With the extra time I find myself having, I have undertaken the task of organizing my operations a little... well a LOT more...
After the recent influx of hopper cars, I sat down and worked out the different sources and destinations of coal traffic that can be reasonably represented on my layout, and set about the task of writing waybills to establish the flow of that traffic.
I set up a business card format on the computer that allows me to print out 4-cycle waybills, then typed up the different possible moves, I then copied and pasted those moves into the format, and started printing.
Each sheet nets 10 cards, so it didn't take long to print out the 100 or so waybills I need.
So now, instead of having a string of empties that runs obliquely west, and loads that run eternally east, I have blocks of cars that are destined for Baltimore, some headed to the export pier at Port Covington, some to Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. Other blocks will run northeast to Bethlehem Steel at Allentown.
Coal comes from the Thomas Sub, where my two on-line mines are modeled, plus from Elkins, which currently exists as staging. Another source is the Laurel Valley, my fictitious operator of the B&O Johnstown Branch from Rockwood, over which the prototype WM had trackage rights to the coal fields around Somerset, PA. Likewise, empties have been sorted to return to these destinations.
And like the real deal, some of the empties returning from Port Covington aren't empty at all, but rather partially loaded with manganese ore imported from Venezuela and shipped to the hungry furnaces of Pittsburgh. (They are partially loaded since the ore reaches the weight capacity of the car before it fills the available volume)
Once these were printed out, I assigned each car a load... pretty randomly... then last night I spent a happy couple of hours drilling the yard and blocking the cars. It worked out pretty well. The blocks can be either assembled into full trains of coal (up to about 20 cars) or set out to be inserted into other east or westbound trains.
Ultimately, I will build a separate yard at Elkins, and a smaller one at Bayard where this blocking can be done without clogging up the main freight yard. On the prototype, these two yards were used to do some coal marshalling, but the lion's share of that work was done at Knobmount near Cumberland. Also, once I build to the point where I can finally install my Chaffee branch module, I'll be adding 2-3 more tipples. Currently I roster about 120 hoppers, and I figure once the layout is at full strength, it'll be able to handle closer to 200 cars. If I ever build out the Connellsville Extension and Laurel Valley in the next room, that number could increase by another 50 to 100... Voof!
Anyhoo, a couple of months ago, I was fretting about whether to expend the effort to really organize car cards and waybills, but now I think I'm going to enjoy the layout a lot more once that's up and running.
Sure, it takes a little discipline, and there's always the problem of a train's paperwork falling into one of Andy's toyboxes never to be seen again... But one of the things I find enjoyment in is working the yard, and having those cards in order really makes it fun to work the drill track and sort things into blocks.
Next I have to work on the rest of the freight movements...
Lee
