Generally when you arrive in a town you will check all the local industries for cards appropriate to your train.

Sometimes a particular train will be detailed only to switch certain tracks. For instance, on a friends layout, there is a train that goes from the yard to a town with an interchange and only switches the interchange. A local comes by and only switches the industries.

All the cards for a given "stop" should be easily accesible. A good system, using color coding for instance, should make it easy to quickly find which cars are yours.

Chris

how do you know if industry Two or Four have pick ups even though they are not getting cars from your train this trip?

You just look in the car card boxes for those two industries to see if those cars are outbound. If the waybills are for the destination where they are presently sitting, you leave them -- they are cars that haven't been loaded (or unloaded) yet. If on the other hand, the waybills show "somewhere else" as the destination, you take the appropriate action for your train, which may be to take the cars with you or to spot them where a through train does its pick-ups.

This is harder to explain than to use, believe me.

When the train crew gets to a town, they look at the card bins on the fascia for "pick ups."  They plan their movements so they can make setouts and pickups in the most efficient manner.  When the crew sets out a car within a town, they put the car cards for the setouts in a bin called "setouts,"  and add the cards for the cars they picked up into their card deck. The layout owner usually sets this stuff up before an operating session.  He'll look at the decks of cards for trains that ran during the previous session, and knows to change the waybills within the cards for the next movement, and checks the cars that were set out to determine whether they are to be picked up at this session, or if they're still being loaded/unloaded.  If YOU are the layout owner, the best thing to do is have lots of operating sessions to see what works for you!

      Paul

Maybe my CC&WB page might help... Maybe...

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

Charlie

I have used the cards and waybills for a while now and I use the old rule that if you are not spotting to a certain industry or track, then do not pick up from there either. Saves you from looking at all the cards and keeps the layout balanced, most of the time. I guess there is no wrong way, as long as it gets you moving cars on your layout. Try a variety of methods. I have found the card/waybill system easy to tweak as you progress. I use my staging tracks as a start over point in the sense that if the waybill has completed the 4 cycles, and the "return to"  is always to my staging, it is at this point that I insert a "fresh" waybill making the system totally random (still with realistic car movements though). I therefore have extra waybills made for each type of car, but with slightly different but appropritate routings.  So the 4 same old cycles never happen twice in a row.   

I also found that the book you mentioned was a waste of time. It referred to more articles then it did in providing substance! Plus, I am sure I have read many of the items before in other books, now since the subject is the same, it is bound to happen. I found Bruce Chubb's "how to operate your model railroad" excellent. Might be a bit dated today, and it is also out of print. But it is a great read!  

I have used the cards and waybills for a while now and I use the old rule that if you are not spotting to a certain industry or track, then do not pick up from there either. Saves you from looking at all the cards and keeps the layout balanced, most of the time.

Some people use 3 boxes for a town - pickups, waiting, setouts.  When a crew arrives in town they know all the cars needing to have action taken will be in the 'pickups' box. They leave the car cards for their setouts in the 'setouts' box. During restaging the car cards migrate from 'setouts' to 'pickups' or 'waiting' and from 'waiting' to 'pickups'.

But it also means that if there are a lot of industries/spots that it can take a while to match a car card in the 'pickups' box to a car sitting on one of the spurs.

Cheers,

Charlie

Thanks guys.  The next OP's session I go to I'll make a point to try and get one with CC & WB to see 1st hand.  I can't beleive I missed that part on Charile's layout - reading it all now.  Must have seen that part way back when and didn't pay attention.

Steve

I've car card boxes for each industry.

And you only pick up cars with the correct destination. "Your" train instruction says e.g. pick up cars bound for South Jct. More at operation.

Wolfgang

Wolfgang did not mention this, but on his site he has some great excell-programs so you can make your own carcards and waybills.

You will find them and a good explantation on Gerry Hopkins site.

Thanks to both of you for sharing these with us!

 I have a pickup box for each industry or group of industries. When the waybill in a car card at an industry turns to depart, the car card is put in the industry pickup box. When the local turns up the crew take the pickup cards and add the cars to the train.

Mike Ruby