Getting ready for operations - Preparing for the first session.

[rickb773]

After 3 years of construction I am preparing my Pennsylvania - Reading Seashore Lines layout for its first operating session. And I have many questions that would benefit from the "wisdom" of the group.

Background: I model the PRSl in the early 50s (and will cheat the timeframe whenever I darn well feel like it). The layout is about 3 scale miles long and faithfully follows the early 1950 track arrangements in Westville and Woodbury (the towns I grew up in). Camden Pavonia yard is there in name only and when completed there will be 2 diorama-ish scenes of Philadelphia.

The real PRSL was a shotgun marriage forced by the state of New Jersey in the 1930s to handle traffic in southern NJ. Previously the PRR & RDG competed for the declining passenger traffic and farm production of the area.

The PRSL was strange in that it had almost no bridge traffic. Its main connection was the yard at Camden with the PRR & RDG (ignoring for a moment a CNJ connection mid-route). So it is basically an out (spider-webs) and back railroad.

My layout has 12 private sidings and 3 team tracks.


1) My first question deals with loading up the cars for the first session. We covered calculating the number of cars and which railroads to use in the 10/13/13 thread: Calculating Freight Car Ratios for the PRSL

I have made up a spreadsheet of industries and when and what types of loads they receive and ship.


Has anyone just started operations by taking all the cars off the layout and just adding them one by one as needed to support the waybills? (As opposed to just loading the layout with cars and just using what is there based on the previous calculations.) I am tempted to do that and just run a personal week of operations before the first group operating session which should then contain all the cars needed for operations.


2) Questions number 2+: From the spreadsheet I can gather the waybills needed to have cars supplied for the day in question. 2a) What happens after that?

2b) Do I just go to the yard and find available cars to put the waybills into?



2c) Do I then hand them to the yardmaster and tell him to find the specified cars and make up a train?

2d) What do folks put the car cards into that comprises the train?

[Rich_S]

2b) Do I just go to the yard and find available cars to put the waybills into?

2c) Do I then hand them to the yardmaster and tell him to find the specified cars and make up a train?

2d) What do folks put the car cards into that comprises the train?

2d) What do folks put the car cards into that comprises the train?
The railroad I operate on, we use aprons to hold the car cards and train orders such as these found at Home Depot
http://www.homedepot.com/p/The-Home-Depot-Canvas-Work-Apron-HD324655/202311423
Binder clips to hold all the cards together in one train, like these found at Staples.
http://www.staples.com/Staples-Large-Satin-Silver-Metal-Binder-Clips-2-inch-Size-with-1/product_329502

2b) Do I just go to the yard and find available cars to put the waybills into?  Yes.

2c) Do I then hand them to the yardmaster and tell him to find the specified cars and make up a train?
You can combine this job and 2b, having the yard master seek out empty cars in the yard, adding the waybills to the cars then placing the cars in the appropriate trains.

How many cycles do you have your waybills setup for? You don't always have to run four cycles for each car. Some cars can run with only two cycles. Also do you have your cars setup to return someplace when they are empty? On the railroad that I operate, when a car reaches it's final destination, the way bill is removed and sent back to the yard master at the main yard. At the next operating session, that empty car is picked up by the train that is scheduled to work that industry and returned empty to the yard marked on the car card.

By doing it this way, you don't always have the same cars going to the same industry, it mixes things up.

Hope this helps and remember have fun at the operating session. Expect problems at your first operating session and get feed back from your operators. You may have to rework schedules, train routines, etc. several times before the railroad becomes fluid. But don't worry, it's all part of the process and part of the fun.

Your layout looks like it will be fun to operate on. Are you using Time Tables and Train Orders?

 

[conrail98]

Rick, most of the layouts I operate on SJ use some form of this:

http://home.comcast.net/~prrndiv/ccandwb.html

It can seem ultra complicated but when it runs, it runs pretty well. Here are my answers to your questions:

2a) - Go find cars and put them on the layout with appropriate way bill for pickups and/or holds. The layout won't start with just deliveries, you need cars to pick up also.

2b) - You can, but are you treating Pavonia like a stub-end terminal? Will any of these cars arrive in on a train from a staging track? If so, make sure some go into those trains as well.

2c) - Unequivocally, no. Your yardmaster will not have enough time to do that in an operating session. All cars in the yard should have appropriate waybills for that sessions activities and if there isn't a waybill for a card of that session, the car probably doesn't need to be on the layout. The PRSL in particular was about receive, send to customer, pick-up from customer, and ship-out, especially since they had little to no "home" cars.

2d) - Most of the guys I operate with have aprons they wear, or shirts with pockets, etc. Others use the clips mentioned by Rich. The one layout I operated on last night has little slots around the switching areas to put the car cards on, especially helpful to sort out the train/town's car cards,

Phil

[rickb773]

How many cycles do you have your waybills setup for? You don't always have to run four cycles for each car. Some cars can run with only two cycles. Also do you have your cars setup to return someplace when they are empty? On the railroad that I operate, when a car reaches it's final destination, the way bill is removed and sent back to the yard master at the main yard. At the next operating session, that empty car is picked up by the train that is scheduled to work that industry and returned empty to the yard marked on the car card.

By doing it this way, you don't always have the same cars going to the same industry, it mixes things up.

Hope this helps and remember have fun at the operating session. Expect problems at your first operating session and get feed back from your operators. You may have to rework schedules, train routines, etc. several times before the railroad becomes fluid. But don't worry, it's all part of the process and part of the fun.

Your layout looks like it will be fun to operate on. Are you using Time Tables and Train Orders? 

Thank you for the input!

I do expect the first session to be a disaster and expect to have a lot fun anyway. It's the friends that count!

We are fortunate to have access to the railroad's freight listing which includes all the product types shipped to each industry and team tracks. Since the spreadsheet dictates what type of stuff is generated each of a 7 day cycle I don't think we have to worry about cars repeating themselves, especially since no specialize cars are needed. Most of the waybills are 2 cycle; some only 1 (coal to the powerplant).

The traffic will be sequential and I will try to match the freight schedules (although my main information is from the 1970s:


6 commuter trains will run in the morning and evening (since I have continuous run potential this will be covered with 3 sets of RDCs and P70s). Back then the freights ran in the daytime (today's schedule has them running mostly at night). The yard will have tracks dedicated to Camden Pavonia at on 1 side and the other side tracks will be the terminus (2 seperate lead tracks to the common yard) of the 3  branches that spread out from Woodbury (to Millville, Salem, and Deepwater). Woodbury also has icing  tracks which will significantly add traffic for the 1950 period.

The layout will be handled as a 2 tower setup with Camden/Philadelphia trains being handed to the Brooklawn, Westville, Woodbury (and beyond) tower group. There will be 2 crewmen assigned to each group (which pretty much fills up the 12'x17' space) and they will do the switching at the towns there.

[Rich_S]

2c) - Unequivocally, no. Your yardmaster will not have enough time to do that in an operating session. All cars in the yard should have appropriate waybills for that sessions activities and if there isn't a waybill for a card of that session, the car probably doesn't need to be on the layout. The PRSL in particular was about receive, send to customer, pick-up from customer, and ship-out, especially since they had little to no "home" cars.
Phil

Phil, I have to disagree. Every car on the railroad should have a car card, empties should not have a way bill. If you happen to have 43 Track Plans from the Experts,


I operate on the layout found on page 52, the West Virginia Central & Pittsburg. The railroad has continuous staging, meaning the owner of the layout never has to restage the layout and the staging tracks are loops not stub ended. Part of the responsibility of the Greenwood (Connellsville) yard master is to place way bills into the empty car, car cards headed for staging. Then when the car reappears it is loaded for a destination on the layout. The opposite is true for loads headed for staging, their waybills are rotated or removed depending on the cycle. The same takes place in Durbin for cars headed to staging. If you always keep the same waybills with the same car cards, regular operators will begin ignoring the waybills because they already know where the car is going to be spotted. Also of note, because of continues staging the next operating session just picks up where the last one left off. There are 30 trains that can be operated on the railroad, but generally not all 30 are run during one operating session.

[conrail98]

Phil, I have to disagree. Every car on the railroad should have a car card, empties should not have a way bill.

Empties do have one, it's assigned to the car. I've never operated on a layout where the "empties" return to a model railroad yard for storage, the destination is always a place, whether it's a business on or off layout, or perhaps some far off yard that supports a specific industry, i.e. automotive box cars. I have seen a few instances on layouts where the car card said "Empty, return to XYZ Staging" or "Empty, return to XYZ" which is represented by staging. Regardless, it's still a defined destination.

I have the book in question, however, I will argue what you are describing is not typical of yardmasters, and, imho, is in no way the duties of a yardmaster.

The railroad has continuous staging, meaning the owner of the layout never has to restage the layout and the staging tracks are loops not stub ended. Part of the responsibility of the Greenwood (Connellsville) yard master is to place way bills into the empty car, car cards headed for staging. Then when the car reappears it is loaded for a destination on the layout. The opposite is true for loads headed for staging, their waybills are rotated or removed depending on the cycle. The same takes place in Durbin for cars headed to staging. If you always keep the same waybills with the same car cards, regular operators will begin ignoring the waybills because they already know where the car is going to be spotted. Also of note, because of continues staging the next operating session just picks up where the last one left off. There are 30 trains that can be operated on the railroad, but generally not all 30 are run during one operating session.

Placing waybills in or removing waybills from a car should never, ever, be done during an operating session. What you are describing, quite frankly, is the actions of a lazy owner. Every layout I've ever operated on, or even discussed in the various magainzes and journals, it is the owner who, regardless of how their staging is setup, goes through and removes, turns, or adds waybills to car cards wherever appropriate so that the layout is ready for the next operating session. At each industry, they cycle the waybill on the car cards, put the car cards with waybills into either a hold or pickup box. You are right, if you just continuously do 4 cycles on a car, it'll always be going to the same place almost like clockwork. That's why you have holds or off-spot areas on a layout, or in case of one layout I operate on, if the industry doesn't have enough spots, you bring the car back to the yard or leave it in the nearest town with a yard/storage track. If you do that well enough, the movement of the cars aren't clockwork or anticipatory. Also, you almost never have a car go from an industry directly off layout, it will normally go into a yard to be put on an appropriate train to reach it's final destination. This could take 2 sessions, especially if no trains go by that yard to that way bill destination by the time the local returns the car to the appropriate yard. I will give you if you are doing really early time period modeling, that may not be the case, since non-rail shipping wasn't as prevalent for local hauls as it was from say the 1930s/40s onward.

Regardless, what you are describing is not what Rick was asking. He's asking that if he has 50 cars in Pavonia and 40 "spots" for customers in the rest of the layout, is it the yardmaster's job to place the waybill into the appropriate car card for those 40 waybills. The answer, is no, that's not the yardmaster's job. If you have a clerk position, that would be their job, if not, the onus falls onto the owner of the layout,

Phil

[John]

I like this approach ..   http://jmri.sourceforge.net/help/en/package/jmri/jmrit/operations/Operations.shtml

JMRI Operations
The operations program allows you to create computer generated train manifests for your railroad. A train manifest details the work that a crew will perform during an operations session. The manifest provides a list of car pick up and set outs and shows where the cars are located and where they should be eventually positioned on the railroad. The program allows you to enter a roster of cars and locomotives, define locations (stations) on the railroad, and routes for trains to travel. The car roster includes information about the car, including road name, number, type of car, color, length, weight, load, date built, and owner. Trains are assigned routes that define locations or stations where cars can be picked up or set out. Features include the ability to control what car types, road names, and car loads a location or industry can service, the available track space for a location, and the maximum length the train can be between any two locations on the train's route.

Locations can have spurs, yards, staging and classification/interchange tracks. Spurs are used to service industries, and can optionally have schedules assigned to them which allows for very fine control over car movement and loads. Trains can be configured to require a caboose or car with Flashing Rear End Device (FRED). The program generates manifests for each train and switch lists for any location. A switch list for a location shows the work for all of the trains that will visit that location. The program can also place icons representing trains on a JMRI panel. The icon can be taught to move in the panel along with the train from location to location.

The operations program is included in the JMRI/DecoderPro suite of tools and can be found under the main menu heading "Tools->Operations".

[John]

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/10834

[Rich_S]

Placing waybills in or removing waybills from a car should never, ever, be done during an operating session. What you are describing, quite frankly, is the actions of a lazy owner.

Phil

Again, I disagree. This is a hobby, when you say things like "never ever", it's the same thing as me saying "your locomotive cannot operate on my layout because it does not have operating cut levers, mu cables and all the correct detail that was on the prototype". The way the railroad is currently setup, the operating session can continue on for ever. We don't have to stop just because all the cars ended up at their waybill destination. When you Deliver the car, you flip the waybill.  When you move a train to staging, you flip the waybills for all of the cars in the train. A good example are hopper cars. When they reach their final destination, usually Connellsville Staging, the waybills are removed. The next interchange train out of staging delivers the empties to Greenwood. Next there is a train that delivers the empties to Slaty Fork. The waybills go back to their respective mines. From Slaty Fork those cars can go to any of the mines and be reloaded to any destination. We've had 12 hour operating sessions and not once did the railroad have to be stopped, because way bills had to be flipped or cars are to be re-staged. The way the railroad is currently setup, it could operate continuously from now until the end of time. 

If you're happy with a 3 or 4 hour session, then re-stage everything, that is fine.  I'm not condemning the way you operate, I'm just saying there is more than one way to operate. A couple more points, the railroad does have a timetable and is operated with train orders. We do not use a fast clock, we use real time. We have a phone system to contact the dispatcher and the railroad is equipped with train order signals. Too often when using a fast clock, you're just trying to get a job done in the alloted time. Railroads like every other industry experience problems, if I have to sit and wait on a train that is running late, that is part of a real world issue. We are out to have fun, not make sure that No. 96 always gets to Durbin by 10:09 PM. The railroad has been operating this way for 35 years now

[rickb773]

Well I got good feedback on the multiple portions of my second question but none on the first question so I figured I would try it.
I emptied the layout of all cars (except cabins, MOW and coupler conversion cars.)



Took all the cars and arranged them by the order they would return to the layout when called upon (2 PRR, 1 RDG, 1 foreign road (PRSL was 2/3 owned by PRR & 1/3 by RDG)).



The plan is to have traffic initiated by the industries on line (and I have the 1954 freight shippers guide listing each siding and commodities delivered/shipped).

Took the 200+ waybills I had made and picked the appropriate ones for a Monday transportation date.
Picked appropriate cars and put them, waybills + car cards on the layout.
The main yard has 2 leads and is to be split between Camden (3 legs) and the terminating yards (3 legs).



I think the yard will possible be overcrowded  (capacity of ~130 cars) but time will tell. (I can allocate 4 tracks to Camden and 2 to the terminating yards if necessary.)


[That's the Philly transfer arriving]

Tomorrow I'll run the Monday schedule (Philly transfer; A.C. Electric power plant express; Millville local; refinery run (1 on-line & 1 off-line refinery) and the Deepwater local.

I want to run a week's schedule before hosting the first operating session (June 28th).

Let's see if my theories work!

[MichaelWinicki]

Interesting thread Rick!

I can't answer question 2– I use a software based system and the software generates the manifest for each train.

However, I throw out a couple things that worked for me...

First off I've found the biggest hang-up operating on my layout and others are the yard operations.  If the yard is pushed beyond it's reasonable capacity, i.e. too many cars or too many trains coming/going at the same time then the fun level nose-dives and frustration sets in.

When I setup the operations on my layout based on the following criteria with the most important at the top:
1. Yard capacity.
2. Industries served.
3. Trains run.

I let the yard capacity determine everything else on the layout in order to always make sure the yard was never overloaded.

I then listed out all the industries and determined how many cars would be switched out from each industry during a typical ops session (for example industry A, has a spot for two cars, but during an ops session only one car is likely to be switched out).

I then grouped industries to create tentative trains– with the length of passing sidings and yard capacity determining how long that train is, which in turn would determine how or which industries would be switched out from that one train.

After putting together a list of trains, I then put them in an order that made the most sense based on the through-freights that were coming to and leaving the yard, bringing cars in that are going to be switched out via the locals and taking cars out that have been switched out by locals in the current ops session.

Don't know if you'll find any of this helpful, but I thought I'd give you my thoughts on the process anyway.

[Chris333]

Are there more photos of the layout somewhere? I like the trackplan, but I don't think I've seen it before 

[rickb773]

Are there more photos of the layout somewhere? I like the trackplan, but I don't think I've seen it before 

Here is a messy copy of the current track plan:

When it settles I will probably again seek the gracious help of DKS to get a decent looking track plan.

Lest the neanderthals get up in arms, note that this is the progress of an older modeler, with no local help, 3 years after a forced move (wife's medical condition). Compromises galore had to be made. I wanted to model the 2 towns I grew up in and they had to be viewed from the aisle in the same direction I usually saw them (traveling along the main roads in the towns). Hence the hated duck under. I had to burrow through the built-in desk/bookshelves (wife didn't like that one) so I used the space to put in a few Philly dioramas (from my college days) which are out of geographical sequence. Scenery is a long way from being done and gussied up (nicer trees are coming) but at least Westville and Woodbury all have sidewalks (which should please Dr. Vollmer    )

Westville and Woodbury trackage arrangements are accurate for the 1950 period modeled (but you will have to forgive me for the occasional NS Heritage units (love the GEs) (PRR, Erie, LV, and UP's D&RGW) showing up. This is my last railroad and it is designed for fun.

Southern NJ is pretty devoid of N scalers. One gentleman taking part in the first operating session will be coming from 80 miles away, another from 20+ miles. I believe we will also have a local friend (one of the moderators from the Model Railcast Show podcasts) who is also modeling the PRSL, but in HO.

The Prototype Pennsylvania Reading Seashore Lines was not your normal railroad. It was jointly owned by the PRR & the RDG (who did not co-exist well) and was basically one ended (in Camden). It carried passengers east and southeast to the seashore resorts (until the automobiles took over) and collected farm products ("Garden State") from all over a sparely settled South Jersey. So no bridge traffic which totally changed the dynamics of its operation. The Atlantic City and Racetrack route was several miles away. This was the lines that spread branches to Millville, Salem, and Deepwater. All the branches came together in Woodbury.

Photos of my current layout can be found on my blog: http://rickb773-prsl.blogspot.com/ and
scattered throughout my Google Pictures library albums:  https://plus.google.com/photos/117979710150548241973/albums

My original 4x8 pics: https://plus.google.com/photos/117979710150548241973/albums/5778817624021779377

The old layout pics can be found at: https://plus.google.com/photos/117979710150548241973/albums/5778815777422772129

[Chris333]

Rick,

Ahh OK I've seen your 4x8 layout and a few photos of your new layout, but I never put it all together before. The layout looks like it would be fun to run.

[VonRyan]

Southern NJ is pretty devoid of N scalers.

There is actually a fair amount of N-scale guys in NJ, even here in SJ. Just very few with a home layout and/or online presence.
New Jersey Southern (N-Trak) has quite a fair-sized membership, myself included.

-Cody F.