Switchlist vs Car Cards

Are you currently using SwitchIt to generate switch lists or are you using something else? I haven't started formal operations yet but I'm leaning toward switchlists. The idea of being able to generate a train with a few mouse clicks appeals to me even though I understand the enormous amount of data entry that must precede that to get the system in operation. I've operated many times with the Car Card/waybill concept and for me there are several things that are what I consider to be nuisances:

 - Cards have to be physically carried around which can be cumbersome when juggling a throttle, uncoupling tool, train instruction cards, pen or whatever in addition.

- Some operators add a paperclip to each waybill to indicate the next destination on the card. This only adds to the physical distraction.

- When your train arrives at the next town cars must be picked up and spotted. Invariably cards are strewn across the landscape next to the affected cars - sometimes causing damage, sometimes not but nearly always spoiling the notion of  realistic operation.

- Cars have to be sorted into appropriate boxes e.g. In town, West bound, East bound, Hold.

- When your ready to leave town the paper clip has to be moved or the card marked, the cards have to be checked against the train to be sure all cars are accounted for, the cards have to shuffled into order.

Granted some of these operations also happen with switchlists and some of the hassles mentioned above can be reduced such as having uncoupling tools at each town rather than carrying them along ditto with having a pen at the site but this assumes everyone remembers to put the uncoupling tool/pen back where it belongs. If they don't it's another chore to hunt up the appropriate item in order to proceed.

I would appreciate the benefit of your wisdom and experience regarding your use of switchlists.

Thanks

Mike

Try Easy Model Railroad Inventory

Colin,

Easy Model Railroad Inventory is a shareware program written and maintained by Bob Langer, who is a forum member and frequent poster here on MRH.

Although I am still beginning to use and learn the software, it looks like a very comprehensive inventory and operations package that generates car cards, waybills, switchlists,etc.

It's free to try and use. You can choose to donate as much as you think is appropriate. You can find it at: easy-model-railroad-inventory.rclsoftware.com/index.htm

-Al

Dallas Model Works - My Railroad

May also want to look at this: dallasmodelworks.com/interchange/myrscarcardselect.asp

Shenware Waybills

I've created literally thousands of waybills for a number of different layouts with Shenware Waybills. Not free, but very reasonable and works well. Has the advantage of using thousands of real industires for off-layout destinations, if desired.

 - Cards have to be

Binding the cards together with an elastic or large binder clip works well to keep them as a package.

Provide a clipboard to hold all required operating materials and paperwork (train instructions, layout map, car cards, clearances/train orders, etc.) You can even stick a pen or uncoupling tool under the clip part of the clipboard, or even modify the clipboard to hold a tool on the side.

Some people do multi-destination waybills that way, but most waybills are made using the 4 "side" system. No need to attach any clips or anything else to the cards.

Try to provide sorting shelfs, racks or boxes along the front of the layout fascia, so cards can be kept off the scenery.

There's different methods and schools of thought for the car card boxes.

One approach is the one box per industry method. In this case you have to look through each box to find setouts and pickups. (Hint, you're looking for waybills that have a destination other than where the car is sitting right now).

The other approach is a set of boxes for the whole town/station/area for Pickup, Setoff and Hold. (You could have separate WB/EB "PickUp" boxes to make it easier for train crews so they don't have to sort through cards.) A train crew puts all their setoffs into the "Setoff" box and only picks up cars in the appropriate Pickup box.

Note again that all turning and sorting happens in between sessions, train crew do not turn waybills or move them from Setoff or Hold to Pickup. That happens between sessions.

The only sorting might actually have during the session you actually have a dedicated local crew that does all local switching of the industries and prepares cars for lifting by through trains. This guy will need to sort out the cars by direction, but should actually be switching the physical cars into separate tracks/blocks at the same time, so that simply becomes part of the switching operation, not just paper pushing. (He's still not moving anything from setout to lift though, just yard track to industry.)

The waybills should never be marked, clipped or turned by the train crews. That sort of resetting happens between sessions.

Checking to make sure you have all the cards in your train should always be done against a switchlist too, so that's a draw.

waybill realities

Switchlists are good. Car-cards-and-waybills are good. But there's a lot posited here that's not necessarily the case.

The layouts where I've developed car-card-and-waybill systems use a small clipboard much like the one Chris showed. One glued-on clear plastic pocket holds the waybills, another the instructions for the train. The clip holds track warrants or trains orders and clearances. One layout even added thin pockets for pick and pencil. This doesn't have to be a problem.

This is not typical of the "standard" 4-cycle waybill implementation.

Sloppy is sloppy, it doesn't matter the car movement scheme. Thoughtful layout owers add places to work.

Not at all. Many implementations use a single car card box per track and handle those things via instructions (if well designed).

Most waybill systems don't use paper clips or marks. You do end up scribbling all over a switchlist as you work, though, and a switchlist is more and more inaccurate in describing your train as you move along.

Checking the train is something that is even more critical with a switchlist, because it's not self-correcting like CCWB. If a car is in the wrong place with a computerized switchlist, it's lost to the computer until someone walks the whole layout looking for it.

Placing the car cards in standing order as you move from town to town is one of the benefits of CCWB, in my view. It allows you to always know what you have.

I've operated with both, and both work fine. The big difference for me is in the yard, where I find computerized switchlists often very restrictive and sensitive to minor errors in car movement. It's virtually impossible to "swing" yard tracks from one purpose to another during a session with computerized switchlists, which can be critical if there aren't quite enough yard tracks for the number of classifications (as there usually aren't).

I hope you'll have the chance to operate the yard at a couple of computer switchlist-oriented layouts before you make your final decison. There are trade-offs in either system, but to me the yard (and the matter of lost cars) are biggies.

Good discussion

The comments so far are helpful. Byron, can you elaborate on " It's virtually impossible to "swing" yard tracks from one purpose to another during a session with computerized switchlists" ? Most of my trains originate in either of two 6 track double ended staging yards that are located adjacent to each other. The yardmasters job will involve pulling specific cars and assembling into the train that's been generated by the computer. My thought was to sort the cars in staging according to type (boxcars on one track, tankcars on another etc.) Pulls would be made according to the switchlist which as already been sorted into block order. Hardly prototypical but hopefully efficient. Thoughts?

Mike

I use CC & Waybills

I have the Shenware and like it for my situation.  I have used other versions of CC & WB and like these too.   Remember they all operate on the same principle.   MRH sponsor MicroMark has this package deal http://www.micromark.com/Car-Routing-System-Starter-Pack,8282.html .  They also sell Paul Scole's Op's DVD which includes CC& WBs http://www.micromark.com/Running-Trains-Dvd-By-Paul-Scoles,9129.html.

One thing not mentioned is CC & WB is self healing unlike switch lists.  It is more important with computer generated lists to be perfect with no errors. Hand generated lists can be very time consuming.  However, you can use a switch list with CC & WB and use the best of both worlds. 

Wolfgang has a fine how to page on his site complete with the software you can download  http://www.westportterminal.de/operation_sense.html

Also, have you seen this  http://www.gatewaynmra.org/articles/car-card-resources.htm ?

For those that haven't joined the OPSIG yet you really should.  http://www.opsig.org/   The have a good outline there too on CC & WB.   Byron got me started there 3 years ago and it has been a great 3 years.!  They have a $10.00 a year registration and you get their E zine quarterly.  They have OP's sessions meets all over the place where you can go and operate on all kinds and scales of layouts.  You can  try all kinds of things out before decide what you want. Looking at particular DCC system?  Sign up for layout that has it and run in it in a real world situation.  Thinking about TT &TO - sign up for one of those.  CC&WB? look at the layouts listed that are running that and see how they do it.  Find a couple of different ones you like and you try them out.

CC&WB - simple to set up, self healing/forgiving, easy to use, easy to expand and easy to add variety.  There is no need to invent the system, just look around and find one you like and use it

Sorry for the long post

Steve

Cherry picking

That's a variation on what's called cherry-picking. Certainly not prototypical, and probably not more efficient. And likely not the way the computerized switchlist program is designed to work, either.

Anyone can do whatever they like, of course. But I'm guessing that an approach like that will really bog down the yard.

OpSIG's even better

It recently went up, but it's actually still only 7 bucks. Best deal in model ralroading.

Best deal?

That would be MRH!

But the Opsig is well worth the money.

Sorting cars in *staging*

Sorting cars in *staging* with different car types on different tracks sounds almost like a form of mole staging operation. Except that the cars aren't grouped by destination or by train.

I'd have to second Byron's sentiment that this most likely, would prove very inefficient in operation.

When setting up an op session on a layout that uses static (staging tracks are organzied before the session) staging vs dynamic (a 'mole' operator dynamically makes up and breaks down trains during a session) staging, I'd recommend that all trains be preconstructed.  If you're using a program such as Ship It! you may discover that if the cars aren't in the order the program expects, things will goes sideways on you.  A reason I prefer CC&WB.

It's your railroad though, so feel free to experiment and see what works best for you.

Cheers,

Charlie

Stone knives and bear skins

I recall an episode of Star Trek (original) where Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had been transported back in time to the US in the 1930's. Mr Spock was trying to manufacture what he called a mnemonic memory (or should that have been a Nimonic memory?) using vacuum tubes. He referred to this project as using stone knives and bear skins.

I use car cards and way bills. Yup, they're not perfect, but they are self healing if a car gets misrouted or otherwise misplaced. The next crew switching that location sees the car is off spot and does the appropriate thing for it.

Now back to how I make my car cards and waybills.  I used to use Shenware for this purpose. They have some pretty nice programs. But I couldn't get the printer on my home computer to cooperate with the Shenware software for making doiuble sided waybills. But I had access to some nice printers at work that printed double-sided. At the time I was using Sun Sparcstations. Needless to say, Shenware and Sun workstations were not mutually compatible. I ended up using Adobe FrameMaker to make my waybills! Kind of massive overkill. FrameMaker is still available but the price is stratospheric so I don't recommend it to anyone not engaged in Technical Publications at a professional level. However, I got a copy back before the price went ballistic and this is what I use now for making new car cards and waybills.

You don't need specialty software to make car cards or waybills. Especially for CCs any decent word processing / desktop publishing software will work fine.

If I were starting over again, I might give Shenware another shot at waybills. I suspect that in the last 8 years or so printer incomptabilities have probably vanished.

I have a bunch of information on CC&WB on my personal website that might be helpful:

http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/operations/ccwb.html

If you go to CC&WB its handy to provide car card pockets and a shelf to hold cards while a crew is working. Here are a couple of photos.

The comments so far are

Staging yard is NOT the same as a switching (classification) yard.

In a classification yard stuff comes in, gets sorted according to destination and leaves on outbound trains.

Lets say I have a 10 track yard, and 10 possible destination blocks. Sounds good you say? Not so fast.

I need to keep some open tracks for arrivals, several tracks are probably filled with unsorted cars at any given point, and there may be a need to store local empties or maintenance equipment. I often run the yard at our club during operating sessions, and even with 20 tracks available I'm always reassigning tracks to handle the switching.

Considerations include:

• how many destination blocks there are
• which of those destinations are needed soon (if there's only one train/day to "A" and it left an hour ago, I can shove any A cars into a "Sort Later" track with other unsorted cars that I don't need until tomorrow)
• the length of the track(s) and how much traffic needs to be sorted for a particular destination
• how many tracks need to be kept open for arrivals, runarounds
• how many tracks are needed or currently tied up with stored cars

When switching a yard, you fully switch out an unsorted track at once, sorting all the cars in it. You DON'T grab a list for a train and search all over the yard for those cars. (Although a lot of switchlist programs pretty much make you do that.)

Thank you for the responses!!

Thank you very much everyone for the responses, very much appreciated!

In regards to the program "Easy Model Railroad Inventory" does it only generate waybills that only have 1 side versus 2 or 4?? This looks like a very interesting program. I am also looking at the Shenandoah software.

Thanks,

Colin

1 Side

I only know of EMRI, I have not made cards with it yet. No need for me to at this point. I have track to lay first.

I quickly entered some bogus info to see what the print result would be. Here is what I got.

car cards

On the Cariboo Western I use clear plastic pockets from Staples for Carcards.They are sold for collecting business cards. I print the car information on Avery labels and stick them on the front of the pocket.

 For train packs I use " jumbo name tag holders".The train card and all the waybills fit inside and it can hang on a hook or fit in a card box.

two additional point of view

Just as aside note I want to mention here there is a Yahoo group devoted to this argument:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CarCards/

Here I've download long time ago a Database made by Dave Husmann in MS Access ( you will find it here : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CarCards/files/CCGv7/)

Then I've modified it to second my needs and my pleasure ( I model N scale and for example I've print the car picture on my cards )

Another interesting point of view ( at least for me ) is what Tony Thompson is developing on his Blog :

http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/

He is designing a sort of " prototypical waybill" clone adapted to our RR "replica" . A "one way" Waybill vs usuals 4 step, but I think the approach have some fascination.

He write a good article on the subject available free here:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bz_ctrHrDz4wMDhmMDk1N2MtNzY2MS00Y2RlLWI4MGMtMGJjODBiNGRhZWIy&hl=en&authkey=COyo7MQN&pli=1

Curious of what anybody here think about.

Staging vs switching

Chris your comments are spot on with the need to reassign tracks etc a constant activity. Cherry Picking is of course a very inefficient activity and one I would want to avoid.

My thought is that the operation would be "shipper" driven not computer or CC driven. Software would "order" a type of car at predetermined intervals ala ShipIt. It would not ask for XM 159787 but rather for a 40' boxcar to be delivered. The switchlist would generate car requests based on shipper orders.

I envision a multi table relational database that merges the shipper request generated by the computer and now filled with an appropriate type car by pulling the next available car on the "boxcar" track with the specific car that has been selected via the car list.

The computer can make quick work of blocking the train once the specific car has been assigned and all I have to do is pull the appropriate car in the order specified.

Realistic Waybills

As Enzo mentioned, the use of a more realistic waybilling "system" is begining to gain interest since Tony Thompson had his article published in RMC last year. We here in New Jersey have been using this on four different layouts at least a year or two before the article was published, as I know other modelers in the Chicago and Washington, D.C. era do as well (mostly because we all sort of threw design ideas around between each other when we started using it here). The "trick" was what to fit on the waybill (real ones are big, and there is a lot of info on a real one that just doesn't translate to the model world), and still be able to read it once it's been shrunk down! The finished card size remains the same as the "classic" Old Line Graphics-style CC&WB, but the look and operation of them have changed to be more like the real thing. For another take on these (and as influenced by Mr. Thompson's article and presentation at the Cocoa Beach RPM in 2010), check out my friend Dave Ramos' website at - http://www.nyhrr.com/operations/Paper.html

RAH

This looks interesting

Ralph,

The way trains are made up the waybill works similarly to how I envision a "shipper" driven system would work. When an order is received for a flat to be delivered to ABC Machine the yardmaster doesn't spend time searching for GN 697354 and fishing it out of the yard to include in the train. He simply takes the appropriate type car that is next in line and adds it to his train.

Transporting Car Cards

A club that I've been recently operating with has a nice method of keeping the car cards all together as you follow the train around - they've got a lanyard with a snap hook on it and then a nice sized plastic zip-top pouch, probably originally for holding ID cards. Everything goes into the pouch, the pouch goes around the neck, and off you go.

They also have a nice tweak on the CC & WB system that avoids pile-ups at industries - spot cards. They've determined how many cars each industry can hold and created "spot cards" for each spot. The spot cards are stored at the local yard and as cars come in for the industry to be put on locals or switch jobs, they get a spot card added to the CC&WB. If you run out of spot cards for an industry, and further cars for that industry get left in the yard until one or more comes back to the yard to return their spot card.

Apparently they got this idea from the guy in Utah (Lee something?) who apparently also created the concept of the Mole.

I've liked using it so much I'll be implementing it on my own layout.

Re: This looks Interesting

"When an order is received for a flat to be delivered to ABC Machine the yardmaster doesn't spend time searching for GN 697354 and fishing it out of the yard to include in the train. He simply takes the appropriate type car that is next in line and adds it to his train."

Assuming you're talking about live staging, that strategy sounds like it might work.  Hopefully the "on stage" yardmaster isn't involved in that kind of cherry-picking, or in making the decisions about what customer gets what car.  Unless you're dealing with a car that is at its home yard, or one that is snagged on its way back to the home road, the car is most likely bound for a specific customer before it gets to the yard at all.

Re: Spot Cards

"They also have a nice tweak on the CC & WB system that avoids pile-ups at industries - spot cards. They've determined how many cars each industry can hold and created "spot cards" for each spot. The spot cards are stored at the local yard and as cars come in for the industry to be put on locals or switch jobs, they get a spot card added to the CC&WB. If you run out of spot cards for an industry, and further cars for that industry get left in the yard until one or more comes back to the yard to return their spot card."

Spot cards were indeed employed at Lee Nicholas' Utah Colorado Western, and were developed with much input from Kelly Newton, who had experience working with some local industries on getting cars spotted according to customer demand.  Basically the spot cards prevent customers from receiving cars unless they specifically want them, thus replicating the work of an agent.  No prototype local crew is going to head out with a batch of cars and no idea if the cars in their train will actually fit in the industry track. 

For that matter, the crew should know before departing what pick-ups they have waiting at the customers' locations, so having all the car cards and waybills for the pick-ups available at the yard is also helpful.  There's no point in having the crew dig through car card boxes out on the line to figure out what work is out there after they get to town.

Even if car cards don't reproduce prototype paperwork, there's no reason they can't be used to model prototype functionality if used properly.