This reminds of the people that have a Beautiful Masterpiece of a Chess Set, board & pieces on display in their home, But do not know how to play the game chess or even understand the rules to a simple game of checkers.

A Chess Master can play on a hand drawn board with cut out paper pieces and fully enjoy the game. Much like a plywood central. Displaying that Exquisite Chess Set on a marble board, does not make you a Master of Chess when you do not know the rules or are willing to learn the rules. In the end you have a very pretty Dust Holder.

How can people be intimidated by ops, it is so much fun. I have people that come over to my place and run on my layout. It is not complicated and I have made it very easy and simple to run with CC&WB. If you show up and something is not being built or on the layout that will interfere or get in the way, you will run a Job. You can wing it, ask questions etc. I will help you out. I'm not pushing anything too hard, just the basics. If you want to be more advanced that is fine we can take that step. I do keep it at basic level so more people just can have fun with little to no stress.

Once the full crew starts getting settled and learning we will up the difficulty level.

Once again why can't we just accept that not everyone enjoys the same facet of the hobby. Knocking someone for having a stunningly visual layout that is nothing more than a roundy round layout is counter productive. Not everyone cares about operations the same as not everyone cares about the art of building. 

As far as operations go I have operated on three layouts now. One used car cards and operated prototypical.  I have operated on another car card but not prototypical. Car number don't matter. What matters is that it is the right car, i.e. a 50 foot box car. I operate on another that uses switch lists. All are more modern with no steam. Out of the three I have operated I have to say, switch lists is my least favorite. That is a lot of fussing over do I have everything and what the heck do I keep here and what do I leave. Truth be told it is my lack of experience that makes it harder and I do very much enjoy operating on the layout. It is just harder for me to get my head around. The prototypical car card was great but I LOVE the non-prototypical car card where id the customer needs a 50 foot box then pick one and leave it. I fully appreciate that real railroaders don't get that luxury and that the numbers matter, a lot, but in this case they don't and it is far more enjoyable. The other systems get much more uncomfortably close to being like work and that isn't as much fun. I think the key to ops if you are curious and have a bad encounter is to find another group and try again. Not every group runs the same and it can make a big difference.

One thing I think is important for modeling ops is the fact that railroads are paying for crews rolling stock right of way etc. They don't make money from them being parked! The goal is to keep everything moving.

I was investigating accidents involving some trains and automobiles at different times. One of the jobs was to set up and monitor things like horn usage, speed etc. As this took place I was in position to take note of several trains that were meeting in a siding. The train that took the siding was there for a short time the longest was about 15 minutes, till the other train passed. I believe that if someone is sticking crews in the hole long enough for them to go dead on the line they are doing a poor job of dispatching and scheduling. I know there are times it happens but I suspect it might be more the exception than the rule.

On model railroads I suspect folks need to stop trying to put ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag. Fewer trains that match the capacity of the layout and the operators would be better than more trains parked on the layout that bore everyone to tears.

I think over doing the ops thing and poorly run ops sessions turn more folks off regarding that aspect than anything. How many operators could pass a test on the rules of that section of layout or actually follow the signals? There are lots of things to go over and there is no use in turning recreation time into another job.

The videos I have seen of op sessions that seem to produce the most enjoyment are the ones that are fluid and have a reasonable amount of time allotted for folks to accomplish their tasks. The folks that are doing the session look to be having fun. The ones that seem to be over cooked do not seem to have the same atmosphere of fun being picked up by the camera.

Rob in Texas, Do you have example videos of what you are talking about to share?

Some videos on this layout are real but get old real quick.    Like this video,  He did take the time and had text on what is going on,  But it would of been better with some sort of voice over or narration on what is happening or going on.  

The other thing is the constant close ups I see in ops videos.  I find the most enjoyable art of watching an ops video is seeing the interaction of the players and how they solve problems.  This video - Extreme Trains at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum – “The Oil Cans” by Bill Rogers is a good video,  but quickly gets old and does not properly show what operations is all about or the enjoyment of operations.

Az, I do not know if those videos I am remembering are even on the web anymore. I am going from memory and saw that some of them did not look like the folks involved were having a good time. On videos I did not enjoy I saw no reason to save or book mark them.

Your points on starting out with a basic level are great ideas. I suspect some folks try and jump into the deep end of things and create a nightmare scenario with out realizing it. I have seen many that were better sessions and lots of good ones can be seen on the grande pacific you tube channel, there are others as well.

I will talk more later getting ready for work.

There are those of us who actually work on the real railroads for a living, and with few exceptions, I believe most are like myself, who don't want complicated operations with car cards, switch lists, TT&TO and so on, because it is too much like work. That is why my equipment is all from the transition Era, that occurred before I was born, and I have no desire to have AC4400, SD70MAC, or any other modern equipment as models, because I see and operate that kind of equipment on the job.

I prefer a rail fan type of operation that would give the feeling of standing track side back when steam still ruled the rails, and diesels were barely being used on a daily basis. Switching operations that consist of pulling the loaded boxcars, and spotting empty boxcars for loading, without worrying about car number GN 769432 is placed at the feed mill by 1630 hours.

My idea of ideal operations would be running the local way freight, doing the simplified work at industry spots along the way, while clearing in the siding for the main line trains. I have actually worked real jobs like that, and unlike just running from point A to point B on a through freight,  there are few dull moments trying to get local work done while dodging passenger and freight trains.

My other idea of operation for the through freight and passenger trains would require long main line runs with recognizable landmarks along the way, and include an interesting aspect of the crew change on the passenger trains in my hometown in the 1950's, where they would swap out the diesel engine for a steam locomotive, because the railroad felt the diesel's steam generator would not be adequate for heating the passenger cars, in the cold Canadian weather, and the steam locomotive was needed for passenger car heating purposes.

Those are just my thoughts,  and of course my opinion is a bit tainted by a 25 years career of railroading, with every manner of operation that you could possibly imagine, and more bad or boring days than great days on the job. Jim.

I had no experience with ops except to design some half baked car forwarding system when I was a teen for my 4x8 layout. It never worked well on any level. I had nothing to show me the way. Fast forward a couple of layouts later and I never got to a point that construction was far enough along to op. 

A close friend in the hobby had a layout but it was a VERY large roundy round. Highly complicated with over 60 turnouts all remotely controlled by Atlas electric components. One had to look on a map of the layout to determine which turnout to throw and then find it on a matrix on the control panel which was arranged when the builder had constructed it and made no sense to anyone but him. So, we watched the trains go roundy round.

Introduced to some operators and an opportunity to be in on a session with 2 of them. I enjoyed my experience very much and came to the realization I enjoyed switching. One one layout I had difficulty with ops because the upper deck was too high for me to see what I was doing. I had no idea how to switch a yard and only a basic concept of his ops scheme so I took a train out on the main line. The best part of that was switching a few industries along the way.

2nd layout. A nightmare of duckunders and narrow spaces. I am a large, fairly short man. The builder is a lean and lanky individual. I found communicating with the dispatcher confusing and intimidating. I was given a switching job at the dock and had a great time until I had to get permission for my train to go from there to the local yard. Then I tried a passenger train over the main. I had a hard time observing signals and physically following my train because of his construction.

So, that did not leave a bad taste in my mouth. I felt I found my niche. Switching. Bought Lance Mindheim's ops book for small switching layouts and thought I'd found my place. Still, I had to wonder what it all meant. TT-TO? Dispatcher? If I wanted to play with the big guys I needed to know what was going on. I bought the OPSig book. 

Don't get me wrong, an EXCELLENT piece of work. It was a joy to read physically. For the content, I may as well have been reading about calculus (I'm a preacher). The first chapters made sense. Much of it I had learned from John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation and other articles over the years on layout design. I got the concepts. Then I got into the deep stuff. Now, to understand something, to completely grasp a topic, it helps if you have some interest. I had none. It was over my head, not because I am mentally deficient, but because I was lost and didn't have much interest in finding my way out. I knew that for my small layout for TT-TO to work I needed space between towns etc. I don't ever plan to have a laytout like that and I figured that if I ever hook up with someone who operates like that I'll learn as I go on his layout. Then again, if it's like the other experiences I had, I'll pass.

I get that the goal of all this model building is to have a layout that replicates the prototype not only in looks but in operation. Trains do something. Watching them go roundy round is unsatisfying after a while. If I get to the point where I am operating my small switching layout I know that switching is only part of the big ops picture.

What it boils down to is everyone wants something different. I get great joy out of complicated DCC installs and electronics in general. To the man who loves ops he may be mystified by electronics. For my friend with the LARGE roundy round layout, his joy was in constructing it. What I won't do is dismiss anything out of hand. I want to know what I don't know so I can honestly and in an informed way say; "That's not for me." As I think all hobbyists should do. 

The stats Joe shared indicate that we want our hobby to be fun and realistic but we don't want to over complicate things. That makes a lot of sense. Some will take it to a more extreme level than others but I think the majority want more than roundy round but less than a full blown reenactment of a day on the high iron with paperwork etc... We all find ourselves somewhere on the spectrum. 

This is my favorite type of ops video. The viewpoint is about right so you can see the context of what is being done.  There is text to tell you what is going on. So you're not just watching trains go back and forth wondering what is being accomplished.

Over time - he explains the types of loads and empties for each industry

The length is about right. Most of the videos are 10 to 15 minutes long. 

Another nice thing is there are enough videos to give you a sense of the owner's layout, layout concept, etc. 

I think the most important thing, each video tells a story.  After you watch two or three of them you really get a sense that this is a "real" railroad and start to understand how it fits into the whole scheme of things.

I find them entertaining.  

gs

1.  Operations can be complicated.  I worked in the operating department of a major railroad for 37 years.  The Opsig book?  Real operations are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than that.  Anything a model railroad does is an approximation (one reason to be a "prototype" modeler, 3/4 of the decisions were already made for you by the real railroad).

2.  People really don't care so they don't bother.  Most operations means doing something that somebody or something else tells you to do, people don't like that, so they skip operations.

3.  Operations requires some level of formal process, "rules" or procedures.  People don't want to spend/invest the time in learning about, developing, or teaching those processes.  See point #2.

4.  Non-railroaders, non-operators lack a context to understand the rules.  Just reading a railroad rule book will be confusing as hell.  Its not until you are actually in the situation the rule addresses that the lights come on and you realize why they wrote it the way they did.

5.  People get distracted by the differences and lose track of the intent.  Railroad rules and processes vary by railroad, country and era.  They evolve and change over time.  Sometimes people don't realize the alternatives exist and get all bent out of shape when they are raised.  Some people get confused when some rule book have red and green train order signals, some have red, yellow and green and on different railroads the yellow can mean different things.  On some railroads, the normal position of the train order signal is red, others it green.  Great, but the real message is that a green signal means that the train doesn't have to get orders at that station and any other color means it does.

6.  People can be defensive.   A lot of people (based on my experience) can get really defensive if about suggestions regarding operations, taking any discussion as a slight on their own layout. 

7.  PPPPPP :  It is easier to build a layout that can support operations and not "operate" it, than it is to build a layout that doesn't support operations and then try to overlay operations on it.  There are thousands of threads where people don't give any consideration to operations, build a layout, then ask, "How do I operate this?"  The corollary is when people impose some hugely complicated scenario and then ask, "How would the prototype do this?"  Then because they have built something really complicated or difficult they get turned off when the answer is really complicated or difficult.  

8.  Operation with requires a shared vision among the people participating.  Often the owner will have a niche vision of the layout and if the other operators dont' understand or don't share the vision, the operation will be confusing or unsatisfying or even worse a turn off.  That can also cause the operation to be skewed towards that aspect and ignore other stuff.  It can take many forms, Having a really fast moving lots of trains operation, having really big, really long trains, exactly duplicating the exact movements of each crew member, having the controls exactly the way the engineer has them, having things take the same amount of time as the prototype would take, having the paperwork the same as the crew would have.  Nothing wrong with any of those, but if other people don't share that same enthusiasm for that slice of the pie, there may not be a shared enthusiasm.

Believe it or not I have received feedback on my operating sessions because there WASN'T complicated TT&TO operation.  Because I am knowledgeable about TT&TO they were expected really complex, intense train orders.  I actually intentionally structure things to avoid that.

I think the most important thing, each video tells a story.

You got it! Good videos that really engage you always tell a story ... in other words, they have a plot, something at stake, an end point we’re driving for. Without that, a video gets boring really fast. That’s why rambling talking heads is really boring — no end point we’re driving for.

So the best ops videos NEED to have a plot. Start at the beginning telling us WHY it matters and what’s at stake if it fails and you’ll grab em every time. Keep it flowing forward with a clearly explained sense of direction. Come to the end with something accomplished (even that you learned from failure) and viewers will feel they didn’t waste their time viewing your video.

"Out of the three I have operated I have to say, switch lists is my least favorite. That is a lot of fussing over do I have everything and what the heck do I keep here and what do I leave." 

  Well designed switchlist operations should be simple and self explanatory. Most tasks are obvious just from looking at the industries and the cars  in the train. Railroad traffic follows patterns that only take a while to recognize. The only car number examining needed is when you have a lot of similar boxcars and multiple industries or spots needing them......DaveB 

I like to build things, always have. My parents always knew I'd enjoy erector sets, plastic bricks (pre Lego), model kits, electronics kits and similar for Christmas and birthdays, and not to bother with basketballs or Monopoly. My dad didn't take me hunting, we built soap box derby cars. My knack for electronics, (combined with a passion for music) led me to a unique career. Now I'm retired-- I can spend my time doing anything I want to. And what do I want to do? Build things. I see a layout in a manner similar to the way a body builder sees a gym: a room full of different ways to exercise my creativity and craft skills. It doesn't even matter if I am working on things that my layout doesn't have room or need for.

I like to run my trains from time to time, but mostly that just inspires me to get back to work. I hardly ever "finish" a session. They are usually abandoned because I thought of something that I can do to improve things. It might be an operational glitch, but more often I am simply struck by an idea. (see Terry Pratchett's "Sourcery" for a discussion of how inspirations sleet through the universe like neutrinos and bring ideas to receptive minds.) Maybe when the layout is more complete, my sessions will run longer, but I doubt it. My plan is to rip it out and build another one.

pqe

The most discouraging sessions I've taken part in are those where the owner has a clear idea of what he wants to happen -- but either can't or won't explain the system to his new recruits.

Case 1: Nicely-scenicked Southern Pacific layout with correct power, cars, place names, etc.

Except: The train names are alphabet soup -- if someone isn't a knowledgeable SP fan of long-standing, getting the RVCPM-2 was kind of a problem. No paperwork to explain it. You have to hunt down the owner or an SP type to know what is going on.

Except: Stations A, B, C and branch D don't line up quite the way they do on the globe. If you know Southern California, it is disconcerting to discover the layout owner has changed the order because they fit better that way.

Case 2: "Oh, we use switchlists and don't need a fast clock or anything." No, they weren't really using switchlists, just a typed list of cars and some two-letter initials. No real clue as to what was a set-out, what was a pickup, or what RW meant. Had to go bug the owner for a translation. I don't mind working out what needs to be done, but it was the equivalent of getting the whole package in French -- and not being able to read French. A simple diagram on the fascia will do it.

Case 3: The over-explainer. The walls are plastered with instruction sheets, in great detail and covering any contingency.  Finding the Fort Mudge Local instructions (maybe 50 words) in six pages of single-spaced typing is time-consuming.

Except: The train names are alphabet soup

Just curious.  What difference would it make if you knew what it meant?  Why did it make difference if you didn't? 

I have numbered regular trains.  If you have No 51, I can't tell you what No 51 means, its just a number derived from what the prototype did.  About the only significance is if its even its SWD, if its odd its NWD.   If you operated on my layout there would be no paperwork to explain why it was No 51 or what that meant.  Never occurred to me that that could be an issue.

How do visitors to your layout know what to do when they're on the 51?

The difference was having some idea which direction the train traveled, what work it did, etc. He just assumed everyone knew all about it. There was nothing given about the origination point or destination, unless you asked. To me, with some background, RV would have been Roseville on the SP, but it wasn't in this case. Can't remember what CP was, or what his -2 meant, but it wasn't the day of the week, of the month, or the section. Second trip of the day, I think.

Inventing a system that looks or sounds railroady, but isn't based on some company's practices, is really a deep pit. Especially when it's all in someone's head, and that head is under the layout resoldering feeders.

With numbered trains, at least most people will know "easts are even" and can wander over toward the west end of the layout.

The solution I usually see is a card or something that says "Fort Mudge patrol, run Fort Mudge to Okefenokee and return, switching Pogo, Albert, and Churchy enroute."  With that, I can figure out the rest. Assuming there's a list, or car cards and waybills. And a way to identify pickups.

On your railroad, Dave, is 51 a train number or a bulletined job number? On Keith Jordan's "The Patch" layout at http://www.patchrailroad.net/The_Patch/Patch_Home.html the jobs are numbered and each crew gets a card describing the work.  On the UP in Idaho, three local switch jobs worked out of Idaho Falls, and all were known by their number -- never did hear a name for them.

The difference was having some idea which direction the train traveled, what work it did, etc. He just assumed everyone knew all about it. There was nothing given about the origination point or destination, unless you asked. To me, with some background, RV would have been Roseville on the SP, but it wasn't in this case. Can't remember what CP was, or what his -2 meant, but it wasn't the day of the week, of the month, or the section. Second trip of the day, I think.

"51" doesn't tell you much either.

What the layout owner should be providing, at the very *least* would be a schedule of the trains to run and their start/finish points.

Better is a description card detailing a train's work, that would be provided along with the train's paperwork and throttle. Here's an example of the train cards we use at the club layout, which if people actually bother to read them(!) provide a pretty good indication of where that train runs to (along with a small key map of the layout also provided), and what that train does:

That, in my opinion is the key - to provide simple and CLEAR instructions and "player aids" to the operators. The one poster above who detailed about 3 or 4 different times that ops failed for him, provided examples in every single case where the layout owner failed to make things easy for the operator, whether through overall layout design, bad ops design, little to no instruction to the operator, or downright poor instruction.

How do visitors to your layout know what to do when they're on the 51?

​Ok, got it now, you weren't really trying to decode the train symbol, you wanted to know what the train did.  The train symbol isn't much of an indicator of what the train does or where it works in any case.

​I have had several train cards over the years.  I started with a 3 page written description of the jobs but it wasn't very handy and people tend not to read stuff.  I separated the text out into 1/4 page cards for each train (or train pair) but the size was unhandy and hard to combine with the other car cards and stuff.

The next step was a car card size "train card" that listed the train info at a real high level and what it did.  It was designed with a bunch of white space at the top so when the binder clip is applied to the top of the car card packet you can still see the train info.  This was used on the previous iteration of the 1900 era layout

I have revised it a bit and made it maybe a bit more graphical.  It has a blocking chart and lists work by station.  You may notice that between the version above and this one I figured out the Wilmington station was 6th Ave, not 8th and the freights terminated at Birdsboro, not Reading.  Also sometime between 1902 and 1928 the P&R added 700 to all the train symbol numbers (1900 No 2 = 1928 No 702).  The car card size allows the train card to be added to the packet of car cards.

I am also contemplating supplementing these with "agent messages".  Haven't decided whether they should be sorted by station and on a hook at each agency, when the train gets there they can thumb thru the packet to find the info for their train or whether it should be sorted by train and added to the train order packet, adding up to 5 or 6 pages to the train order bundle.

Not being familiar with your railroad, the question I would have is, are there industries other than the EB Eddy Paper Mill at Espanola?  You say twice that the job is for the exclusive service to EB Eddy, but in the train description is says "Perform all local switching and return to Sudbury."  If there are other industries at Espanola, do I switch them?  The description and notes say its exclusive for EBE, but the notes also say I do all local switching.

Those look great Dave!

The layout I operate on mos has cards sized closer to your agent cards. They are just a bit bigger than the car cards so you can spot it quickly if you worked it into your stack someone but gives the basics on where you originate and end, locations along the way for work, and even information like take siding or take the main at key spots. It is REALLY helpful!

Not being familiar with your railroad, the question I would have is, are there industries other than the EB Eddy Paper Mill at Espanola?  You say twice that the job is for the exclusive service to EB Eddy, but in the train description is says "Perform all local switching and return to Sudbury."  If there are other industries at Espanola, do I switch them?  The description and notes say its exclusive for EBE, but the notes also say I do all local switching.

The train will do all the switching in Espanola, but that's 95% just the Eddy mill (& related). It's basically the only industry. The only other thing that was really there was a spur into the local Brewer's Retail/Beer Store which would have been used infrequently if at all anymore at that point.

So... yes to both questions basically. The job exists because of the paper mill - there is another train that runs through here working the rest of the branch line *except* Espanola - and the Espanola job will handle other cars in Espanola, but those "other cars" will rarely if ever happen. Maybe once in a year's worth of sessions. The job will switch out the mill and local storage tracks that support the mill. McKerrow, the other location mentioned on the description card, is just outside Espanola and is the junction point and beginning of the branch. A yard here is used to store cars for the mill at Espanola as well as transfer westbound loads to another train while the Espanola job heads east back to its home terminal at Sudbury.

So yeah, that wording could actually be clarified, but EB Eddy is basically the only thing there.

Key map of the club layout territory modelled. Note Espanola & McKerrow at middle-left. Both the Espanola job and the Little Current job explicitly do no work between Sudbury and McKerrow on the Webbwood subdivision (blue line). The Espanola job works McKerrow & Espanola (99% exclusively EB Eddy traffic) and the Little Current job works everything beyond Espanola on the Little Current subdivision (green line).

Thanks for the response.

I'm sure it would be clearer if I had all the supporting documentation and could see it in person.  Probably the take away for the starting layout owners is to provide that documentation or a "tour" from new operators so they can see the context of the instructions.

I'm going to cross post this entry I wrote on the "Switch Lists vs. CC&WB" thread because I think it touches on this topic too.​I previously posted an excerpt from a prototype routing guide on the other thread.  Its is incredibly complex, kinda like trying to figure out income taxes in a foreign language.  Would a clerk have to refer to this guide for every shipment?  Hell no.  

Model railroaders seem to like "randomness".  Well actual operations aren't that random.  Most shippers ship to a relatively limited number of customers, most customers receive product from a relatively limited number of suppliers and railroads have a limited number of options as far as interchanges and routes.  Cars would fall into set patterns and the clerks and yardmaster would recognize those patterns.

If you were on the UP in 1960 anywhere on the western end, and you had a car (other than perishables) going anywhere east of Chicago, guess where your were going to send that car?  North Platte.  Pretty much doesn't matter, load, empty, route, whatever, the car is going to North Platte.

If you are modeling one of these one station layouts or an industrial lead, routing is really easy.  You probably only have maybe a couple options in and a couple options out.  If its an industrial lead, you pretty much have one way in and one way out.  A car going to Los Angeles is the same as a car going to New York as far as your crew is concerned.  There is zero randomness on routing.  I model a subdivision and I only have six "routes" available as far as my crews are concerned.  I have one interchange with the B&O, 3 with the PRR and a connection to the rest of the P&R through Reading or the car goes to an industry on the model portion of the layout.  Those are the only options I have, those are the only options I have to worry about.  Out of the hundreds or thousands of routes available in the the RDG Tariff 111 routing guide, I really only have 6 to pick from on my layout.  I could randomize all I want, I will still end up with only 6 routes my crews can act on.  

If I modeled an industrial switching lead  ISL I would only have 2 possible routes.  To an industry on my layout or off my layout, back to the yard my local came from.  I could have a database of 250,000 industries to ship to, doesn't matter, it really boils down to just one route off the layout.  A car to LA will be handled the same as a car to New York.

Once you realize how many real routes you have (or more correctly, don't have), it simplifies things and all the "options" become window dressing, eye candy for the paperwork.  That takes the pressure off trying to figure out stuff.  If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter.

I think part of the reason most modelers prefer to stay away from prototypical ops is that we want to have fun, and paperwork clouds that up (for most of us). Part of the other issue is that many switch lists and other forms of paperwork are confusing, especially to new members.

When I was a conductor at a shortline, we ran switchlists that looked a bit like this for a particular industry:

It lays out where the spots are, gives a track diagram, and lists which car needs to move where. A simple diagram like this is way less confusing to unfamiliar members than "Pull XX loads off of track 12" and no indication of where track 12 is.

While I understand Dave H.'s points in his recent post about there not being randomness in freight car movements, and that the same cars frequently orbit between shipper and receiver, I believe that for the locomotive engineer and the conductor & switchmen (the crew roles that most modelers take on) there APPEARS to be quite a bit of randomness in their world. They have a completely different viewpoint than folks who work high up in traffic management and car fleet management departments. During my short time as a brakeman, the last thing on my mind while tramping through the mud in the rain would have been to think "Oh, right, I remember these reporting marks! We spotted this mechanical reefer at the Kraft plant three weeks ago!".

A rail customer can be both a shipper and receiver and the amount of goods that are inbound to each customer depends on the what is needed to do it's business. The same applies to outbound goods. If demand is up, shipments increase. If demand is down, shipments decrease. Not every customer on every railroad ships and receives the exact same number of of the exact same type of cars each day. This is even more obvious when dealing with agricultural products as those items depend on the growing seasons.

In the prototype world, especially nowadays with all of the leased car pools, I'm certain that many cars do orbit between shipper and receiver. I see this locally where there always seem to be four covered hoppers of Bentonite sitting on the team track with the contents being transferred to trucks. (I'll have to start checking reporting marks to see if the same cars are showing up frequently.)

In the modeling world, this is also true because we don't have access to the large number of cars available to real world fleet managers. Switch crews on my system will frequently see the same covered hoppers moving in and out of grain elevators because I have a limited number of them, but some days they'll see two, some days four, and some days, none.

This is the randomness factor that I've been talking about. It's not so much that the same cars will be seen at the same customer sites, it's that car forwarding systems that cause crews to always move the same numbers and types of cars to the same customers each operating system lack the "apparent randomness" found in the real world and therefore the operating sessions aren't as interesting or challenging as they could be.

But then again, I do like puzzles.

Depends on what you call "random" and what you are measuring.

If each day I take an object of a shelf and put another object back on the shelf in the same spot, and every day its a different item, am I doing something "random"? The activity is EXACTLY the same every day.  Zero randomness.  I take an object off the shelf and I put an object back on the shelf.  "Operations" is activity.  The objects could be random (or not), but the activity is not.

So it is with switching.  If you take cars from a yard to and industry and you put the corn syrup at the corn syrup spot and the boxcars at the loading dock, the activity isn't random.  Doesn't matter if one day its a UTLX tank and the next day its a CCGX tank.  Its the same job originating from the same yard and putting the same type of cars in the same spots, then taking the outbounds back to the same yard.  Plus the crews are given a switch list that may say car ABCD 1234 goes to spot 22, that is exactly the opposite of random.  Random means any outcome is equally possible.  If the switch list says put ABCD 1234 on spot 22, then it completely eliminates randomness.

When I look at it, the inventory can be random, but the activity is really not.  Its a limited number of commodities in a limited number of car types to a limited number of spots in a limited number of places. (and really on a model railroad the inventory isn't random, I own a "fixed" number of a certain car type, lets say flatcars, if I spot a flatcar its going to be one of about 4 or 5 cars.)

And this is the key to organizing operations because it is these patterns the let you set up instructions to crews and billing systems.  If you like random then don't have many systems behind your operations.  You can spot any car anywhere.  The more complicated the system, the less random it will be.

"I see this locally where there always seem to be four covered hoppers of Bentonite sitting on the team track with the contents being transferred to trucks. (I'll have to start checking reporting marks to see if the same cars are showing up frequently.)"

   One neat thing about graffiti is it makes it easier to identify cars at a distance :>) I often saw the same unique covered hoppers come and go here on the branchline.  If you want more random traffic I'd suggest modeling a bridge route with trains coming and going without needing an on scene industry or destination.....DaveB

Dave - I think you are missing my point. It's the number of cars and the frequency that's random, not where the car is spotted, the reporting marks of the car, or the process used in spotting a car at a particular customer. We might have a difference in definition of the word "random".

Let's say that there's a location where there are five customers. Some have one spot, some have more. Some are located on the same track, some have dedicated spurs. What makes life interesting is when a crew has to work those customers and some days they only have to deal with two or three of the customers, sometimes all five. Some days cars on customer spurs will have to be moved in order to spot additional cars, sometimes not. That's the "randomness" that I'm talking about. What I don't find interesting is where every operating session a job services all the customers on it's route and pulls and spots and equal number of cars. That's busy work and not a challenge.

You are correct in saying that spotting the tank car at it's spot and the box car at it's spot isn't random. What makes it appear random to the switch crew is that some days you only spot the tank car, some days only the box car, and some days both. Some days you'll have two box cars for the customer, but they only have room to unload one at a time. It's not the individual moves, it's the overall job and instructions for that crew can be written in such a way to cover instances where some customers don't receive any cars and other customers don't ship anything.

Variety is the spice of life!

It's the number of cars and the frequency that's random, not where the car is spotted, the reporting marks of the car, or the process used in spotting a car at a particular customer. We might have a difference in definition of the word "random".

​On that I agree completely.  Its still not random, but that variation is what the modeler needs to focus on to keep operations interesting, because those types of variations are what makes a difference.

​I have seen software where the system allows the user to set a fixed schedule of inbound cars (ABC corp always uses 2 boxcars and a gon on Tuesdays) and then says lets the user pick a "random" shipping destination.  That has about the least amount of randomness in activity.  On the other hand having the switching requirements vary by industry and something other than a day of the week, (or month) really mixes it up and lets makes a greater variation between sessions.  

​Having said that, all things in moderation, you don't want to have wide variations because then you get wildly different times to do the work and that can have negative consequences.  By making the switching pretty straightforward, and keeping the total number of cars handled somewhere in the same balpark, the time to do the work will come out pretty close.

Yep, here we go with the, "Ops is the thing" argument... again.

I have the OpSig books, both of them, and buy their magazine every now and then to read it. I like picking up good ideas but in the end, it's got to be fun and one thing I've learned from doing op sessions is that generally, the more work it is, the more likely people will find excuses to leave early.

I run with the Micro mark 4-position car card system. It works well for me, as I run with 4-5 car trains and even cycling that one train through the layout can take as much as 90 minutes to move everything around (and then i can just swap the positions on th waybills in the cards, and start over right away). Switch lists for me wouldn't work easily as I'd have to think well in advance what cars would be used on which movement, then, the same thing in following iterations. the car cards work better for me as they're far more flexible in changing out cars if I want (or if one is causing me problems). It's all about moving the cars to various places; a large switching layout more than a mainline run in a classical sense as it's a small layout in On30.

I'm reminded of a guy on whose layout I ran a few times, long ago before many people had DCC. He removed the fun out of every aspect of running. Guys would wait more than an hour for a scheduled meet and he'd yell at you if you walked over to talk to someone else in the meantime ("You just walked away from your train, you couldn't do that in real life!") or if you broke the rules in any tiny little way. He even had a remote-controlled locomotive that would 'explode' if you passed too many water towers. He'd tell the offending hogger that he was now dead, so he should just leave and never come back. I saw a real-life CSX engineer have to be restrained from giving the layout owner a classic southern 'whuppin' for that. If you brought a beer to the op session along with snacks (which he didn't like you going to get snacks or drinks, because you couldn't do that in real life), he'd threaten to kick you out because you can't drink on trains in real life, either.

The guy was an insane control freak, the worst I ever saw, but some guys into ops are the same way in various degrees.

There are those of us who actually work on the real railroads for a living, and with few exceptions, I believe most are like myself, who don't want complicated operations with car cards, switch lists, TT&TO and so on, because it is too much like work.

I can understand this. It's very much like how I faded away from historical re-enacting (the portion where you run around in the woods shooting blanks, that is. I still do display-only events now) once I'd been in the real military. It felt too much like work, and poorly-done, at that.

I use a similar analogy all the time; ops when you're treating like a real job is like going to a civil war re-enactment and being told you're going to peel potatoes and dig ditches all weekend. Sure, such things were needed in real life and it is accurate, but what the [bleep] fun is that?

You can never have too much detail or too many trees on a layout.

Notice how the survey choices were worded?

Choice 1:  Roundy-roundy

Choice 2:  Mother-may-I

Choices 3-5:  a complicated system and a Dispatcher

Perhaps dropping the derogatory wording would be a good start.

Then we need to start by recognizing that not everyone wants a work experience as a hobby.  Some of us are in this for relaxation and enjoyment.  I understand that running a railroad is a very complicated process with lots of rules and people needed to make it all work safely and smoothly.  If I wanted to be part of that I would have hired on with the railroad.  But I didn't and I don't.

I enjoy running trains by myself so "xxxx" and a dispatcher doesn't work for me.  I'm more interested in the broad picture of moving stuff by rail from a shipper/seller to a receiver/buyer.  So the detail level of checking the brakes, momentum starts and stops, and other minutia just gets in the way.  Also I enjoy running my trains as a railfan where you don't know what exactly they are doing, but just enjoying the show. 

So maybe MRH instead of trying to sell choices 3-5 should focus more on choices 1 and 2.  Develop some track plans and operations for those choices.  Leave choices 3-5 for the hardcore guys in the OPSIG..

Paul