So many of these issues matter a lot less once one acutally starts operating, in my experience.

On the layouts I've been associated with, during reset we just choose a few waybills to not be cycled of the cars that are spotted. This creates variety wihout any extra boxes or the operators being required to do any thinking.

In this way, waybills are only cycled during resets. Operators never fuss with waybills during a session.

And it never seems to be a problem if a car doesn't move for a session. Once operating sessions are up and running, nobody really seems to care about the movement of an individual car.

You definitely don't need any extra boxes to add the variety of some cars requiring more time to load and unload. It can all be handled during reset. (No for off-spots, for that matter.) Operators are just instructed to look at the waybill: if the waybill destination is where the car is sitting, leave it. If for some other destination, follow the rules on their train instructions as to what to do with a car for that destination. Easy.

The key to running a train on the layout when you're using any car forwarding system is to just put the train back where you found it when you're done running it.

With double-ended staging, this is a piece of cake. I just pick a train, run it out of staging, around the layout and back to staging.

I'm with Byron (Cuyama) on this. When I re-stage I randomly (or sometimes maliciously - with evil grin) pick a handful of cars that don't get their waybills turned. In a situation where an industry was saturated with a surfeit of cars I'm likely to leave more bills unturned than normal.

Regarding off-spot cars - I *never* turn those waybills. The crews are supposed to (in theory anyway) give priority to off spot cars (which have special off-spot mini-bills proclaiming "Off Spot" in big red letters) making sure they make it to their target location before any cars newly imported into that area.

My car card boxes are setup with a slot for each industry (or sometimes set of industries on a track). There are no separate set-out, hold, and pick-up locations. Crews examine the waybills to see if the car is already at its destination and if not do the right thing for the car type, industry, and their train.

So no, I don't have any special plan for holding certain cars more than 'overnight' for loading/unloading.

Cheers,

Charlie

Of course I do.  Every night, right before I tuck them in to bed.  Sometimes I even read them a little bedtime story.  They love hearing about the great Pennsylvania, the Sante Fe, even the Union Pacific.  But I daren't read about the Penn Central, it gives them horrific nightmares!

I really needed a good laugh tonight and your comment really hit the spot Thank You LOL.

Dan

 I thought he meant actually holding a car when I first read it.

Anyhow on my layout many waybills hold a car by having loading or unloading as one of the 4 moves on the waybill. Other industries where I need a faster turn around go straight to the next move, once the car is spotted correctly.

Mike Ruby

Yes, I just don't flip the waybill. I use 4-position-waybills. Sometimes I add a note with fifth and sixth position.

Wolfgang

Hey now, watch the language!!  Operations are meant to be fun!!!

[I'm sorry guys, I knew this was a serious discussion for the start, but I just can't resist...I'll stop!]

[There was one more joke to crack here, but I've cracked enough floors already and it only goes worse once the jokes descend below the floor!]

I'll give you a little more anecdote to go along with the punch.  We have an operations night on the last wednesday of every month at SASME, so if you;re ever in Tucson on a wednesday night and you want to see the proto-ops thing, drop on by!

We normally use a card system similar to the one made famous by a certain author who published his landmark article back in the 1930s or 1940s.  It works pretty well...  We also tried a computer simulated setup, which worked in a very similar manner - the pain of both systems is staging the cars at the beginning of the session, which can be a ton of work!!

We have one person who head the Operations; he is the dispatcher and the general chief of the night.  the cards, the timetables, the routes and the schedules are all his work.  His philosophy is that the crew members need to read all of the literature that accompanies their train, which includes big old long lists of rules.  And engineers also have to determine when and where they meet other trains, in addition to where they pick up and drop off cars.

The Engineers, on the other hand [the rest of the club] is a real stacked, rigged, mickey mouse sort of characters and i think more than one deck [my own included] might be short or long a few cards!  This is no slight to them, because they are priceless, and they can get things going as good as the three stooges or any other TV show that is accompanied by a laugh track! [Don't even think about mentioning the curtains, we've killed that prop!!]  When it comes to operations, they are very simple minded - as one guy says 'Look, just give me my switchlist, and I'll be fine!"  Another takes a look at all the literature, throws up his hands, and just runs his train around the layout.  The real comedy is, there is a cornfield meet and it is NOT his fault!!! [the oncoming train was supposed to wait for him in the next siding before proceeding]  And there have been other cornfield meets too, in as many operation session since [2].

Meanwhile there are two people working together on the local freight serving the industrial area, very meticulously making their moves.  things get exciting when the crews who have no clue what they're doing meet up with the people who have too many clues as to what they're doing.  Ribbing and raw comedy ensues!!

Now as an engineer, I don't notice if a car is "Being held" or not.  All I look for are which cars in my train are inbound, and then which cars in the industry are outbound.  If a car on the siding is blocking a car but otherwise not going anywhere, then I yoink it out, extract my car, and then put the sleeper back in with whatever hot potatoes I have in my manifest destiny.

I also really don't look at that cargos or the industries beyond their destination.  We have some waybills that have destinations in places like Pennsylvania in towns I've never heard of.  As an engineer or even as a yard master, I'm dumbfounded when I see these, until I remember [I guess this is conductor work] that there is a interchange with the ATSF via Gallup in the west end of the Indian Springs Yard and that serves all places to the East.  But as an engineer, I really don't want to think that hard!  And while I have some discipline when it comes to these things, I see others who are completely lost - and these people are PhDs!!!

So that's my take on Operations.  It can be a lot of fun, but it is also very easy to overthink this to the point where it is no longer fun for some and just a big headache for others.  If you the dispatcher want things to happen, or decide that a car needs to stay at a siding for a longer or shorter duration, just do it.  If you need a system to remember that the car is loading or unloading, then get some red and green construciton paper and put red in the car pocket for loading, green in the pocket for unloading, and then remove the paper to display the "when emplty return to" statement or replace the C-paper with the loaded manifest slip.  Problems solved??

On the Sudbury Division we use the 4-cycle car cards as well.  As far as determining which cars are to be lifted on our layout, that's extremely simple:  We have 3-slot waybill boxes with "Set out", "Hold", and "Pick up" slots.  When a crew drops off a car, they put the bill in the "Set out" slot.  Then they pull the cards out of the "Pick up" slot and locate those cars to lift.  The remaining cards should be in the "Hold" slot and those cars should be left where they are.  Only restaging people move cards between slots.

For some cars we use the instructions line to display a note saying "Hold 2 days" or whatever number are required.  Then we use paper clips attached to the waybill to keep track of how many days have gone by, one for each day.  Only the people doing restaging need concern themselves with the clips; if a car has a clip, its car card is in the "Hold" slot of the waybill box and should not be lifted.

We also simulate cars being held off site for loading or cleaning using the same instruction lines, only in this case the destination is something like "Storage Track 2".  After the required days have gone by, the waybill is cycled and the car heads for the industry for loading (where it may again be held a day or two before it's ready for pick up).

The holding process adds a lot of realism to our operations.  Typically, there are about 15 to 20 newsprint cars on hold in Sudbury yard, waiting for new waybills or to be cycled to their next destination.  This is just like the prototype; if we didn't have that big string of newsprint cars, it just wouldn't look as much like Sudbury as it does.

Thanks for the answers! Besides feeling a tiny bit hurt about my subject being rediculed, the reactions pointed out something to me about this hobby:

I've had a few layouts, all small and all - except the smallest - never close to being finished. Some have been operated in a basic way (colored tabs on the cars). But most of the time I've been in the process of planning. To me - and many many others for sure - this planning is in fact the model railroading hobby. We wish to come further - really think we will get further!! - but if we don't, we really have enjoyed our time spent with the imagined layout set in an area we had to get to know and figure out the industries, geography, demography, climate etc of.

Sometimes this planning goes way to far into details. Those of you who are lucky to be operators of a club layout or proud - well deserved - owners of working layouts may think some questions from us planners are a bit odd, because some imagined problems really aren't problems when you get to the real thing.

So now I will spend more time actually building my layout http://ldsig.org/node/67 instead of worrying about the exact car flow etc.

But Benny, I'm sure you'll find some funny language from the PhD-type local freight conductor I probably would be counted as, since there will always be some problems that I just have to get an answer from you all here!

Thanks again!

Erik Wejryd, Linköping, Sweden