Website is gone. Is there another link???
No, it doesn’t. An 0perating session is a single 24 hour day. There just isn’t enough territory to let a car sit at an industry a “scale” amount of time be it a day or a week or whatever.
Two or three sessions to make a car move two places? There must be a whole lot of places to put cars on that layout, or very few trains/operators. Now I do know of pre-programmed operating sessions where once the car has reached the waybill destination it halts the motion of that car so it is basically dead until the next “set up”. In that was each car makes only one move per operating session, so it takes 4 sessions to cycle a card. But those are some monster layouts, and they require hours of set up time before EACH operating session. The ones I’m talking about are the perpetual type that require almost zero set up between sessions.
Once again sounds like a very large layout and very few trains.
The real point I was trying to make is that a car circulates through exactly the same four sets of moves. How noticeable those four moves are is a factor of many things. Adding “return when empty to” breaks the cycle up a bit and adds more yard work.
Dave
I just finished downloading your latest carcard database. I lost the last one I had to a computer problem. I must say, the new version is a lot more robust than the old version I had. I need to get all of my cars entered back into it and am looking forward to getting it all set up again. Thanks for all of the work you do on this program.
Dan
I suspect with a single post and a recommendation for a $140 piece of software, you must have some financial gain with this product. I would be interested if any other posters other than yourself use and recommend this “pricey” software.
Let’s follow an example. A car for an industry on the layout which comes from staging.
The car comes out of staging on a through train and gets dropped off at the yard. Depending on whether or not the yard switcher actually gets around to sorting that track before the local departs, the car could end up sitting in the yard until the next session. Now the car has already taken two sessions to get delivered.
Now let’s say the industry is a facing point switch with no nearby runaround, and the local can’t set it off in that direction, and has to set it off at the next location or haul it all the way through. The local could be an out and back type of run that returns in the same session, or perhaps it only runs one direction in a session and has a counterpart that runs the other way. Maybe this counterpart train has already been past by the time the first train sets off the car, thus it takes another session for it to be delivered. (Or maybe the train starts in a branchline terminal, runs to the yard and back to the branchline terminal, in which case it will still be the next session before the car is delivered.)
Already, you can see that it could be anywhere from 1-3 sessions to deliver an inbound car, depending on how the car makes connect
Glad you like it. Hope it helps your sessions.
A side of a waybill is a destination where it will be loaded or unloaded. The car may be moved to a dozen “locations” and trains to complete the trip to one destination. The empty car is picked up from industry, pulled into the yard. The switcher classifies the car. The switcher builds an outbound local. The local runs to the destination town and spots the car. That’s one move, one side of a four move waybill.
If you run through four sides in one session that means you’ve had to pull the empty car, switch it, spot the empty car at industry (side 1), load it, pull the load, switch it, spot it at industry (side 2), unload it, pull the empty, switch it, spot it at an industry(side 3), load the car, pull the load, switch it, and spot it at an industry to be unloaded (side 4) all in ONE session. That is waaaaaaaay fast.
Dave, do I have to get a yahoo account to download your car card waybill system? Do you have a link to your ccgv7 folder?
And if you model the Penn Central, you have take into account the car getting lost for several days due to computer errors, the train being delayed by almost a week on bad track, then the car has to sit in the siding, within 100 yards of the industry track for three more days because they can’t get an engine in working order to come out and spot it!
But those would be “situation cards” not waybills…[:D]
Lee
In my opinion, on a small or medium layout where there is little rotation among the operator(s), cars having fixed routines (other than those intended for captive service) will get repetitive/boring. In such cases, I think it best to change waybills at the end of their last cycle, and better yet, rotate cars on and off the layout periodically, particularly if they are easily distinguishable/unusual/etc.
My experience operating on layouts with sophisticated operating schemes (such as car cards, waybills, and such) that require many (six or more) operators, is that these owners don’t usually operate trains but are more likely to be roadmaster, trouble-shooter, or dispatcher. Thus, they won’t notice repetitive movements as easily as those operating the trains.
Mark
At my club, we do both.
Here’s what happens in between sessions:
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waybills for cars parked at industries are turned (unless they’re held for loading/unloading for more than one session) so they’re ready for pickup in the next session
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all waybills for cars in staging are turned. if they’re already on the last move, the waybill is removed instead of rotated
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new waybills are assigned. to do this, we have a spreadsheet that list each car type, and uses Excel’s random number function to choose a value between the specified minimum and maximum for the number of each type of waybill. Any cars that don’t receive a waybill are removed for the next session, and while assigning the waybills, you usually start with the cars that were in storage and not used the previous session. This approach keeps the individual waybill assigned to a specific car always changing, keeps the overall mix of cars on the layout always changing (especially for the through trains which otherwise might always be the same mix of cars), and keeps the number of cars in each train always slightly different which adds to the variety. This way, the same car rarely follows the same pattern (subject to the variety in the waybills you’ve created for that car type). If you only have a few cars of a given type and all the waybills are the same, then the car’s movements could be noticeably repetitive (good for captive/assigned service cars). If you have a good variety of waybills for the car type, then an individual car should ping pong a
Dave, I just downloaded your software and it looks great! Now all I have to do is write down all my train car data.
Do you have a picture of one of your completed waybills or waycards? I’d like to see how the train pic’s look on the waycard.
Yes and no. I could show you a picture of my car cards, but none of them have pictures, I don’t use that feature myself. I only added it because so many people asked for it. I use colored 60 lb car card for my car cards generally so any picture wouldn’t come out right. On my layout I want to reinforce the idea of looking for the car initial and number rather than a picture of the car. Most of the people who want the picures are N scalers where reading car numbers may be an issue. Most N scale layouts I have operated on are more modern layouts, 1960’s or more recent, so the cars are more colorful. I model the 1900 era so the vast majority of my cars are some shade of brown or reddish brown, or are black. that makes a picture (especially an itty bitty picture) less useful IMHO.
I see your point. I model circa 1995 Soo Line, BN, Davenport and Rock Island Davenport division so my cars are more colorful. I still haven’t gotten a good grasp on this car card waybill system, but as soon as I enter some information and decide what industries do what on my layout hopefully it will become clear.
Here is a schematic of my layout.
I really only have two industries to switch on the layout. Ralston Purina, and Alter metal company located in Davenport Iowa. Ralston has two tracks, while Alter has only one. The other side of the layout constitutes a small rail yard with turntable located in Bettendorf Iowa.
There is a staging yard that has 3 tracks available and holds approx. 8 cars per track. The layout was mainly built to run trains, not operate them, but I think operation will add alot to the “fun” factor.
Your thoughts???
what scale are you?
HO
What i normally suggest for small layouts is to figure out how many “spots” or cars your industries will hold and then have 1 waybill for each spot. So if Acme Inustries holds 3 cars you would have Acme 1, Acme 2, Acme 3. Then for each spot you would write down what cars can be spotted at those locations. So if Acme 1 can handle both boxcars and reefers then the waybill for Acme 1 would read"
Acme 1
Boxcar - Reefer
Then make a car card for each car.
Shuffle the waybills and draw about 1/3. Put them in cars that match the waybill car type (so if Acme 1 was drawn it would go in a boxcar or reefer). then spot those cars at their industries. Pick 1/3 of the rest of the waybills, match them to car cards and put hose in the next train to be spotted. For the next session, pull 1/3 of the waybills from the cars at industry. Mix them with the remaining 1/3 of the waybills. Pick a random 1/3 of the waybills and match them with cars for the next session. In the next session spot the 1/3 in the trrains and pull the 1/3 at industry. You can keep doing this every session. Every session will be different and you will never overload an industry.
Thanks for the help…I’m copying this and pasting it in word for later reference. How would you use the yard/staging tracks? I’m thinking I have 3 staging tracks, so a couple of Soo consists and maybe a BN head to the yard from staging…drop off loads to be switched at the industries, and then pick up mt’s and head back to the staging yard. The Bettendorf yard uses its own switchers (Driline) then to drop cars off at the industries and pick up mt’s back to the yard. This was done in real life, so I’m trying to keep it somewhat accurate. Both the BN and SOO owned the Driline and used it for switching small industry in the Quad
Yes, very good explanation, but you state it like I don’t know. I’ve been operating with way bills and car cards for over 25 years.
I don’t know about waaaay fast, but definitely a lot of moves and this is my point exactly. If we don’t do that, on several of the layouts even with throughs and passengers there aren’t enough trains to keep the 10-15 operators busy. Or they get to run one train and then just sit for the rest of the 4 hours. I’m not certain some of the cards don’t make it through 5 of their “way bills” in one session.