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Car Cards
Car cards made with an MS Access databasse. Printed on 67 lb cardstock.
The car cards have minimal information, the car initial and number, a color abbreviation, the car type code, any special
restrictions, the home block (if any) and the owner.
Waybills
The waybills are also generated by a home grown MS Access database. Most are "2 cycle" in that only two of the
four positions are used. The moves are numbered and have car, destination and blocking information.
At the top is a color coded stripe for the block, which in my case is the station.
- Green - Reading
- Blue - Birdsboro
- Grey - Coatesville
- Yellow - Wilmington
- White - on line local business
The stripe may also have an interchange minor stripe
The block is repeated in text with destination station, customer and track below. Finally the commodity being shipped.
These particular waybills have one move loaded and one move empty.
Special Waybills
Special waybills are used instead of the regular waybill or over the top of a regular waybill. They are the same
size as a regular waybill.
Left to right are:
Spot/pull card : Cars at industry or held off spot will get one of these cars for one of the locals
or industry jobs. It can be used to spread the work between multiple jobs or shifts.
Hold for agent card : A waybill to send cars to a station to hold for local loading the cars will go
into a pool to be assigned for loading at a later date.
Block card (side 1) : Block cards are waybills with a generic block destination (normally staging) that
are used to support through traffic that doesn't actually spot at an industry on the layout.
Block card (side 2) : Other side, allows for multiple routings.
Conductor's Desk
I found some smaller clipboards and found they can hold all the paperwork for a train.
On the right side there is room for a reduced size switch/train list and the right side a medium binder clip holds the
train card on the front and a copy of the timetable on the back. On the bottom left is a large binder clip to hold the
car cards and waybills.
I have some small cuphooks around the fascia to hang them.
About 33% of the conductors so far have chosen to use them.
Fascia Arrangement
Here is a typical fascia arrangement. I am trying to have a clean fascia with recessed controls.
I found some J strip for edging 1/2 inch drywall and attached a strip at the top to let the operators manually sort car
cards.
Below that are the switch controls, pushrods in a recessed area.
The car card boxes are by track and are horizontal, recessed into the fascia. The boxes have a 3/4 inch base with
semi-circular finger holes cut in the edge. 1/4 x 1 1/4 lath is used as the sides and dividers.
Yard Fascia Arrangement
At the Wilmington Yard I have vertical car card boxes (one for each track) because there will be a high frequency of
moving cars around. I have cards higher then the car car cards to use for blocking and classification markers.
Waybill Storage Box
I file my waybills in a plastic storage box, with each compartment devoted to a different industry. The first move
on each waybill is the move TO the industry, whether that is spotting an empty to load or and inbound load.
I have an MS Excel spreadsheet that semi-randomly indicates how many waybills to pull for each industry, based on the
capacity of each industry.
The waybills are assigned to cars:
- Empties to be spotted are assigned to pool cars in hold for agent pools.
- Empties to be spotted are assigned to on layout empty cars, trying to match the 2nd move destination to car initials.
- Cars on interchanges are billed, matching waybills with that interchange on the 2nd move.
- Cars in staging are billed, maintaining blocking integrity.
- If there isn't any other way, the cars in staging will be physically fiddled and billed.
- Any left over cars are assigned a through waybill/block card.
I also have to work the waybills at industries. I have established limits on how many cars each local will spot and
pull at each station.
- At each station, for each local, I select the number of cars on spot to be picked up.
- The waybills for those cars are turned to the next move.
- A pick up card is added to indicate which local should pull the card
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