Excellent video

Thanks very much Dave for a very well executed video with clear commentary. Even though my layout is totally different from yours, I really enjoyed the explanation.

Tony in Gisborne, Australia

Nice Informative Video

Thanks!

Great Information

Thank you for a very nicely explained clinic along with some great information on the presence and purpose of the " Y " and how the history of your layout coresponded with the two yards and how to use them.

Well thought out video

That’s an excellent and well presented video Dave.  Great tutorial on classification.  Also an excellent demonstration of the point that you don’t need to have easy access to the length of the body tracks, just the end your switching.

I’ve generally kept the car cards in front to back order in the tracks, rather than back to front order.  Your explanation of why back to front is better makes sense.  But since the first thing you do when pulling a track to classify is string the bills out on the sorting rack does it really make that much difference?  I suppose which order you want the bills in to pass of to a train crew might make the difference - the few layouts I’ve operated on use front to back order.  Do you use back to front order for trains as well?

Card order

A lot of it depends on the preference of the operator.  In most cases I just hold the cards and switch.  On a local I typically only hold the cards for the station or track I'm switching so I don't have to mess with the whole train pack.

However for the purposes of the video, to make sure the viewer could see what I was doing, and because I was switching a cut of 15 cars, I used the binder combs.  

You can organize it either way, you just need to be consistent across the yard.

One of the cool things about car cards is if you need to flip a list, its really easy to do.  With a paper list, not so much.  On the other hand very few paper lists (other than handwritten) maintain standing order, so it direction with a computer generated list is pretty irrelevant.

As far as trains go, once again that is a push either way,  some roads list a consist rear to front and others list a consist front to rear.  There is case to be made either way.

Listing the train front to back seems logical because that's the way its "viewed' when it goes by you, engine to caboose.  On the other hand, listing the cars rear to front makes sense if your think about Federal requirements about hazmat.  Since in most cases cars are added or subtracted from the front of the train, listing the cars fromt eh back to the front means the order and numbering of the cars on the list remains unchanged.  Since Hazmat rules require a crew to know where a hazmat car is in the train, numbering from the rear means the list is correct as far as hazmat car location longer.  If you list a 100 car train from the head end  and pick up 5 cars, the list will show a hazmat car at line 50, but its actually at line 55 in the train.  If you list a 100 car train from the rear end and pick up 5 cars, the list will show a hazmat car at line 50 and it will still be at line 50 in the train.   

Granted on a model railroad that doesn't mean a whole lot but that's the reason there is variation on how the real railroads display their lists.

I use what the layout uses, on mine I let the yardmaster decide.  He's building the trains.  Generally the crews can adapt.  As I said with CC&WB it takes 30 sec to "flip the list" so its not that big a deal.

Thanks

By the way, thanks everybody for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks for another wonderful clinic Dave!

And as usual, i'm raising my hand to ask a couple questions. 

1) I have been told by professional railroader's, such as yourself, that Crews do not handle the Waybills, only the Conductor did, so for purposes of switching, is this accurate that the Yard Crews classifying and blocking the cars did not have the actual waybills in their hands while switching?  It was the Yard Clerk who handled the Waybills and handed them to the Conductor for each train, and the Conductor would hand in the Waybills to the Yard Clerk when a train arrived.  If that is accurate my next question is this;

2) Was it the Yard Clerk that generated the switchlists for the Yard Crews to classify the cars that just came in?

3) Were the crews that assembled the trains of various blocks, were they handed a switchlist as well?  

And though you didn't get into this topic, how were deadline/cut-off times handled for each train.  For instance if Train #98 is scheduled to depart Frankfort Yard at 4:05 PM, then only cars were ready by 2:05 PM would be put in the train.  What exactly was that deadline determine.  The last car that is classified OR the last car that was classified that the Yard Clerk's office has been told.  I presume the Yard Crew would update the Yard Clerk upon the completion of their switchlist as they handed them in after the cars were classified.  

The reason for asking this question is I would like only the Agents, Conductors and Yard Clerks to handle the Waybills.  I'm hoping to create a simple (YES SIMPLE) system for the Conductors to turn in the Waybills for an incoming train to the Yard Clerk.  The Yard Clerk write out a switchlist for the Yard Crews for that train, and the Yard Clerks will handle preparing the waybills for each outgoing train.  So learning how the prototype did it, might help provide some answers, unless the actual system (and i should say again, this is for circa 1953) is far too complicated to duplicate while making it a fun job to do.  

Thank again

Ken L

Yard

Correct.  The Waybills stayed in the yard office, if something happened to the waybill the car would be lost adn they would have to trace back to find the paperwork.

Yes (sorta).  The yard clerks generated a "track list", a list of all the cars in the track in their standing order.  They would give the track list to the yardmaster, who would mark which track the cars were going to go into.  The clerks generated the list and the yardmaster made the switch list.

Yes.

The yard would just stop switching to that track  or when they finished a particular cut, they would get the lists updated and then generate lists for the trim job to start building the train.  The transportation plan would have which connections would make or what the cut off times were or else the yard would have a generic T minus time to start building the train.  They had to build it far enough ahead that the carmen would have time to work the air.

One of the local modelers does that, but the position is the yardmaster.  An inbound train hands the waybills to the yardmaster.  He writes up a list, then marks it for a switch list and gives it to the switch crew.  They give the list back to the yardmaster when they done.  The yardmaster "switches" the waybills to match what the crew did, then they yardmaster makes a new track list or updates the track lists.  The yardmaster has a "pigeon hole" for each yard track and that he puts the waybills into.  As the cars move from track to track the yardmaster moves the waybills from hole to hole.  When the time comes to build a train, the yardmaster marks the track lists, hands them to the switch crew, the switch crew switches/doubles the cars and hands the lists back the yardmaster, who "switches" the waybills and then writes out a list of the cars to give to the outbound train crew.  It takes 3-4 lists to get a car from inbound to outbound train.

When I first started were weren't using waybills but were using IBM cards.  When a train arrived they printed out all the car cards for every car in the train.  Then they would feed a stack of car cards in a track into a reader, that generated a track list.  The track list would be marked to make a switch list.  When the switch list was turned back in, the agent or operator (small station, no yardmaster) would "switch" the car cards in the pigeon holes instead of waybills.  By 1985 the IBM cards were gone and we were all computerized.  We still had to carry waybills for hazmat shipments but not for non-hazmat.  The waybill was still there, just it was virtual, not paper.

Thank you

That was an excellent video, Dave. Very much appreciated and i picked up several tips that will change how I handle classifying in my (small) yard.

John

If you could ever...

...do a clinic on the duties of the Yardmaster in a Prototype Yard and translate that to a model Yard of significant size requiring more than one Yard Crew (say up to three, one assigned to each end of a double ended yard and a third to handle the customers within the Yard's assigned crew limits).  And perhaps throw in there the Yard Clerk(s) position(s), that would be awesome! 

Thanks.

Ken L. 

How do your manual turnout levers work?

Loved the video -- confirmed that what I've been doing all these years is indeed how others are doing it. I'm curious though - you have little pull levers for your turnouts. How do those work?

Waybills in Yard

The system doesn't get any simpler than this.

1. Train arrives in yard.

2.(a) Conductor sees which cars (if not terminating the whole train) they are setting off in the yard and hands those waybills to the yardmaster (who handles multiple hats as the YM, yard clerk, agent, and sometimes switch crew as well, depending on the size of the layout and yard) who instructs him in which track to put the cars/train.

2.(b) YM gives the conductor the cards for the cars that the train will be picking up and instructs him which track they are in. Train does the moves they need to do to pick up and drop off.

3. Yardmaster either writes up a switch list for the yard crew (or himself), or just uses the waybill cards as the "list" switching cars where they need to go, or files the cards into a sorting slot for the track to handle them "later". You'll want a "rack" or box with a slot for every track in the yard to put the cards/waybills into. Cards for cars in Track 1 go into the Track 1 slot. Diagrams, labels or something like a whiteboard to keep track of track asssignments (e.g. "Westbounds", "Unsorted", "Local", "Eastbounds", etc.) are helpful aids to the YM.

Class yard clinic

Good video on classing cuts of cars.

Having worked for the B&O in yard service I’d have done one thing different in your class work. When you were done with track one you put the 2 B&O cars on top of the Wilmington cars on 4 then pulled 2 track. I’d have held on to the 2 B&O cars then you could put the W cars on 4 track with other W cars and not had to later cut out the 2 B&O’s. Then any new B&O cars could have been placed on 2 track and after classing 2 & 3 tracks you could have doubled up on the B&O’s off of 2 track and set down on 4 track without having to dig out any B&O’s.

Terry Harrison

Probably a dumb question.

Is the ultimate local destination of the different cuts the four tracks that you describe at the start of the clinic?

Thank you,

David Stewart

Switching and Destinations

Switching (Terry) :  Lots of different ways to do it.  You are correct, that would have been an option.  The reality is that when I actually run a session, I probably won't even separate the Wilmington's and B&O's.  Its 1900, blocking is rudimentary, I will probably shotgun the far south cars and let the crew sort it out when it gets to the B&O interchange.  I actually thought about making the move you described, but since the outbound trains carry both blocks, it wasn't a critical move.  If I was modeling the 1950's or later, yes I would want to separate the B&O's and Wilmingtons, because that's what the real railroads would have done.

Destinations (David) :The four Belt tracks are not permanently assigned a destination or classification, because it will change as the session wears on.  All the cuts at the beginning are mixed cuts of every destination on the branch.  At the end of the session they should be all cuts of cars for Philadelphia, Reading and St. Clair (the coal marshalling yard).  If I see that the Birdsboro operator has time and wants to do more switching I may have the job classify the north/outbound cars to those three blocks.  At this point that's optional.  It depends on how much time they have after doing industry work.

Pushrods

I probably ought to do a video on making those.  I have 4 types, normal and "reverso", metal bracket and low profile Masonite. Here's a picture of the mechanisms, both metal brackets, normal on the left, reverso on the right.  This was also a previous version that used a hinged pivot on the throwbar rod.  While it worked, it also had a few failures and I decided the plain connection, jut bending a wire through a hole in the toggle handle was sufficient.  The dowel rod attached to the brass wire on the normal and to a brass wire through a hole in the short dowel on the reverso.

Yes, video please!

Thanks for the info and a video would be very helpful. Thanks for sharing.

Todd