# Explanation on car cards n waybills needed



## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

Dear folks,

I run a small 4x8 applachian coal layout.

I want to improve my operations with car cards and waybills.

I have seen videos and articles on the topic but I couldn't understand it's operations ESP on waybills.

Can any enlighten me how waybill works? ESP how it dictates the movement and loading and unloading of coal...which industries it goes to etc.

Mine has a coal tipple and some small factories and some sidlings.

Thanks
Kiong


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## Gansett (Apr 8, 2011)

I too have read the articles in MR and watched a few videos. In some cases it takes several guys to run a "session". The idea of keeping a schedule greatly detracts from my idea of "fun". Sounds more like work to me but I'm sure it adds a sense of realism. 

No trains were derailed or ran late due to this post.


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## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

Yeah- The explanation are like further Mathematics lessons which I can't understand till today at 38. 

Anyone has a easier way of running trains with 'sense of purpose' using simple documentation/paper work?


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## pookybear (Feb 3, 2011)

This is a good ready on the subject.

http://modeltrains.about.com/od/operatingmodeltrains/ss/Model-Railroad-Waybills.htm

Pookybear


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Kiong, I've done a lot with this so hopefully should be able to answer any questions.

The overall concept is pretty simple: The car card + "waybill" combination represents the movement document for the car (the prototype waybill). The genius of the car card/waybill system is that is separates the actual movement information from the car information so that all your paperwork is infinitely reusable.

The car cards (car information portion) can be almost any design or configuration, but the common feature is that important identifying information about the car is on it. Required is reporting mark, number and car type; other information like colour, length or other notes are optional. The car card always has some sort of sleeve or pocket to hold the "waybill".

The "waybill" (movement information portion) insert has three pieces of information: the shipper (from), the received (to) and car contents (lading). Technically a train crew really only needs to use the "To" line to route the car and the rest is "scenery", but IMO the From and Lading should be there as well in order to give the feel that your railroad is actually shipping cargo from one point to another.

Since the waybill is a slip of paper that is inserted into a pocket on the car card, it can be made double-sided. When the current move is completed (the car's actual location and the "To" line on the waybill match) the waybill turned to the other side for the next move. (The turning of the waybill usually happens _between_ operating sessions.) In the absolute simplest case, if you just set up a car to rotate between a specific shipper/receiver pair, the first move would be empty to the coal mine, the second move loaded to the power plant. If you just keep the same waybill with the same car all the time (some people do but you can make this system a lot more flexible if you don't) the waybill flips again back to move 1. Rinse and repeat.

Note that each move typically covers the entire trip from point A to point B. On a large layout this might involve smaller movements and transfers from point A to yard X to interchange track Y to yard Z to point B, but this is all one "move" on the waybill. Each successive train or yard that handles the car gets it closer to its destination. The yard is [usually] NOT a destination.

That's the basic concept, but you can also do a bit more with it. I'm happy to go into more detail on any point.

Running by timetable/train order, track warrants, CTC, informal verbal instructions, VFR/smoke signals, etc. is also "operations" but how you do your dispatching/train control is completely different and totally unrelated topic to car forwarding systems (car cards, switchlists, tab-on-car, switch at random).


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## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

Thanks guys. Chris your explanation is very detailed. I think you have given me a better insight to it.


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## NSHO (Dec 28, 2011)

Do you keep your waybills in a "deck" to be drawn? Are the waybills grouped by industry? When is a waybill drawn? How often?

I'm familiar with the waybill but unsure how they come into play.

Thanks


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## New Berlin RR (Feb 11, 2012)

NSHO said:


> Do you keep your waybills in a "deck" to be drawn? Are the waybills grouped by industry? When is a waybill drawn? How often?
> 
> I'm familiar with the waybill but unsure how they come into play.
> 
> Thanks


That's one way of doing things...you can run it as you see fit really!


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

At the club we have a sort of complicated system of waybill pools, but that's basically it.

For each car type we have a few "pools" of waybills, based on industry/customer or service.

e.g. (using sample descriptions, not the types/codes)
Paper Boxcars - Eddy Paper
Paper Boxcars - Abitibi Paper
Paper Boxcars - Misc. Western Overhead Traffic

The extra unused waybills are kept in a sorting box with separate slots for each pool. When old waybills are removed from car cards, they go on the back of the pile for that pool, and new ones are always drawn from the front.

When the waybill gets to the end of its last "move", it gets removed. Our system is designed so that this (almost always) happens in staging.

There are various methods for pulling new waybills, but as long as the new ones always come off the front of the pile, and old ones go to the back, it keeps some variation.

Some people take a train that's arrived in staging and remove the existing waybills and assign appropriate new waybills to the cars in the train so that the exact same train comes back out again but the cars all have different destinations.

What we do is pull a certain number of waybills for each pool and find matching cars for them in staging and "fiddle" the trains to make up new trains. We use a spreadsheet with random numbers to determine how many of each to pull; you can always pull the same amount, roll a die, or use any other convenient method you can come up with.

If you look at our spreadsheet it looks really complicated, because we've broken our car types down into lots of really specific pools in order to try to replicate a realistic division of cars and traffic patterns (eg. home-road general service boxcars, home-road paper service cars, other types of assigned-service boxcars, and several different categories of foreign cars based on area/railroad and service are all separate car types/pools), but if you just look at one car type in isolation, it becomes pretty straightforward. You can use the normal simple car types, or get as complicated as you want to divide cars from each other into appropriate services.


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