Hello again,
Im on the phase of my layout where i need to come up with a car card system, or more so, want to. Im picking up the digitrax zephyr set and am planning to run sound and all that. How do igo about starting my own car card system?
Thankyou,
Keith
Keep it simple.
For each of your “towns” or “industries” have a pocket for “Pick Up”, “Set Out”, and “Hold”.
When you start your session, your “set out” pocket will have the cars from the previous session that were spotted at the industry. Move these to the “Hold” position if you want to stagger how often you service a facility. You’ll move them to “Pick Up” for the next session. If you don’t want to stagger which industries are serviced, at the start or end of a session you can move the cards in the “Set Out” pocket to the “Pick Up” pocket for when you start the next time.
The car-card system I am familiar with uses double sided cards that can be flipped over as well. This gives you four options for where the cards go. One side has places for the cars to get loaded, the other side has places for the cars to be unloaded. Granted, doing this will keep your car in captive service between four points on your layout.
I’ve only one pocket.
This is my latest version. Between sessions I fllipp the waybills. So you have only to follow the instructions at the waybill.
I made the car cards & waybills with excel. Look at my operation site.
To get it on the way I made a spread sheet with industries shipping & receiving.
Wolfgang
The Gateway Division of the NMRA has some good articles on car card and other operating systems:
http://www.gatewaynmra.org/operate.htm
You will need a “car card” for every card that identifies the car and holds the “waybill”. In reality what a car card system is is a way to duplicate a prototype waybill by recycling the car information (the car card) and the shipment information (the waybill). When you put the two together they can have essentially the same information as a prototype waybill.
You can make your own car cards and waybills using Word, Excel or Access. There are examples of such systems in the files section of the CarCards Yahoo Group. They vary in complexity from just printing out blank forms that you hand write the info on to complex databases.
If you don’t want to “roll your own” then the Operations SIG of the NMRA and MicroMark sell CC&WB sets:
http://www.ares-server.com/Ares/Ares.asp?MerchantID=RET01229&Action=Catalog&Type=Product&ID=82916
In addition some operations software companies sell car cards generating software.
Dave H.
I got a starter set of car cards/waybills from Old Line Graphics years ago,don’t know if they are still around.The hard part for me was/is coming up with loads and destinations off the layout(different industries,cities,states,etc)I really like the system after the initial homework and set up,it pretty much runs itself.
Terry
thankyou everybody,
i have decided to go with dehusman’s suggestion so that i can becom familiar with how the system works.
The owner of Old line Graphics had some health problems so I understand that he is very backlogged on orders.
Dave H.
I made my own waybills and car cards… Also, instead of coming up with destionations off the layout, (which tend to confuse yard operators which train they go on if they haven’t memorized every industry on the layout) I just use Way Freight West (WFW on the waybill) and Way Freight East (WFE in the waybill) after an article in MR a few years back. (think it was an article on a layout called Watawatoga or something like that)
Good luck!
I have been using this free download. It is not perfect, then again maybe I don’t utilize all available either. You can create train orders with it and have an inventory also.
http://gregorybraun.com/RRTrains.html
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i250/exceller8/model%20trains/P6130263.jpg
http://www.nscale.org/photos/showphoto.php?photo=3615
Free is the only way I can stay in this great hobby right now.
I don’t think they are available from Old Line Graphics at all any longer, but MicroMark has the same car cards and waybills and it’s an easy way to get started. This package also includes an instruction book, which I have not seen.
Once you’ve tried CC&WB and if you like the system, a computer-based system to print the materials can be handy. If you don’t have MS Access to use the free on-line forms Dave H. mentioned, you might try Shenware’s Waybills program. It’s pretty inexpensive and works well for me.
Byron
Model RR Blog
In addition to the excellent links and suggestions already posted, I would suggest checking out the yahoo CarCards group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CarCards/). I found it to be an excellent resource. As with all the Yahoo groups I recommend checking “web only” when you join to allow you to browse the content without being flooded with emails. Cost is an issue for me, I have found a lot of great freeware ways to allow me to “roll my own” on the CarCards group.
For information about using car cards in general, I highly recommend “Realistic Model Railroad Operation” by Tony Koester. I got a lot out of it.
Regards,
Chris