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!

Schedule and waybill planning and implementation

 Time to write up some waybills

I have been procrastinating this task for a while, but finally have some thoughts about how the train schedule will work on the layout.

In order to write up the way bills I have manually created a few trains and now I need to write up the waybill for each car. I will use the 4 position waybill system with each car having its own car card that has a picture of the car plus the reporting marks on the card.

The plan is to have a mix of trains to cater for each type of operator.

The types of train will be:

Run through - does not swap out any cars, just runs from staging to staging across the layout.

A simple switching job - this type of train will run from staging, then when it reaches a specific town will switch  1 or 2 tracks and drop off or pick up a small number of cars and then continue to staging.

Complex switching job - this type of train will originate from the main yard and go out and switch a number of tracks at a few towns on the layout and the return to the main yard. There are a number of industries on the layout that will receive a car from off line, then load the car for another on line industry, then the car will then return to the main yard and then depart on the mixed freight. Some cars are captive so will run between 2 locations on the layout that are in different towns and therefore have to switch between switching jobs via the main yard.

As the simple switching job trains switch out specific tracks in 1 or 2 towns, the trains can either run or they can be skipped if I have a small crew. The run through's can also be skipped if needed.

The complex switching jobs have associated mixed freights that will run from staging to the main yard and drop off a number of cars and the continue.

Now to get on a write up these way bills.

Car cards next to each car, waiting for a waybill

A rough plan of each train and its direction, towns to stop at and types of industries to switch

A full list of all the industries on the layout. The red ones are the cars that are on line industries that will either receive or send a car to another on line industry.

The 4 way waybill. Here there are 2 waybills. They are double sided.

More progress to follow.

Car cards and more car cards

Time to sort some car cards.

Now that the last test operations session is completed and the planning and preparation for installing fascia is well under way, I decided that I needed to sort our my car cards and place them with each of the cars and figure out what cars I have cards for and what I don't.

I am also in the throws of preparing to develop a schedule and that heavily relies on all cars and loco's having a card each.

Some time ago (about 5 years) I photographed all my cars and loco's and made car cards for them. Since then, there have been additions to the fleet and this issue needed to be resolved.

In order to find all the cars with no cards, I had to take all the trains out of staging and get them up onto the main level where I can see the numbers on the cars. I then sorted the cards into car type and this then enabled me to do many many laps of the room to find all the cars.

I placed each card next to the relevant cars. This then enabled me to locate the ones that don't have cards.

I then made up a stack of cards that belong to each train and moved the trains back into staging. The cars left over are the ones with out cards.

I then rounded up the cars and placed them into 1 location so I can photograph them and make cards for those cards.

Here are a few pictures to give you some perspective of the size of the task..

All in all, about 6 hours to sort, find, place cards, make train stacks and move the trains back.

There are around 80 loco's, 440 cars all in 13 different trains and cars at industries.

Now that I have taken a break from the fascia work, I will now get back to that.

Until next update.