, but otherwise, you have it.

Do I like it? No. Would I prefer we have enough people to write down as we go, most definately, but there’s only so many people to go around.

Ugh. You’re proabl;y right, Ishould go to a car count switchlist instead of one by car type, but even still the YD has to fill it out. (Though it would be faster) And I’m not fond of making multiple blank sheets for multiple train types. (Local trains going East need one sheet, Yard-to-Yard transfers would need a different sheet, PAX needs a third) Ugh.

Thanks guiys, and continue

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I also am a member of NWR. Out of about 26 members we have maybe 8-10 who are interested in ops.

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Flashwave,
So, let me see if I have this right… You want your yardmasters to also be business agents but you don’t have the manpower or time? And that’s because your layout is used constantly so true car forwarding is impossible? Hmm…

For one thing, I’d get rid of the dual times. Pick one time and stick with it, just set the clocks in the layout room to that certain time and just run. For example, pick 12:00 noon to start all operation sessions no matter the actual real time of the day/night. Set all your clocks to “noon” and run your train schedule. I would also be using a fast clock to give the illusion of more time passing, but that’s up to you. In addition to making the paperwork easier, it also allows you to start running trains whenever people want to. If someone is late or if everyone is early, then you can run whenever it strikes your fancy, rather than being locked in to a certain time or two.

With regards to the constant layout use, at my club I have the same issue. What I do is set up all the layout paperwork the day before operations (Ops are always on a Monday, so I have Sunday to set up). I have some fellow club members helping me out, which reduces the work load. First thing I do is go around and inventory the layout with special forms for this purpose, showing every siding on the RR. I record reporting marks, number, and AAR type for every car “At Industry”. If the cars are not spotted properly for each industry, I move them until they are.

Next, I go around and collect cars to be spotted at all the industries. At our layout, we would place them all on one track to make the yardmaster’s job easier (we run a lot more cars through the yards then you do, I’m thinking…our smallest trains are around 30 cars long). In your case, I would have all these “Set Out” cars placed randomly in your yards. Write on the inventory form the car’s reporting marks,

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Trying to switch a yard with cars randomly scattered through it but no knowledge of where they are tends to be highly unprototypical and very frustrating.

Real simple way to operate. Make up a two sided waybill for each spot on the layout. It would have destination, commodity and car type info but with the car number blank. For inbound loads side one would be the loaded move to industry and side 2 would be the empty return to the yard or staging. For outbound loads, side one would be the empty car order and side 2 would be the loaded shipment outbound. You could even laminate the “waybills”. Then go around the layout and write the car number of appropriate cars on waybill (if using laminated waybills use a grease pencil). Then for the rest of the cars use single move through waybills that just route the car to a yard, staging or an interchange (no car type, commodity or specific shipper/consignee required). Write the car numbers for the rest of the cars on the through waybills.

When you write a car number on the waybill, leave the waybill at the location. You can then use the waybills as just like car cards. Virtually every suggestion has you doing some sort of inventory process, so this isn’t any more work than any of the other suggestions. The operations can then be mananged prototypically, every car has a destina

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Sorry, I didn’t read through all of your explanation because, while I’m interested in operation, I’m not interested in all that paperwork junk.

But I’ll mention the following. First, one of your fellow members posted that out of 26 members, 8 to 10 are interested in “operations”. If that is true, then you have a long row to hoe.

Second, you mention that you have an open club and that members can run trains any time they want. You’re going to have to do away with that. The only way any sort of real operations can occur is if you have a dedicated fleet of rolling stock and locos that are used for that purpose. There is no sense trying to have an “operation session” if Joe Bloe can show up with his link and pin equipped cars/loco and decide to run them around from yard to yard dodging around the scheduled trains. And I know this sort of stuff happens because that’s what happened when the club I belong to wanted to start operations. The only way they could get the idea off the ground was to have their dedicated fleet of cars, each with a car card, and only operate once per month. At the end of the session, all the cars were picked up from their industry locations and put in a box. Prior to the next session, they were staged back where they had been. The free runners were told that they could use the railroad to run free the other 29 days of the month.

While I’m sure there are many way