Is there a yard?

I like your system, but in the operating scheme, I don't think they would hold up the car float to wait for the railroad to distribute the cars and pick up empties.  That looks like a yard next to the float.  It doesn't have enough tracks to have inbound and outbound cars for Lehigh Valley and the Penn Central, but if you set up a schedule so that the operators only bring empties for the railroad that the carfloat is from it would work.  

I think the way the railroad would operate then would be as follows, and it would probably take two operators, or one person doing two jobs consecutively.

Lets say that you are going to work the Penn Central at an op session.  The empties and the loads for the Penn Central should be picked up from the industries and spotted in the yard.  They should be arranged in the yard so that it is convenient to load the loaded cars on the center tracks of the car float and the empties to the outside to balance the load.  If your carfloat only has two tracks, the empties and loads should be balanced both side to side and front to rear.   There also needs to be a track in the yard left open for loads coming off of the car float.

One operator's job would be to empty and load the car float.  The carfloat arrives at the dock, and the carfloat operator unloads the float into the empty tracks.  If there isn't enough space in the yard for all of the loads coming off the float, use any empty space on the spurs to the industry behind the yard for overflow.  After the carfloat is unloaded, then he loads the cars waiting to go to the Penn Central. 

Once the float is loaded, then there are tracks available for classification to the various industries that the cars are to be delivered to, and then other operators can deliver the freshly arrived loads to those industries.

Wow...you know EXACTLY what I'm doing

Your description is PRECISELY how my railroad operates, Russ!  I'm not kidding, you described it to a "T".  Do you have cameras in my house or something?!   I have a carfloat operator who does just what you describe above (basically they load/unload the carfloat and then sort the cars for the NEXT float) and a second who services the industries, and then exchanges any cars due out on the NEXT float for cars inbound with the carfloat operator.

Here is my carfloat yard and carfloat as it stands from my last session:

The 3 tracks to the left are my carfloat (I still need to assemble the float and apron and I haven't put the cars back into storage since the session) and the 6 tracks to the right are the carfloat yard.  The 3 tracks to the right are currently filled with cars due out on the next float which will be session #2.  For session #1 a Lehigh Valley float was tied up at the pier so session 2 will be a PC float.  As you see in the 2nd picture all of these cars are empties due out via Penn Central (the card boxes for these tracks are the 2 right most boxes in the picture):

The layout does have a small yard (which I've started calling the Engine House Yard due to it's proximity to it) behind the viewer in the 2nd picture.  That yard is pictured below.  The cars currently here are all due to go out on a LV float (i.e. session 3).  In session 2 the operators will need to be sure to get these cars over to where the Penn Central bound cars are in the previous photos so that they are ready to be loaded in the subsequent session.

I think in retrospect my initial post may have been a bit confusing.  I was only demonstrating the two possible cycles of a car on my layout:  it's either empty in - load out or vice versa.  It looks slightly different to the operator due to how the waybills cycle so I wanted to demonstrate it.  I didn't mean to imply that these things were happening simultaneously or even during the same session. 

I hope that clears things up and thanks for your thoughts.  It actually gives me confidence that the operating scheme you envisioned from my layout was the one I'm actually trying to do!

Thank you!!

Thank you Rich, for a great explanation and system of using Car Cards/Waybills. You made it simple enough even for me to understand!

This will definitely go into my Ops literature.

-Al

Neat design

Car Float Dwell Time

Hi Russ.......Read your post where you said that you though that " I don't think they would hold up the car float to wait for the railroad to distribute the cars and pick up empties.". Well, that depends. Since Rich is proto-frelancing, he can go eitherway with things. But I digress......

At mainline terminals like the LV, PRR NH, ect, there was too much traffic to wait around for cars to be switched, TYPICALLY. There were cutoff times to load floats and schedules to be met in order to float cars across the harbor to meet other railroad's train connections, so time was of the essence. Not to mention, even the bigger railroads didn't have enough of fleet to just allow their tugs and/or carfloats to just "sit there" not making any money. Carfloats didn't freely move around the harbor being used by just anybody - For example, the PRR couldn't use an Erie float that they picked up at the NYC yard, and then deliver it full of cars to the CNJ. The carfloats were dedicated.

BUT, at "landlocked" operations like the captive terminals of the class 1 RR's in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the railroads would deliver a carfloat to the yard, and then typically go about other business and come back later to meet said train connections - and that could be hours later. Combine that with the fact that these terminal yards were a block wide by a block long (typically), didn't interchange with any other railroad, AND that the carfloat in question was owned by the railroad itself, Rich's ops plan is quite allowably prototypical.

On the other hand, his proto-freelance operation is more like the private NYC contract terminals like the Bush Terminal, NY Dock and BEDT RR's. While they had their own carfloat fleets, they also recieved floats from other RR's, hence Rich's separate PC and LV float deliveries. These kiond of particular terminal operations had at least two float bridges to receive traffic from the class one terminal operations.

I guess the point I am trying to make is "it depends". As you put forth, it is certainly the "obvious" way of doing things, but it is also not the "only" way it can be done, while still staying within the realms of "prototypicallity" (is that even a word?!?! LOL). I think with the era that Rich has chosen, that the carfloat sitting there waiting for the railroad to "do it's thing" is certainly plausable. The rail-marine operation of the late 60's - early 70's was a far cry from the hub-bub and importance of moving freight by water of only 10 years earlier. The railroads, and it's transportation system were all but falling apart, so the "care" for lack of a better term, was not there and liberties in operations were taken. I would not be surprised that todays carfloat operations in NY Harbor are of a similar nature, due to the fact that it's just one operation servicing a relatively small traffic base between two points (Jersey City and Brooklyn), thus allowing them to "take their time" in getting things done.

RAH

Dwell Time

Once my operating scheme was well established and I was comfortable with how the layout was running I was planning on introducing a fast clock with a departure time for the float.  Right now using the sequence I've developed to load/unload the float it took my first operator 35 minutes to get the thing swapped out however they were classifying cars as they pulled them off of the float which probably slowed the process down by a few minutes.

In short the operating scheme for the railroad has been kept intentionally simple for the time being:  I want to be sure the track arrangements and the car forwarding system is bulletproof before I add any further complications.  Regardless, as Ralph mentioned above this is a proto freelance railroad (it's the Brooklyn Easter District Terminal "in feel" but that's about all) so I may never add that dimension if I don't feel I can develop an operating group strong enough to handle that added dimension.

~rb

Empties

Rich,

I recently designed a car card/waybill for my layout currently under construction, so was very interested to read your comments. I might have misunderstood your description, but it sounded like all the empties for industries come in on the car float. Is that correct? I ask because if you have industries that are unloading cars that have arrived as delivery loads, don't you have at least some empties already on the layout that could be used to fill the empty car requests by other industries nearby? That might give you some interesting inter-industry switching right on the layout without having to bring as many empties in on the car float. Just a thought...

Neat layout

I really like the concept and design. A couple of observations:   Make sure there is enough track paved for team access as much of the waterfront terminal traffic was unloaded from car to truck(or wagon in the old,old days). and although prototype carfloats carried waybills along with the cars , for a layout it seems it would be easier to write up a switch list for the 15 inbound cars and another for the 15 cars you want loaded on the outbound float and just let the crews use them? .........DaveB

Ditto!

Make that a ditto. Very cool, thanks!

One question for you-- how do you deal with cars which may have the same reporting marks? (Model train manufacturer's generally only make so many variations of cars). Do you renumber your cars? Or do you just not have that problem?

John