Who flips the bills?

Having not all the cars at an industry be outbound is definitely a nice added level of operating interest!  Some guys do it, some don't.

If the operators flip the bills as they spot cars then you definitely need some sort of system like you're proposing.  If the layout owner flips the bills between sessions, you may not need it.  The layout owner could use judgement, dice, or whatever to decide what bills to flip.

One of the railroads I used to operate on regularly had a system something like that - he had a field that said something like "hold for 1 day" or "hold for 2 days", and when you spotted the industry you would sort the bills into different pockets depending on if there was no hold, or if there was a hold.  Then between sessions he (or a helper) would go around and shuffle and flip cards - operators never flipped waybills (with the exception of when you arrived in staging).  His railroad was a lot of fun to operate on, but it always seemed to me like the extra bill pockets on the fascia and the hold lines on the waybills weren't really necessary given that operators didn't flip bills.  He fine tuned what was going to be happening in the next session anyway as he was flipping bills between sessions, so he could have managed the holds that way.

For the small industrial switching railroads I've had, I do the setup between sessions and I just don't flip all the bills.  If I've got guests I can tune the session to be easier or harder depending on who they are.  For myself I like to set up the next session immediately after finishing one, so that next time I come down to do some switching I've got a new problem ready to dig into.

Bill Flipping

I've never op'ed on a layout where crews have to flip waybills themselves. The owner or a dedicated person does that in between sessions/shifts.

Similar to Ken Rice's comment, I've used waybills with a small note "Hold 2 days for [un]loading" and the owner or setup person skips over that one when rotating waybills. For longer "hold" periods cards can be marked with a paper clip to indicate time passage, or the multiple "hold" boxes described in the previous post.

Good Idea

This is a good idea to implement. I am thinking of just printing up some extra waybills, maybe in pink, that say “HOLD”. Then I can stick a “hold” card on top of the waybill at random, and remove it for the next session.

which brings up a question, do you try to keep all you waybills in the same cycle number? I was just running a test session, so I have finished cycle 1 and now will flip all the waybills to cycle 2. If I put a hold on one of the cars it will  still be on cycle 2 when I flip all the waybills to cycle 3.

Not same cycle

There's no reason to keep all your waybills in lock-step on the cycle.  And there are good reasons not too - for example a car may be billed for a local industry there's not space at, so it may be sitting off spot, or on a nearby storage track - you don't want to flip the bill until it's actually delivered.  There are a lot of other examples where letting each bill cycle at it's own rate is necessary.  And of course the hold situation is another example.

Another way to look at it - if you let the waybills each cycle on their own, the number of possible different situations your railroad can be in is a LOT bigger than if you force all waybills to cycle in lock-step, at no additional cost in paperwork.

Great Discussion

Great Discussion so far, thanks for your input!

Ken & Chris... I’ve operated on two layouts in which operators flipped the bills upon delivery. I’ve also operated on many more layouts that the owner flipped the cards or the owner used one-use basic car card and waybill in one that was computer generated every 3-4 months.

I planned to have operators flip, but I think if I flip waybills myself, I’ll have better control of some of the nuances of car movements between sessions. I may just do that, I fear losing track of what needs done if the bills are flipped infinitely without some oversight.

Brent... I added the HOLD to the waybill to keep things as simple as possible. But using just one extra card would allow more flexibility, since it could be used anywhere on any car. Thanks for your input.

CC&WB

Most of the layout I operate on that use CC&WB do not have the crew flip the waybills, the owner does that between sessions.  The crews do not flip the waybills.

I kinda do the opposite tack with the waybills.  Since the there is a constant flow of cars into the class yard during the session and much of the industry is served by switch engines (as opposed to locals), I put a green slip in the pocket of the cars in the yard that I want to be spotted that session before the start of the session.   The green slip means the car is to be spotted. The concept is that the agent and customer have talked and the agent has given the crew a list to spot.  Any additional cars that arrive the yard after the start of the session will be spotted on the next shift.

The net result is that the cars spotted this session have that green slip in the pocket.  Between sessions when I go around to turn waybills at industry, I know which cars were spotted last session (green slip) so I will tend to flip the waybills or rebill the cars without the green slips (the older cars).  I also remove the green slips.  I might also leave cars there for multiple sessions because I want to.  Unless I flip the waybill the car sits there.

I don't care about cycle number, it shouldn't make any difference because different cars may take different lengths of time to get where they are going.  For example I have locals that only run one shift (one shift per session), so it might sit in the yard for 2 or 3 shifts before it departs on the next local. the meantime other cars have completed their runs or are making another connection.  All the cycle number is for is to make sure the moves for THAT CAR stay in the right order.

I generally use two move waybills and a lot of single use waybills.  I don't think I have any 4 move waybills currently.   I use single use "Hold for Agent Local Loading" waybills to send empty cars to yard to hold for large industries.  For example at Coatesville, I send empty gons to the agent to hold for loading at the rolling mills.  I also use single use waybills to route empties home and to bill through cars (staging to interchange or vice versa).  If I pull a car from industry empty and I don't have a load for it, I will remove the two move waybill and insert a waybill directing it to an appropriate off line point (interchange or an off layout point/staging).

Consistent Cycle

What? No.

The cycle is just for that one specific waybill/car, not the layout.

Waybills on the layout should pretty much be on all the cycles.

Just consider a simple industry. When the RR local arrives with cars to drop off, the waybills for the inbound cars are (probably) on cycle 1. Any cars already at the industry to be picked up will already be on cycle 2 outbound.

When you rotate between sessions you're only switching everything to whatever its "next" cycle is, whatever cycle each individual bill is at.

Non-rotated Waybills

It all adds to the natural variability of the traffic.

Keep in mind only cycles that have been completed (spotted at industry, arrived in staging) should get rotated. Anything sitting in a yard or transfer* track waiting to make a connection or be classified, or off-spot on a side track don't get rotated.

*Excepting interchanges where the other RR isn't modeled "live".

Even if everything runs consistently perfectly, all connections are planned out so that everything makes connections and the yard is empty at the end of the session, and no industry ever hits capacity, and no "hold" tricks, and no other tricks for re-billing cars or introducing any sort of simulated "demand" variability, and bills are permanently mated to cars, and you consistently use all 4 cycles on all waybills (most "rigid"/consistent/predictable scenario possible) you want about 25% of cars in each cycle.

Seeding the Layout

Simplest example:

(Basic 2-move waybills. One train in/out, no connections/variability.)

For a particular industry, if you want one car coming in, and one coming out, just print two identical waybills, assign one in "Move 1" to the inbound car in staging, assign the other set to "Move 2" to the one at the industry ready to be picked up.

You wouldn't necessarily want to create two different waybills, one where the inbound move is "Move 1" and the other where "Move 1" is the outbound move. Just print the same waybill twice and start the second one at "Move 2".

I have such idea but in other way

Each car as his own car cards including his waybill route, from here to there and there to next  destination; all the flip mean a new move or future move, yes a bit routine, a car arrive at the industry, a old one is pick up to make a new move.

But industry could have a form of waybil switching jobl, meaning  when  a train reach this industry following the traditional waybills to spot cars and pick up some, the  "local industry switching  waybill" organize the way these cars are put and organized on his  industry track

Like cards hanged along yard, we can make a box card for an industry containing the switching job to put the cars she need and pickup some or organizing the way they need to be put along his private track.

There is no need to add these informations  on the general waybills; they only  organize  the general  move of the train and the destination of each cars.

If we use a four cycles"  local  industry switching job card" we are able to change every switching move of cars four times in a different order, each new train coming has a new switching job to do to put and pickup the ordered waybills cars.

This is not necessary for all the industry on the line. only a few seems enough to make big switching job

Some have the chance to model layout big enough to have a small town on the line which has severals different industries; again here we can have a general "town waybill switching job organisation" but also some "local industry waybill" to organize any switching job

This is  may be a way to make  more realistic switching job and more for sure than the basic  put and pickup action of cars organized by the traditional waybills

This way we can simulate some difficulties to switch car at a local industry, change the order of the car on the industry track, the flipping action of the industry card is done when the switching  job is finished and the train go to the next spot to be switched.

This could also make an operation session longer and add more switching job in a same spot.

just a suggestion.

Order of Cars at Industry

I really struggled to understand that last post.

The typical way to create more interest/activity at an industry is to have multiple "spots". (example, an industry might have different [un]loading spots on the same track for different types of cars or product, like hopper pits, tank car connections, and/or boxcar docks) Incoming cars would be billed to specific spots, and you'd have to shuffle things around to get them to the right spot. Not some arbitrary card that tells you to randomly re-order the cars at the industry (I didn't quite actually understand how that was supposed to work.)

"Billing" to spots

Just for clarity, there is a difference in "billing to spots" between the prototype and the model.  Its done differently because the paper flow is different.  

On the prototype the waybill rarely has a detail spot on it.  The waybill is created by the shipper and the spot is determined by the consignee.  The consignee would have to tell the shipper EXACTLY where he wants the car a week in advance.  Back when I worked for a railroad I checked a couple hundred thousand cars (I held several jobs that did a lot of data diving) and only a few percent of the waybills on loaded cars had a detailed spot destination.  All the rest had either a generic spot or none at all.

The spot was provided at the destination station by the consignee, either by info phoned into the customer service center/yard office and was undated so the crew got the spot info on their work orders/switch list, or by the consignee giving the crew a list with the spot info on it when they got to the industry.

Having said all that, on a model railroad that doesn't necessarily work well, so its common place to just have the spot info on the model waybill.  Not saying not to do that.  Just explaining the difference between the prototype and how we have had to adapt it to the model world.

Also realize that the detail zone-track-spot (ZTS, SPINS, CLIC) numbers are era specific, most not showing up until eras when office automation was implemented.  That varies in how much and when between the late 1950's up through the 1970's.  If you are modeling 2015, yeah sure, the computer knows everything, if you are modeling 1952, what's a computer?  YMMV

Spot cards

I read an article somewhere (can’t recall where) about someone who used “spot cards”, together with waybills without specific spot information.  Perhaps someone remembers the reference I’m thinking of.

The general idea was the car cards and waybills were used as you’d expect, except for the last stage.  The layout owner had exactly one “spot card” per car spot at each industry, and he’d tuck those into the car card pocket in front of the waybill for cars that were supposed to be spotted.  If a car arrives near it’s destination, but has not spot card, it needs to be stashed somewhere rather than spotted at the industry.  I think there were some twists to handle blocks of cars for industries that get a lot of identical loads (e.g. a block of grain cars), but I don’t recall exactly what those were.

I tried it on the switching layout I got well into the operational stages with, and I liked it.

Spot card options

It also depends on how you handle the spot cards.  

If you pull the spot cards when the car is spotted and put them back in the "deck" the next time you draw spots, you will have to pull the car that is already there.

If you pull the spot cards after the car is pulled and put them back in the "deck" the next time you draw spots, you will never have a car billed to a spot that's occupied.

Which brings us to the subject of the pulls.  One additional variation on that is to have another position on the spot card with the notation "Pull", an only those cars get pulled.  Since the spot card stays with the card until the car is pulled, you never have to worry about double spots.

Spot card options

The way I used spot cards on my switching layout is the spot card indicated the car should be at / stay at the spot in question.  Between sessions I would remove the spot cards only for cars that needed to be pulled, but leave the spot cards in place for cars that would stay at the industry (sometimes called holds).  I'd put the available spot cards in the pocket for the next car for the spot.  No double spots - the spot card was the definitive indicator of what cars should be spotted.

Empties to clean-out track

4-cycle "load time" cards

I posted this quite a while back, but it seems appropriate to add it here.

On my switching layout, I have several loads that will have variable load/unload times.  I made these 4-cycle cards to slip in front of the waybill.  I'm the only one that flips the cards.

The 4-cycles are:
     8 hours/2 days
     12 hours/3 days
     16 hours/4 days
      20 hours/5 days

For instance, the local switcher brings 3 empty scrap gons to one of my industries. One is placed near the loading doc, the other two go on a nearby track. When the when the waybill is placed in the card box, a load-time card is slip in front of the waybill.

The starting amount of load time is selected at random.  At the end of each 4-hour op session the card is rotated to the next lower time. 

When I made these I figured some loads might sit around for a long time, and I didn't want to make two sets of cards, so I gave them the dual purpose of hours/days.  I don't use the "days" option.

I suppose you could use dice to get a random number, at this point I just say "hey google...."

GS

Unloading times

A lot of that I take care of by regulating the size of the locals/industry jobs.  If the local only spots 6-8 cars and only pulls 6-8 cars, and there are potentially 10-20 cars in their area at spot, somebody's going to be left behind.  Its up to my whim on which cars get pulled (typically the cars closest to the bumper because they were spotted earlier.)

Hold box

I've worked ona few layouts that would have Setout/Hold/Pickup boxes at each town.  Cards cycle through those boxes so the Hold's get... held!  I guess a layout owner could between sessions determine which cards to leave in Hold vs move to Pickup.

Lots of information to think about.

I started with the MM 4 cycle waybill. I actually like it a lot but I was using it for multiple moves on layout. My new layout is single location so I am thinking about using the waybills as 2 cycle waybills and shuffling them between boxcars when in staging.
 

My layout is the center of the railroad where local traffic is sorted and consolidated. I am building a system/ database to hopefully organize my shipments. There is a lot of data to sift through and most of my efforts to make it easier 

3 part box vs. by Track

The three part box (set out, hold, pick up) is more of a local centric view and doesn't work at all for yards.  It also can have issues in large "towns" where there are a couple dozen cars because there isn't anything to indicate where the cars are.  Since the "Pick up" waybills have all been turned to the next destination there is nothing that says where they currently are unless the waybill has a "shipper" or "from" line on it.

The car card box by track is a more yard centric view, it maintains the current location of the cars, but every track has to be checked for cars to be pulled.  It works well for yards.

Both ways work, just how you want to organize the work and the paperwork.  I have seen real crews that planned their switching using track lists, I have seen others that just used the work order (industry switch list).