Real vs. model

It is a good idea to have a train or two ready to go in the yard. The mainline runs are shorter than the prototype, but the switching of cars in a model yard is close to actual time. Railroads run 24 hours a day, so by having transcends, you are just simulating the work done on the previous shift. Yard jobs are run three shifts a day. 

The real railroads build many trains at one time, meaning they switch cars into tracks that are selected for that destination. If your yard can handle switching at each end, designate a track for all the local cars, and have the industry jobs pull their own cars off that track from the opposite end of the lead switch job. Too many yard jobs on model railroads are wasting time blocking and building the industry and local way freight. 

If you are the lead switch job, and also footboard yard master, set yourself up for the future by switching the cars destined for A,B and Z to different tracks as you pull the tracks that need to be switched. When the crew for the train to B arrives, just point them to their track and hand them the car cards or paperwork. You can enjoy a beverage until the next train arrives to be sorted.

if the train to A is the first one to depart, look for the tracks that hold cars for A, and switch those first. As you are doing that, the rest get sorted too. 

Hope this helps.

Thomas Gasior

Meaning...

He probably means that the turnout was so bad as to be a spectacle, a dramatic and large-scale failure, an enormous disappointment, shocking by its lack of participation, and leaving him plenty of time to ponder yard switching. But that's just a guess. 

Randy

Op session

I agree with Thomas' comments, but would add that our op sessions at the Providence Northern club require a great amount of staging, which includes many trains ready to go at the opening bell . The yard operators do make up some trains, but on the club layout they spend most of their time helping through trains pickup and drop blocks of cars.On many layouts yards have a track for each destination making switching relatively easy, but as Thomas said, the real railroad yards are 50 or more miles apart, on model layouts we are lucky if they are a scale mile (50') 

 As far as turnout goes we have suffered the same lack of interest at times, especially during the summer. fortunately we do have several members who are dedicated and act as yardmasters,. We also invite non members to participate which can be great. Some of these are other groups that we reciprocate with and attend their op sessions.

                                                                                                               Ray

Yard Ops

At our club layout, we also have a good sized (for a model railroad) yard with dedicated yard switchers and a yardmaster (desk job).

Several locals are based out of the yard, but through trains run from staging to staging and just set off or pick up blocks of cars.

Crews should (and do) take a single track of unsorted traffic dropped off by another train and sort that out completely based on the destinations of the cars. When it's time* for a particular train to run, it takes whatever is available on the track assigned to it. If certain cars miss their connection, there's always "tomorrow" (next session). Don't hold everything up to cherry pick a few cars to make a connection, even if it means a train ends up shorter than normal one particular session. 

The overflow will go out on the next train, and this generates some realistic variation from session to session.

* We are trying also to be aware of the time and hold to particular switching cut-off times. This makes sure that the cars for a train are all ready to go with a caboose on it and not still being switched when the crew draws their power from the engine facilities. This is also more realistic as in reality carmen would need to inspect the cars, connect air hoses and such before the train is ready.

Switching

Model railroaders tend to think of operating sessions, with a beginning and end, you run 5 trains and then you are done. Real railroads operate 24x7. Its a continuous cycle of things happening. As such things happen in a sequence. Another difference is that tost model railroads run predominately locals and switchers where as the real railroads also run a lot of through freights.

Assuming that you are talking about a yard that predominately builds locals (trains that will spot and pull cars at industries), life cycle of a car is the car comes into the yard on a through train. It is set out. A job classifies the cars into blocks. The blocks are assembled into trains. The trains run out. The train return with outbound cars. A job classifies the outbound cars into blocks. The blocks are picked up by through trains.

What you appear to be doing is trying to run two shifts at the same time. On a real railroad one shift would build the trains or classify the cars and then the trains would depart the next shift. You are trying to classify and depart the cars all in the same shift. Railroads will also stagger the starts of the job. The trains don't all have to be built at the same time, they don't run at the same time. You are imposing a "model railroad" restriction that since the op session is 7pm to 9 pm you have to have everybody busy from 7pm to 9 pm.

Solutions may be to stagger the starts of the local jobs, start with jobs already classified, have the switcher building the next sessions trains. Throw in a few through freights, where the first thing somebody does is run a through freight to clear outbounds out of the yard, then they run a local in the 2nd half of the session. Others run a local then when they are done run a through freight, bringing cars in or out of the yard.

I have a yard with 5 class tracks (3 stub, 2 double ended and a long track called the runner) ranging between 7 and 10 cars long. I normally start the session with the first out train pretty much switched (normally a through freight). About half the cars in the yard would be classified and the other half to be switched. The switcher sets the through freight, then starts building the local. After the through freight leaves the local is normally ready. The switcher sets the local. By then an inbound through freight is probably arriving and the city job has probably pulled a track out of interchange. The switcher switches up the rest of they yard and builds a cut going to industry. The city job pulls that and goes to do industry work, then the switcher switches up the interchange pulls. The rest of the session the switcher is classifying cuts from interchange and industry for outbound through freights and classifying inbound through freights for interchange and industry cuts. They might get 30 or 40 cars inbound on through freights and 30 or 40 cars outbound from interchange and industry. They through freights are spread more or less evenly, the industry work tends to run heavy at the beginning of the shift and interchange tends to be heavier towards the end because of the way the city job tends to work things. At the end of the session there is typically a cut of cars for the first train of the next session, most of the cars are classified and there is usually one cut to switch (typically the last inbound freight). Because the traffic is spread over the entire session, I can easily push 80-90 cars through a yard that only holds 45 cars.

Sounds to me like I run my

Sounds to me like I run my yard very much the same as Dave. In regards to the real thing. Yard Masters are supervised by Trainmasters. Trainmasters are supervised by Superintendents and so on up the chain. The guy in the tower who is telling the ground crews what cars to cut and where to put them all have times that they have to make for trains to depart. Usually these times are dictated by interchange times at another yard or train A has to be at destination Z by a certain time. Cars that do not make it onto a particular train they are supposed to go on are called Failures. UPS trains for instance; A yard master will jump through untold hoops (actually he'll do the telling and ground crew will do the jumping) to make sure that these trains do not have failures. UPS pays the railroad a lot of money to make sure this happens. If it does fail then everyone gets a phone call and someone has to pay the price. Today most railroad operate without a timetable per say of train departures, but more of a window and cut off time. 

It is very hard for most model railroads to duplicate this type of operation due to the immense amount of yard trackage these modern yard have. The Sudbury Model Railroad guys have a nice size yard, but still is a long way from something like Inman Yard Atlanta. 65 class tracks 14 departure tracks 13 track local yard 8 track rail hwy, 8 track arrival yard. would love to have the room to model something that size so I could build multiple trains at once and have several crews working the yard at the same time, but then again it starts to become a job at that point and not a hobby. 

Have fun...

Neither?

When cars show up in my yards, they get blocked.  For example, at Junction City, the blocks are: WP westbounds, UP, D&RGW, Lakeview shorts, Milton Turn, Raft River Turn, and Junction City proper (i.e. local industries).  Any given inbound cut will get broken into these blocks.  I don't often have the yard prioritize a certain block, so every cut just gets worked in turn, continuing until it's done, then work proceeds on the next cut.

The locals run as extras, but have a call time.  They take what's available at the cutoff.  If there are other cars waiting to be classified at the cutoff time, oh well.  Those will be blocked later as the yard gets to them.  I don't normally have the yard hold a train while awaiting classification from other stuff.  Furthermore, most of the trains are already built in staging, as only a relative few must be assembled in the on-stage yards.

Typically the previous shift will see the blocks built up for the current one.  Building an outbound train requires pulling the appropriate quantities of cars from the required blocks that already exist.  Through trains pick up pre-blocked cars too.

Unfortunately, model yards often start each session with a mess of unblocked cars, and departures remain at a standstill while classification is done.  Maybe it makes sense to have some classification work for the yard crew to start, but most of the yard should be ready to go, left in good order by the last shift.  As others stated above, the prototype works off a continuous cycle with no beginning or end.  We modelers too frequently let the yard become a dumping ground as the session concludes, with the expectation the mess will be cleaned up next time.  Another problem is requiring every train to be built after the session starts, thus not making effective use of pre-staging.  Yet another one is not having staggered call times, leaving people standing around waiting, perhaps with unrealistic expectations about everybody being able to get running at once.

So... if the yard is handled sensibly, it won't be necessary to decide between finishing classification work and getting trains out.  If you're stuck with those choices, chances are the session planning needs serious revision.  The OP stated the session turnout was a spectacular failure.  Maybe there are multiple issues with execution of the sessions that should be addressed.  Yard ops could be a key part of that.

Catching up

Glad to see plenty of enthusiastic responses. I need to find a lovely round-robin Ops group that'll put up with me. 

Defining a spectacular failure: 
 Ideally, the layout in question needs 1 Dispatcher, has 3 main yards (+1 staging, unmanned, but three entrances into it... yeah), 3 branchline operations (1 with its own transfer yard in the middle of nowhere that's fed by road trains, two depend on main yards), 1 stub ended coal mine that can be worked by visiting road crews but runs a lot smoother with a helper on the Mine engine, plus locals for the industries around the yards themselves, a peddler freight, 1-4 coal trains, three road trains running yard-staging, two trains running A-B-C-D and D-C-B-A working ONLY the yards. roughly 12 slots minimum. And this is with bare minimal crews footboard YDs, one man engine crews, a single Dispatcher, etc. Those of you with Desk Jockeys and two man crews I say PHHT!!!!

I only had 5 people show up. 

Now, I have the branchline locals staggered out that the first one can get everything pulled and ready for the road train to pick up, then have the crew knock off and start the next branchline, get it to the yard to swap cars, then take the third out and do its work before cycling back to the first and then the second. So there's room to consolidate, but...

Oh, and I was supposed to have a guy with a GRILL and Burgers. Also know as the Club President He bailed on me at the last minute (seriously, two hours before), so not only did I not have enough Operators, but I didnb't have anything for the people who did show up.

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Rob:

Guilty, but in our case, the majority of the time the other two yards are left fairly empty. Getting them going is only a few moves, it was mine that was left as a complete cluster****. I'll admit, I kinda shot myself in the foot with this one. When I set these up, I mostly stage paperwork. Since this is a Club layout, things move between sessions, and while I have the understanding and blessing that nothing moves between the Staging (Thursday) and the Session (Sunday) from session to session things move three dozen times. I (used to?) prefer not doing any physical staging, and probably in the other yards the Yardmasters didn't have much issue getting started, as they were well under their "comfortable working capacities). My yard had 27 cars in it that served no purpose to the session beyond being hauled off to staging in addition to four other trains. Most of you see 27 cars as a pittance, but our layout is old (40years) and the sidings short, and 27 cars is 1/3 total physical capacity of that yard. I told myself when I made up the switchlists "You should just go ahead and get rid of those now and be done with it." but I didn't listen to myself and said "nah, it'll be fun!"

"Last shift" is a key phrase there. Since this is a club layout, things have moved quite a bit since "last shift" compared to a layout that simply doesn't move unless being operated and every movement mapped 

again, guilty, but in our case the "mess" really does change between shifts... but that's looking to be no excuse for me taking better time to stage

While we're not on a clock, per se, most of the traffic falls on an if-then schedule: East Bend-Miller Mine can't leave until the West Marmon Local arrives in East Bend with empty hoppers. EBLS can't get underway until EBMM returns, a two-fold restricttion because EBLS needs loads from the mine, (typically, none of the Random Number Gods needed coal last session, it was weird. But then, it's summer, so...) but EBMM usually ends up tieing up part of the main anyway before I can get EBLS past it. On the other end, LSEB can't leave until after EBLS is underway, and there's enough of a ripple effect betwixt 'em all to force stagger. That being said, everyone who shows up still has this unrealistic expectation about everyone being able to get running at once... and all the time. I get a lot of "Can I move?" "No." "Can I move?" "No." "Can I move?" "No." Despite the number of CSX jokes we make about trains just sitting and crews getting paid to play cards in an engine cab for 12 hours. 

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Other than having things preset, that's pretty muych what I have in each yard: 1 through freight (each) that flushes out the unneded junk to staging, locals that use what's in the yards already, followed by road trains moving cars that are needed but by a different yard for its local then where they are at the start, then more locals built from that second round of road trains (if the collective attention span lasts long enough to get to them). Those would likely be your "second shift". And I could probably have the yards sorting the inbound cars, but with being a fluid club layout, I don't have an accurate way of prediciting next session: what the industries will order and where cars will be, so we let the arrivals sit. 
 

Actually, I suppose I could fire off a second round of industry "orders" specifically to give the yardmasters something to classify too, but I don't think attention spans are gonna go that long, 

Never turned anyone interested away, that just defeats the purpose of a "Hobby". but if/when I decide to do this again, I'm DEFINATELY reaching out a little farther and a little louder. I use to be afraid of "undercutting" (is that the right term?) the club with a non-member heavy turnout, but it's become clear I don't have enough interest so for ANY of us to be able to Operate, it's gonna have to have outside support.  

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Thomas:

Not sure I;m following that first part. Are you saying sort cars out "In town only" "Close to town only" and then "Out of town", and then letting the "In town" crews on the opposite end of the yard figure out which cars are whose?  

The turnout was a spectacular failure ...

Operator count

My suggestion would be to plan 2 or 3 "levels" of operation with different sized crews. Don't try to operate the whole railroad. Pick what can be supported. Ask for RSVP's for each ops session (with a request for advance notice if somebody has to cancel (and they will)). That will let you stage to the level of operation that you will have bodies to support.

Its best if each level of operation can be additive to the level before it.  If that doesn't work, you can use what i call a "Sunday schedule".  If you look at prototype schedules it is very common to have a note on schedules that a train is "Daily ex. Sun" and then in another column is a separate train that only runs on Sunday.  So it is perfectly prototypical to have a "reduced schedule" for certain days.

For example I normally ran with 6 people, if I only had 4 I would annul the passenger trains and abolish the yardmaster/switcher at Coatesville.   If I had 5 people I would add back the yardmaster at Coatesville.  If I had 3 people I could annul the local (which would make people sad).  If I had 7 people I could throw in a couple extras and work a branch with a separate  job instead of the local.

Calssification and randomness

Why? If you get the concept of the the continuous session, you have the yards switch up the inbounds and build the next outbounds. Nothing says you have to run the next inbounds, you just build them. Then the next session you make up the trains at the start, just as if the previous shift built them. There is no requirement for the trains to actually survive intact to the next session, you build them one session, then you build (pre-stage) them "for real" the next session.

One other comment on the "random number gods", I would suggest not using a random generator to run the sessions. I would suggest designing the operation to support a certain amount of work then keeping that work the same plus or minus a couple cars. That makes it easier to plan the sessions. If the the local always has 6 or 7 cars to spot and always has 6 or 7 cars to pull, then the local will tend to take the same amount of time to do its work. If the local has 3 cars one session and 12 cars the next, it will severely affect the sequence of events in the session. If you want to randomly pick which 6 of the 20 spots the local will spot and which 6 of the 11 cars on spot the local will pull, great have at it, but your sessions will be more repeatable and consistent if you keep to the 6 in, 6 out (or whatever that number is) balance. I know modelers think making things "random" makes it "prototypical", but after 36 years working for a real railroad, I can assure you that it isn't. Its only appears random if you don't know what's going on, if you understand what's happening, prototype operations is far from random.

I once upset somebody who wrote a paper on using statistical methods to predict when trains would be operating. I pointed out that his methods required a certain amount of randomness and the individual trains to be moving independently, but the actual operations were not random and littered with dependencies. Oops.

Ideas to improve model RR yard ops

http://www.layoutvision.com/id19.html

10 Different Opinions

One thing you will find is if you ask ten different railroaders the basic logic behind switching a yard, you will get ten different opinions. They may not conflict with each other, but everyone has their own idea of what is important. Likewise, every model railroader has a different way of handling their yard. One thing you learn pretty fast on a railroad is that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and despite the different opinions, the main thing that matters is the end result. Do the cars end up where they need to be without delaying trains or arriving at the customer's track late?

While freight trains do not as often have the strict schedules we are accustomed to seeing for passenger trains, ultimately, the customer is expecting his (or her) car by a date the railroad has promised. Since, ultimately, it is the shipments of the customers that generate business for the railroad, getting the cars where they need to be on time is important. Sometimes, in a yard, it is more important to get one train ready quickly, so that becomes the primary objective of the switch crew. At other times, their focus may be on one train, but there may not be as much time pressure, so it may be possible to set up for other trains at the same time. Part of this depends how the yard is run, in terms of management.

Some yards have a yardmaster, who generally directs the flow of the yard. Usually they do not give switch crews play-by-play instructions, but they hand out lists (or piles of lists) to their crews. The list gives the crew the desired end result, and it is up to the crew to make that happen in a fairly efficient manner. Since the crews are just basically following instructions, their ability to set up for other work, outside their lists, is limited by how much additional information they have. If they have worked the yard a while, they probably understand some of the typical patterns, and communication with the yardmaster and other crews would give them some of that information.

Some yards just have one switch crew on duty, and no yardmaster. Usually the switch crew gets instructions from someone in touch with the customers, like a trainmaster, and someone with a lineup of any arriving and departing road trains, like the dispatcher. From the information they get, they put together a plan for the yard, and go out and switch. Since they generally have a pretty big picture of what is going on in the yard, it is more likely that they will be able to plan for other activities, and handle the work of multiple trains at the same time.

Basically, the amount of work a yard crew can do at one time depends on how much information they have, and how efficient it would be to do so. Sometimes, the way cars are laid out in a yard, it just does not make much sense to try to switch several trains at a time, even if you have all the information for those trains.

Also, switching the yard is much slower than on the model, especially if you are in a yard where air has to be used when switching!

Cars for industry or locals.

In reply to Morgan's question .

If you can lessen the load on the lead switch job, make it happen. By switching the cars for local industries into a single track, but not worrying about blocking them, this will save time. The industry job can then pull that track and switch out the cars it needs.

Example: you have a 5 track model yard. Track one is for cars going to New York, 2 is for Chicago, 3 is for Lis Angeles and 4 is used for all the local cars. 5 is open as a runner so trains can move to other end of yard. 

The industry jobs can then sort their own cars, and put back the ones they don't need in track 4. 

Thomas Gasior

Sizing Ops Sessions option

One layout I operated on for several years had a great solution to the manpower problem! There were a lot of trains scheduled, but at the pre-briefing, based on the number of attendees, the "Boss" would give everyone a schedule and say something like "trains 1, 5, 9, and 10 are annulled" Remember always, trains run on fast time, switching runs on real time, The clock is "On"! John Colley, Sonoma, CA

RE, 10 different opinions

Kinda like asking 10 different officials the interpretation of a rule, you will get 10 different answers.

My miniature wooden axle operation  calls for a block swap yard (yet to be built) and a smaller yard uptown used mainly as a receiving yard with a transfer job that runs back and forth.