On the prototype, a car movement usually starts with a ‘Car Order’ - the Shippper requests a car with certain loading feature to move product from his plant to a ‘Consignee’. So that 1st position of your 2 or 4 cycle card should be the request to move a ‘Perspective Empty’ to the Shipper’s loading dock for car loading This is the 1st position of your Waybill.
The second position of the cycle should be the ‘Waybill’ to move the loaded car to the ‘Consignee’. You can use the 3rd and 4th position to cycle the car again, or in the case of something like a meat reefer, you can use the following scenerio:
1> Capture empty reefer and move it to the ice dock.
2> Move iced reefer to ‘pre-cool’ spot for future loading.
3> Spot reefer at the Shipper’s meat dock for loading.
4> Move car to ‘Consignee’(car can now be made empty, and is now an available ‘perspective empty’).
This simple ‘Car Card’ system really is easy to set up, duplicates basic car movement quite well, and is ‘self healing’ if your operators make a mistake.
The down side is the shuffling of a stack of car cards/waybills.
You can start your car from Company A that provides steel for widgets. It comes to your widget factory from the CNW (staging) to the to your yard, is sorted to your widget factory. 1st move. The empty can then be returned via your yard to the CNW (staging). 2nd move.
Or you can send the empty to factory B for loading (assuming it will be sent in the general direction of the CNW. 2nd Move. It goes to retailer distributor in other town. 3rd move. Empty returns to CNW (staging) 4th move.
Or widget factory fills empty with widgets and sends to factory C. 2nd Move. Empty returns to CNW. 3rd move. Or is sent to barrel maker. 3rd move. to load with barrels to send to brewery on the CNW. 4th move.
Since a railroad is in the business of moving freight, its primary concern is with the goods being moved. Therefore, the waybill is used as a means of determining how that freight is to be moved, over what routes, and thus what charges are to be levied. So, a waybill doesn’t get assigned to a car until that car is loaded. To get a car to the loading point , a car movement order is requested, usually to the district freight agent, who then requests the dispatcher to make a car available to the potential shipper.
Reference: The Twentieth Century Manual Of Railway Station Service by Fredrick L. Meyer, copyright 1911.
So, your car card starts in Staging, the Waybill begins at the shipper (the Widget factory).
I actually designed my car cards and waybills from his article, it is very very good. I had to read it more than once to get the concept, but it works. Go to the operations section and you will find the link to the article.