can anyone point me in the direction of finding out how switchlists and car cards work?
I know that this is MR’s site, but . . . Railroad Model Craftsman just had a GREAT 3 part series of articles on this very topic in the February, March, and April issues (2005). I would definately recommend them.
Ron
you want to know how a real railroads switch lists work?.. if that is what you want…ill bite…
a switchlist is nothing more then a track list with instructions on to where the cars that are in that track are to go… it will show you evey car in the track …normaly…(but sometimes there are extra cars that dont show up on the list…or cars missing that are on the list)… the yard master then takes the track list…and makes markes with track numbers to show what cars are going it what track…
csx engineer
A few months ago, MRR ran an article about this subject. I don’t remember the issue. The title could have been “This Guy LIKES the Paperwork!” but it wasn’t. The author used a New Haven theme, a lot of similar plain boxcars, and a switching layout.
If you can find HO Railroad From Start to Finish, the last chapter is a description of how to make come car cards and use them to create a switch list. I intend to use this system with modifications when my layout has some track laid down.
There is a book “Realistic Model Railroad Operation” from Model Railroader. It was written by Tony Koester in 2003. It is very good at explaining the uses of ALL of the paperwork.
There is also a CarCards Yahoo group, several Yahoo groups on various software for generating switchlists and car cards, and the Gateway Division of the NMRA has information on their website.
Dave H.