There have been a few questions about beginning ops recently and I thought I would post a link from my website that describes one way to operate a “classic” HO 4X8. This is part of one of the clinics I presented at the NMRA '05 Convention. If you have not seen it already, this discussion is here: http://www.layoutvision.com/id39.html
While the HO 4X8 is probably my least favorite format for a layout … so many people build them and want to try out ops, perhaps this will be helpful.
I would be happy to answer questions if people have them, but I’m not on the forum all day long, so it may be the next evening or morning before I respond – I’m not ignoring you!
I am interested in any info on operations. I have zero expierience in operations and will have my layout to the point that I will be able to do some ops soon. I for one appreciate your time to provide info to us less fortunate. It does strike me as strange how some of the least productive/interesting topics seem to go on forever and the topics with some “meat” seem to never get off the ground. Thanks for the info, maybe it will pick up some speed and we can get some more input.[^]
Perhaps you have over estimated this forum and the power of online forums… Most topics about “nothing” go on forever, seems most “gossipy” topics have a wider range of participants. Most none “gossipy” topics with technical material are extended by people who know the author and are part of an entourage.
I post many modeling articles and find very few participants, I posted a “gossipy” ariticle and got 3 pages worth. Not enough modelers and too many “gossips”. I usually post an article hoping to find someone to pickup the ball and extend the idea further.
Ideas like making ponds using Mylar:
Very few people viewed the post, but it is very important if someone’s Ebay account is ended. I think that went on for about 40 pages. I do thank the people that view the modeling articles.
I seem to have missed this post. I am extremely interested. And I think guys with larger layouts should be interested as well.
I got through the link and I think I kindasorts understand what’s going on, but I’m a little fuzzy still on the car cards and waybills. I understand that the car cards mark the movement of products and movement of empty cars over four op sessions.
My problem is understanding how the car cards are developed. I’ve started Bruce Chubb’s book twice and have not gotten past his description of his home layout.
So I have a layout, a couple of industries, and a bunch of cars. What strategy would you use to develop logical car cards for these cars?
One car card that disappeared from the original Doug Smith ariticle in the 1950’s Model Railroader was the one just listing destination. I have used it and it works well for a small layout. Each car gets a card, on it is listed a destination, then a line of either eastbound or westbound through freight where the cars are taken back to a yard, the next line is another destination. A paper clip is moved down the card as each move is made. An example:
Boxcar MKT 120202
Feed house
Eastbound freight
Lumber yard
westbound freight
Mine track
East bound freight
etc.
I have used this and it works well on a small layout. I used it on several small oval layouts. There needs to be a small yard area where the through freights are marshalled and taken out on lap runs. After running as through freights they are broken into locals as despersed.
Thanks Harold, but I have an ulterior motive. Our club wants to go to a car card system and no one really knows how to do it. So I was planning on a test on my layout.
Thanks for the link! A very interesting clinic. I was going to check it out yesterday and didn’t get to it. My layout should be ready to start some op sessions by the first of the year so I am trying to get an idea in my head on how to go about creating waybills, etc. and the best way to operate the whole mess. Thanks for the info.
The one thing that I would add to that is that it’snot strictly four sessions. As the cars move around the layout, there will be occasions, even on a small layout, where they don’t move during a particular sesison … the “Eastbound” left, for example, and the car has to wait for tomorrow’s (the next session’s) Eastbound. One of the common misconceptions about car-card-and-waybill is that every four sessions the whole situation repeats exactly. In my experience, this never happens, even on a small layout.
One can also add variety by swapping out waybills after the cycles are complete.
Chubb’s book is excellent, it’s a shame it’s out of print. But you don’t need all the detail found there to develop car routing. (Tony Koester’s Ops book has a “quick start” section and Davis Popp wrote a good quick start article in the Feb. 2005 MR). These and other references are in the handout from my convention clinic
Here’s the basic sequence of steps I have used to develop car-cards-and-waybills for layouts of all sizes, from one moving 8-12 cars per session to those moving 400-500 per session.
First step, decide (roughly) how many cars on average you
So the four routes of an individual waybill might read (just destinations for now)
Cycle 1 To: Team Track
Cycle 2 To: Interchange
Cycle 3 To: Feed Mill
Cycle 4 To: Long East
Now we’re treating the Interchange track as a “somewhere else”, not an industry. The general pattern is:
On-layout Industry > somewhere else > On-layout Industry (same or different) > somewhere else.
Now “lather, rinse, repeat” until you’ve filled out enough cycles on enough waybills to match all the destinations you counted in the earlier analysis while interleaving “somewhere else” cycles. At this point, with just the destinations, you can start operating. Some people never add any more info to the waybills and that’s fine for a start or for forever.
It can also be a good idea to start with a fraction of the number of cars you will eventually move each session and have a couple of “practice sessions” moving fewer cars and traisn than you expect to in the final session. You’ll get a better feeling for how cars move and understand if you need to re-weight the detinations before finishing writing all the waybill cycles.
Hopefully the number and types of cars you have on hand comes out roughly equal to the destinations you’ve drawn up. If not, tweak it around until things work. The great thing about car-cards-and-waybills is that it’s easy to make changes.
Note that the “Cycle” numbers have no meaning on their own. I’m just listing them to help keep things straight. Some people get confused and think every car on the layout has to be on the same “Cycle” number at each session. Not at all … once ops start, they’ll all be mixed up – which is good.
I don’t use Set-out / Hold / Pickup boxes that some folks do because I don’t want operators to think those kinds of “model railroad thoughts”. Instead, waybills are cycled (or not) between sessions. Thus, I decide after each session if a car has been loaded or unloaded and turn (or “cycle”) the waybill to its next destination.
I bought the car card/waybill system from the Micro Mark tool catalog. It comes with lots of instruction and even some card card boxes for your layout fascia. I don’t have Micro Mark’s address with me at the office, but they advertise in every issue of Model Railroader. Check the latest and contact them. The whole system was about $35.00.
I have a 4 x 8 layout that will have 6 customer’s 1 interchange and a team track. There is a diagram of my layout at the web page below . I was wondering i would have 56 movements under what you say. How do you decied what each freight car does. I will be using the microcard system.
I’d think that a computer program would make a good “scrambler” to provide these cards. It would need an inventory of rolling stock, and some sort of destination information as well. “Long East” and “Long West” seems like a good way to handle off-layout movement designations.
I didn’t mean to offhandedly dismiss what you said about the list and paper clip. The more I think about it the more it seems like a good way to get started.
Byron,
Thanks for doing this clinic. It needs to be done and it is not easy to get through. I went back and re-read Koester’s quick start. (Started getting MR in March 2005) I’m faced with a decision. Either I figure out how to translate everything into operations that run only one direction, or I use engines that are out of era. The problem is that although all my old-time engines can make the 3.1 grade of the outer loop with 4 cars, only one can make 3 cars up the 3.7 down grade of the inner loop. The rest only pull up one or themselves. My 1910’s Shay and my 1920’s 2-8-0 don’t have a problem.
So if I can simplify what you are saying, I should start slow. I should pick a few cars and determine movements for them. You it seems, would have me specify what I was carrying, Koester says not to worry about it.
I think part of my problem “getting it” is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a car cards and way bills are. Mixed in is the Switch list.
Correct me if I’m wrong here. For our intents and purposes, the Waybill is the 4-sided “card” that fits inside the pouch of the Car Card. The switch list represents the tasks the train must perform.
I guess you are getting the 56 from counting the number of industries (7), interleaving them with “somewhere else” for another 7 (subtotal 14 so far), then multiplying by 4. This is correct in a sense, but actually it does not equate to the number of waybill cycles since some of your industries will take more than one car at most sessions. But that’s not a critical distinction for now. It’s actually a little simpler than that. No matter what the car routing, you need to have a way to deliver cars to- and from specific industries and move them from the visible layout to and from “somewhere else”.
The question you are asking, I think, is how to assign the work for switching the various industries to trains and or operators. With the layout you’re building, you could probably designate one of the sidings as “staging” and operate it much like the example in the web clinic. But because of the different routes and such in your plan, this is not so straightforward.
The challenge of a layout like yours is one of the reasons I would prefer that he commercial publications and track manufacturers would promote more layouts with real operating potential instead of the roundy-roundy-up-and-over schemes. But I think there’s still lots you can do to have fun with what you are building.
An interesting solution in your case might be to have a local train that moves around the layout, working the various sidings and spurs. It would also be possible to break this into two trains that work on different shifts, each responsible for a separate segment or for specific sidings. T
Yes, several. There are a coup;e of handy ones that help automate some of the tasks associated with creating car cards and waybills. The one I use is Shenware’s Waybills
But for a smaller layout or if you are just starting out, hand-writing works great and the start-up time is much reduced. The experience of hand-writing also gives you the background to use the Waybills software most effectively.
There are also computer programs that actually create the car and train movement, usually via a computer-generated switchlist. Most are a royal pain to use, IMHO. There are two challenges. One is the amount of set-up work and tuning that is required to get everything to run as planned. The second is that if a car is mis-routed, the software loses it forever until the layout owner manually finds it and corrects the computer.
For newbies to ops, I think the car-cards-and-waybills (CC&WB) offer a good balance of realism and simplicity. If a car is mis-routed with CC&WB, it’s self-correcting. The next job through sees that the car is not where the paperwork says it is supposed to be and takes it to the yard, staging, or spots it in the correct location.
And for cars and paperwork that become separated, it’s easy to have a simple rule “Take cars with no paperwork to track 1 in the yard” and do the same with paperwork that has become separated from the car. A happy reunion results. CC&WB are always self-correcting. Nice when working with new or casual operators.
Since you are starting out and this is an interim layout, this would be an easy choice to me. Save the old kettles for fun running, photography, etc. For op sessions, use the more-modern stuff that pulls better. I think it will be more fun to run in both directions with the slightly anachronistic engines, but that’s just my opinion.
I actualy said it was optional. If you want to start with destinations only, great. You can always add more info later if that seems like fun. There’s no one way to do this. People get wrapped around the axle looking for the one true path and miss a lot of fun.
And yes, absolutely, start with a smaller number of waybills and try things out. Maybe plan on moving 10-15 cars the first time through. You’ll defintiely get the feel for it faster by doing than by reading.
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QUOTE: Originally posted by SpaceMouse
I think part of my problem “getting it” is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a car cards and way
