Way bills and train folders

Way bills - Finally!

For a number of years I have been procrastinating about making way bills for my car cards.

I wanted to print them but could not find anything that worked or the way I was trying to do it in excel in terms of printing both sides and printing the writing upside down just was not working.

My hand writing is not great, so was determined to find a way. But had stalled at this point for a number of years.

Finally a month ago I found a video on youtube that had a link to the Älgoma Central in Ho scale web site (found here). This is a web page provided by Chris van der Heide.

This was a watershed moment. Fortunately Chris shared is excel sheets for both the 2 way and 4 way cards. As I already had all the card cards that I made many years ago, these way bills were perfect.

I already had plan as to the industries and types of cars and where some of the on layout industries could exchange cars. I just needed to make the way bills.

 

The next step was to adapt the excel sheet. Fortinately the excel sheet was made up of 2 pages. One page is effectively the data for the way bill and the other is the data placed in the pre-determined way bills.

From this I was about to print either single sided 2 way way bills or souble sided 4 way way bills.

I then found all the correct types of cars for the industires that I had previously set out on the layout and made up a few trains and instered the way bills into the car cards.

I then made up train folders for each train that contains the insturctions for the engineer and the car cards. It also holds the loco cards and caboose card.

Note the number on the black clip is in green. This is the lead loco number and the green shows that it is a sound loco. This saves the engineer from having to open the pack to find the lead loco number.

Non sound loco's have a different colour on the background of the number.

There are 10 trains staged in staging. All but 1 train has a lead loco wth sound. I have created other black clips with other loco numbers on them including others with and without sound.

I have also printed town / route maps and placed them at each town about the turnout control panel or near by.

At each town there are car card boxes that hold the cards for the cars in each town.

Next to staging there is trim card boxes for each staging track that hold the folder of car cards for each train.

Each industry, while the buildings are not finished and dont have names on them, I have printed out small cards to show the industry name to enable cars to be switched to the correct location.

I have also developed a plan as to what trains stop at what town to try and even out things.

Now that the car cards and way bills are down. I need to test out the process. Im sure the mix of cars will need to change as I may have too many on the layout, but time will tell.

Im very pleased with the way the waybills have come out. As I have kept the excel spread sheet, if I find any errors or need to change the routing etc, I can just reprint them and put them into the relevant car cards.

Now let the ops sessions begin!

AC installed

 Keeping it cooler

After a very warm summer and having issues with track warping etc, I decided to install a split sytem into the shed.

I have also reinstalled the skirts on the layout to clean up the room.

I will now continue to shake down the layout and fix any issues before a few impromptue sessions.

Signal installation

 Signals

The next step to getting the layout back to how it was in the old shed is to reinstall the signals.

I have reconfigured some of the driver boards and will use both TC64 and SE8C as I had before and eliminate the use of the LocoHDL and SRC16 boards for signals.

With this change, I had to build a few extra termination boards for the SE8C and TC64's

Then I was able to install the signals.

Due to changes in the layout, I need to make a few more double mast canterleaver signals.

All signals installed and working nicely.

Here are 2 wide shots of the isles. 

I dont have airconditioning in the shed and it has been a fairly hot summer. The layout has suffered a bit with some track warping. All is fixed now but the AC is now really needed as summer is not done yet.

Next step is to reinstall the skirts.

Lower staging installed

 Lower staging

I have now completed the addition to the lower staging by adding 6 extra tracks under Plattsburgh.

Here is the new staging

Here is the old staging

Next step is signal install.

Lower staging expansion

 Need more staging.

After completing the track work and the track power wiring, I set up a few trains and loaded the 5 tracks in lower staging.

As I realaistically have only list 1 town and I had a total of 10 staging tracks, I am / was concerned that I will need more than 5 staging tracks.

Looking at space and as the town of Plattsburgh sits at the highest point on the railroad with 200mm clearance between the lower staging and the deck of Plattsburgh, I looked at the timber work and space and figure I can realativly easily install more staging, all be it dead end tracks. I am looking at keeping it at 5 tracks so this will give me a total of 10 tracks.

Here is a picture of the staging as it stands (all be it with the additional turnout drawn).

Here is the additional staging v2.0

It will go under Plattsburgh here.

Construction pics to follow.

769 days is all it took

 The D&H is back in business.

After 769 days since the layout was started to be disassembled, it is now up and running again!

The fascia is not back on yet nor are the signals. There is JMRI work to be done to update the panel so not back to 100% where it was, but at least I can now run a train around the layout.

After a finding my mojo again and few nights and a busy weekend, I ran a train around the layout.

Here are a few quick pics to mark the occasion.

This is the new transition from Fairhaven, up and over staging to Plattsburgh.

Train arriving in the paper town of Plattsburgh.

Train exiting the North Creek branch (that connects to Fairhaven to enable a loop around the room and not go via Pt Henry and Plattsburgh. Will be mainly used to stage a train for an ops session.

More turnout maintenace and some wiring bugs to fix.

Plus need to add the fascias and update the town control panels. Plus a whole lot of track cleaning.

Stay tuned.

New track work complete

 New shed, slightly new design, track work done.

With all the timber work complete. I then set out to reconnect all the main bus wires and DC power feeds. Job done.!

Next step was get the track gang out and install he new cork road bed and track. This task is all complete.

The drop down bridge at the door way now has through tracks and extensions to the main yard. Time will tell if I keep the extensions or just remove them later.

Old view

New view

The new return loop and set of turnouts was installed.

Old view.

New view

Then I installed the new track work from Plattsburgh to Fairhaven.

This is where the old layout when up the spiral.

Old view.

New view

Old view

New view.

The new section also includes a shorter around the room continuous run. The old layout did go through the backdrop at this point but was a dead end branch. Now it continues on.

Old View

New View

Now to get stuck into the hidden stuff.. The wiring!.