Within the past year I have begun running operations on my railroad for the first time. My local trains get their cars from the mainline freights and replaces those cars with the same amount. The cars basically cycle through the railroad over and over. There is no defined start or end.
The issue that I am having though is that cars get “bunched up”. Meaning, when an operator gets the cars from Silver City, he tends to put them on the train together. After several cycles it gets to the point that the local trains consist of mostly one town, instead of being more evenly distributed.
To counter this I came up with a few rules to making up a train that will hopefully mix things up more.
Stock cars must ride directly behind the loco, due to the smell being an issue for the conductor.
Tank cars must have atleast 2 cars between it and a caboose or loco.
Are there any other real-life rules that dictate the placement of rolling stock unto a train?
Railroads really did try to do that, not because of the smell but because by putting the cars up front the cars were less likely to have problems with slack action, which could injure or even kill the animals under extreme circumstances.
Not sure about not being able to be next to the caboose, but tank cars or other cars with flammable materials were generally not put directly behind a steam engine due to the chance of sparks causing a fire.
As far as “bunching” the cars in the train…freight trains serving more than one industry or city generally are “blocked” in the yards, so that if the train goes thru city A then B then C, the cars for city A would be behind the engine, city B’s cars would be in the middle, and city C’s cars would be last. That way it was easier to switch the cars, since the cars that will be switched out at city A are all together - rather than having to hunt for this car at the head of the train and that car at the rear.
Not sure of the details but there were also rules for watering and time off the car for livestock… something like 12 off the car for every 18 hours on. Also seem to remember something like every 6 hours was a watering.
You’ll have to check the detail with someone more knowledgeable than but given the start of the day the livestock were loaded and the clock started to tick. 6 hours later a watering stop. 6 more hours another water stop. 6 more hours off the car for 12 hours and feed. Could add some nice interests added to an OPs session. I would check Byron Henderson’s site. This sound like something I would have learned from his readings
Are you using waybills? I have the 4 cycle car card and waybill set from Micro Mark. Every time one of my cars enters staging, the card gets pulled and it is then at least temporarily empty. That reduces the odds of the same car getting the same load for the same destination.
I have yet to implement an automted way of industries requesting empties or assigning loads inbound. For now I just shuffle the cards, pick a few out, and change out some of the cars in staging with those I have in storage, then stck the waybill cards in the car cards. If it looks good, I’m done. If not I mix it up a bit.
My bill cards are fairly proportional to the size of each industry, so there are more cards for the 6 car track at the cash register factory, than there are for the 2 car track at the dairy.
I have an excell sheet formula for “random” numbers that I plan to use for an empty request, based on set minimum and maximums for each industry. That will solve one of the problems.
The trick is to make up waybills with four destinations on them with two to a side and one printed upside down on each side. That way you pull the card up from the packet far enough to read its destination. When it arrive the card is pulled out and turned upside down revealing where it goes next. When it gets there the card is turned over revealing the third destination and then turned upside down to reveal the fourth. So box car A goes to an industry in town A first. Turning over the car tells you it is to go off line west as an empty. Turned over it goes to industry B in town B and then goes east as an empty. It is up to the train crews to insert the car in the correct location and train. That way everything does get mixed up.
I use a computer program called Rail-Op. I use it because I don’t have to carry a bunch of car cards and keep track of them by hand. Rail-Op prints out a switch list that is easy to handle. Also, the computer keeps things random. The advanced version has a loads and empties feature plus others. I only have room for two or three operators, so this makes it nice when I am operating alone sometimes because I don’t have a preconceived notion of where the cars are going. As with all computer programs there is a learning curve. There is also a great support group at Yahoo Groups.
In the past I had thought of using the multi-destination way bils but abondoned it because my cars are industry specific. For instance, only one of my industries takes covered hoppers and another only gets box cars from the UP. I will reconsider doing this though as it should solve my other issue.
The rail op software is worth a try. I originaly wanted to do switch lists until I started using car cards.