i’m familiar with the cards used during model railroad operations to determine (non-passenger) car movements. My questions is do real railroad use separate slips of paper to route cars or are these car movements consolidated onto single sheets for trains moving cars between yards and the final “peddler” freight that actually drops it off or picks it up on the loading dock?
I can imagine that as customers “call” to arrange for drop-offs or pick-ups, that a routing slip is created, but it seems that these slips could easily get misplaced as the cars are consolidated onto trains, re-routed between yards and finally delivered.
However, I can understand that the way things can be done today with computers would be different than in the days without computers. Today, i can easily imagine that consolidated waybills can be printed for each train, if even needed, and nothing can be misplaced.
On the club railroad i help operate, new cards are printed out each op-session. But i wonder if it would be just as prototypical if a single waybill sheet were printed and handed to an engine/conductor to switch cars.
The vast majority of model railroads I have operated on use what are called car cards and waybills (CC&WB). It uses a “car card” that is a piece of card stock with the car initial and number (plus other info) that is folded to form a pocket. Then the “waybill” is added that has routing instructions on it. It does not appear you are using that method because you said:
With CC&WB you print the paperwork once and then just move the waybills portion around, recycling the paperwork. That is the beauty of CC&WB, the paperwork only needs to be reprinted when it physicaly wears out.
Yes and no. Very era dependent. Classic answer. The customer contacts the railroad and requests an empty car for loading. The railroad spots the empty. The customer provides a “bill of lading” for the shipment. The railroad takes info from the bill of lading and creates a “waybill”. The waybill is used to make a “switch list” (modern term work order) that tells the crew what cars to pick up where and where they go. The crew picks up the cars and adds them to a list of cars on the train, the “consist” or “wheel report”.
When the train gets to the yard a clerk writes down a list of the cars in the order they are in the train, the
Back in the 50’s, a ‘waybill’ was usually cut for each car/load. Multiple copies were generated and one of those copies followed the freight car on it’s journey from shipper to consignee. The conductor had a large packet/sleeve with the waybills.
As early data processing evolved in the 50’s, train list were generated by tabulator machines, and this early ‘switch list’ was used by the conductor The conductor still had a copy of the waybill with him/here.
Current operation have basically gotten rid if the paper waybill, and a computer generated train consist is used by the conductor.
In the day of the paper waybill, there were lots of copies generated. They traveled with a train conductor, were sent to the shipper, consignee, and many copies went to the car routing & billing departments of all railroad involved in the move. Railroad had huge staffs of clerks to process all of this paperwork.
On a model railroad, what you are describing is a switch list - this provides the train crew where each car needs to be spotted. The popular car card/waybill system has a waybill attached to a car card. Some folks have combined the two into a single prototype waybill. Home computers have allowed the generation of ‘one time’ waybills & switch lists from a common data base. Of course, ‘someone’ has to update all of these records at the start/end of an operating session, and even during the session as cars are classified and change trains.
JMRI has developed ‘Operations’ as one of the ‘apps’ and it will merge available empties with car requests, track the car across the layout, and generate train lists for the crews.
sound like i was looking for what you call a switch-list (i.e. waybill(?)) And I really appreciate Dave’s more complete discussion and the paper work involved in creating and moving complete trains.
just as some modelers choose to build their own turnouts or structures, creating your own waybills program is an alternative to something off the shelf.
The approach I took was to feed the previous switch-list into the program to determine the current car locations and then produce the next switch list. (There are other options to GUIs and pressing mouse buttons).
Dave’s comments are now making me wonder of train-lists, moving cars from one yard to another.
Switchlists and waybills are different things. If you are writing a switchlist program, it won’t produce waybills, and vice-versa. The JMRI operations module would be a good thing to explore if you are interested in what is being done with operating software recently.
There are a couple of commercial programs to produce waybills (I like Shenware’s Waybills) and several to produce switchlists (of varying utility). My personal frustration with switchlist programs is that none really seem to work very well in yards and any error in car movement anywhere on the layout propagates forward, creating cascading errors in subsequent sessions.
Card cards and waybills, by contrast, are self-correcting in my experience: any work done incorrectly or not complete at one session can be completed in the next session without affecting other cars or locations. And in the case of cars and paperwork that become separated, just send any unbilled cars and any errant paperwork to a defined location (the RIP track works), where a happy reunion takes place.
can you be more specific about the differences between switchlists and waybills, and why you think a single program couldn’t do both (if you wanted).
not sure there’s a need for waybills on a model railroad. Any program needs to conveniently handle actual switching mistakes and car being removed or added to the layout. User-friendly isn’t powerful and I’m not a fan of GUIs and mice.
wondering if “error in car movement” occur on real railroad, and if so, how are the handled/corrected
A switch list can do the same…Just have the “crew” to go “dead on the law” and pick up where you left off next operation day…One doesn’t need a new switch list for his local every time he operates.
As far as cars going astray that happens on the prototype-even with computerization.
Not correct – as you yourself stated. Conductors used waybills on real railroads in the past – every day. Most folks who are operating are simulating the conductor, not the brakeman.
Larry, you didn’t understand my point. Incomplete as in “off-spot”. A switchlist doesn’t solve that problem without manual intervention. And if an overall job is incomplete at the end of a computerized switchlist session, I think you’ll find that it creates problems for the next session unless some work is done in between. Have you operated on layouts with computerized switchlists (which is the topic of this thread)? I have (ProTrak, Railop, etc.) – and I’ve seen the plusses and minuses.
You like switchlists, that’s fine. Waybills work great, too – hundreds, probably thousands of operating railroads use car-cards-and-waybills successfully. To each his own – your way is not the only way, nor is it the only “correct” way.
Jim Bernier explained it pretty completely, there’s not much to add (at least from a modeling standpoint).
There’s no value that I can see in doing both switchlists and waybills with a program for modeling applications. One or the other will suffice. But if you want to write that into your program, it’s your time and effort.
From a lot of personal experience, I can tell you that this is a problem with all of the current switchlist programs. If a car goes west instead of going east at one session, it messes up two trains at the next session, and more trains down the road. The only way to solve this is for a human to check the location of every car on the layout after every session. That’s not the definition of fun to me, but it might be for others.
By contrast, a car that goes west instead of east on a car-card-and-waybill layout has still been misrouted, but the operating paperwork is still sufficient to send it back the correct way at the next session with no operator or layout owner intervention.
And speaking of fun for others, I think you’ll find that the vast majority of model railroaders expect GUIs and mouse (or touch screen) functionality. If you are writing a non-GUI application just for yourself, it doesn’t matter, of course, but others may not find that convenient.
But my own opinions on car movement systems are only informed by seeing what has actually worked in personally setting up and managing ops sessions on multiple layouts, the largest one of which keeps 20-25 operators busy for 4+ hours and moves 400-500 cars per session in doze
i think there’s a misunderstanding here, which you’ve corrected … there’s a difference between “couldn’t” and no need to.
I believe i understand your point … with the waybill cards, the mis-located car be simply routed to its correct destination during the next operation session, correct?
And i believe this gets back to your earlier point, that while the use of waybills on model railroads may not be realistic, they handle errors more gracefully than switch lists.
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And speaking of fun for others, I think you’ll find that the
Not correct – as you yourself stated. Conductors used waybills on real railroads in the past – every day. Most folks who are operating are simulating the conductor, not the brakeman.
Then the local’s operator will stand by the switch to watch the crew switch cars in a safe manner and to insure operating and safety rules are obeyed? That was part of the conductor’s job back in the day.
A modeler does the job as brakeman not conductor…
I presented the prototype way of switching cars with a switch list as a option–not stating one way or the other if it was the only way.I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.
As far as “off spot” cars those are facts of every day railroading.Nothing is perfect-even a routine setout can be delayed while a trucker moves his truck.
The majority of the conductors I worked with did very little planning-he left that to the senior brakeman after all we knew our jobs and it was fairly routine including the every day thing such as a car sitting on off spot,spot the inbound going behind the cars already there and respot the cars we moved,18 wheeler blocking the track etc.
Its not all that hard to follow a switch list which may include written instruction-example spot CB&Q 873347 at Kinnear door #5 plant 3…No respots.
We already knew Plant #3 was on Kinnear track 3.The standard procedure was to switch the plant tracks in order if every track needed worked.
It took around 45 minutes to switch Kinnear on most days due to the work load…
any software … i’ll assume you are referring to model railroad software
obviously you need to be able to add and remove cars from the layout, and as i mentioned earlier, to conveniently correct errors with waybill software. (not necessarily using a GUI to do so, though you and many others may prefer to use one).
but is there any need for manual input between sessions if the previous set of waybills were executed correctly? I assume the program could execute sequentially using the previous waybill orders to determine current car locations
A waybill is the car movement record. It has all the information for the ENTIRE move (except the final spot). The switch list is the tactical next move.
The waybill is the part of the system that “remembers” the car movement data. A CC&WB is the equivalent of a real waybill.
Sure and depending on era it involved lots of manhours of people tracking down the movements of the car or in the modern era AEI reads.
A waybill is the car movement record. It has all the information for the ENTIRE move (except the final spot). The switch list is the tactical next move.
The waybill is the part of the system that “remembers” the car movement data. A CC&WB is the equivalent of a real waybill.
First,I started using cc/wb after reading Doug Smith’s article in 61 or 62 and after fooling with waybills since then I don’t think we need all that information since we are emulating the final delivery and pick up of the empty or load-the as you called it “tactical next move”. I like that.
99% of the time the cars we picked up was returned to the yard for classification into trains that sent them back toward their home rails or if the car was a “home” car the yard boys would spot it on the empty track or send it to another division if need be.
The routine was simple…We signed in,looked over the daily bulletin,train consist and then we would look over our copy of the switch list to familiarize us with the needed work.
Depends on how you conceive of the operation. I know several of people who use CC&WB and switchlists. They operate just like the prototype and use the CC&WB for exactly what it represents, the waybill, and then make hand written lists from them. Exactly how the prototype did it.
From a conceptual standpoint, if you are going to have a car be handled by more than one train or engine, then something has to “remember” the information about the car, where its going, who is the consignee, what’s in the car, etc. For an analog system that was the waybill, it retained all the movement information. Then all the list had to have was the minimum information necessary for the next move. If you use the list to keep track of that information them you have to recopy all the information on every list. For a digital system, its the same thing. There has to be a table somewhere that retains the shipment information for the car and associates it with the car. The record in that table for a car is the de facto waybill. Whether you want to or not, you pretty much have to create a waybill record in a computer system if you want any sophistication of movements.
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From a lot of personal experience, I can tell you that this is a problem with all of the current switchlist programs. If a car goes west instead of going east at one session, it messes up two trains at the next session, and more trains down the road. The only way to solve this is for a human to check the location of every car on the layout after every session. That’s not the definition of