Car cards?

This may seem like a silly question but where are these waybills supposed to be used?  Is this a way to generate better waybills for a "conventional" CC&WB system?  He talks about the cycling etc, but never really says when the waybills go or whether they are used with conventional car cards, etc.  I would assumer they are because there is no car information (which car the waybill belongs to) on the waybills.

Are the waybills cut apart or folded when used? 

I assume they are single use because he is crossing stuff off at the top, so after the cycle is completed, you toss the old waybills and then generate, print out, and cut apart new waybills for the next session.

Waybills go into car card pockets

Sorry for the confusion Dave, the stack of waybills for a given shipment all are placed into a car card's pocket.  When a leg is done (dropping off the empty, loading done, etc.) the top waybill is removed showing the next step (loading, waybill to receiver, etc.)   

I would have sworn I had that in there, must have been lost in the editing process, and I missed catching it in the proof.

As it does say, I cut them apart.  

And after a year of cutting for a larger layout than my first, I've gotten tired of that chore.  So I'm now working on reformating the output report to make a single, step-wise card that I can just cross off each step.  Still will have to cut apart the way bills, but now it will only be one per car, rather than up to four per car.  Nice thing about the database back end is that I can change the report without having to rewrite each and every 4-cycle card.

Technicolor on train ops

This is no criticism on the article or application, just some comments on the train operations mentioned.

The decision to run an extra would most likely reside with the trainmaster or possibly with the agent in the 1920's rather the dispatcher.  If it was a road train it would involve the dispatcher to arrange for the crew, caboose and power.  If it was a local they would source it from the pool of local crews and the dispatcher wouldn't have as much of a say.  The tricky part is finding an engine and caboose.

Having said that it would be rare to call an extra to handle empties (except in a coal, grain or perishable area), the trainmaster wouldn't want to spend the money to run the extra and in the 1920's the big expense is the crew costs.  They would fill out the regular train or double the hill if required.  Hours of service was 16 hours so the crews had LOTS of time to flounder around and using a single job for 12-16 hours was often cheaper than calling two crews.

Regarding "canceling" a local if there was no business, the technical railroad term they would use is "annulling" the local and it wouldn't be done that often because locals tend to be assigned crews.  They are bulletined to operate over a specific territory on specific days by labor agreement.  That means they get paid at least a basic day for each of those days, whether they run or not, whether they handle a single car or not.  Since they are getting paid, the railroad will usually find something for them to do.

FYI, a cool book to read about operations in this era is a book called "Set Up Running : the life of a Pennsylvania RR engineman 1904-1949", by Oscar Orr.

Access

I created my own Access app to generate car cards and waybills, but don't have any back end logic to drive what roues/shipments are selected.

Unfortunately, Access doesn't have the ability to print rotated (or at least I haven't found it yet).  When I do multi-sided or top and bottom waybills it means multiple passes through the printer rotating the paper manually.  On the other hand, Excel can rotate 90 degrees both left and right, so you can do top and bottom in one pass.  One thing I haven't tried is exporting the data to an Excel spreadsheet (as a data table) and then using a formatted spreadsheet linked to the "data" spreadsheet to print the actual waybills.  

The limitation with that is the formatted spreadsheet in Excel would only read a set number of rows, so the Access app could only export a set number of records at one time.

Overhead

One concept that is handy with car forwarding for overhead business is the concept of a "block".  A block is a group of cars handled from one place to the next place they will be handled.  That could be a yard where they will be reclassified, to an interchange or to a station.  Train carry certain blocks and cars are assigned to certain blocks based on their destinations.  The block to which a car is assigned is dynamic depend on where it is and what blocks that yard and its trains handle.

On my system I have blocks that drive cars to staging yards and my overhead and through business just gets a waybill with the block name on it.  I do differentiate between loaded and empty cars (mostly because of open top cars) but the waybill block is the same.  I don't indicate car type, shipper, consignee (reciever), origin, destination or lading (if loaded).  It's irrelevant as far as the car movement is concerned.  The waybill has the block on it.  The block will be either be the interchange or off junction if its a thru car, or the yard from which the local/switcher that serves the industry originates (in the case of a car going to industry). Each through freight carries specific blocks.  The yard bundles up the cars in each block and then adds them to the trains that carry that business.

Blocking is a powerful way to route cars simply without having to have a lot of detail behind it.  And having used it for the 37 years of my railroad career, its prototypical.

The real place it shines is for overhead trains from staging to interchanges or staging.  If you have a 20 car train in staging and all it does is stet out and pick up at junctions, interchanges or staging, you can just use waybills with the block names on them to drive the movement without any of the detail of a normal waybill.  For example if I have a train coming out of Reading staging and it has a block of 9 cars for the B&O at Elsmere and 11 cars for the PRR at Wilmington, I just get 9 waybills that read "B&O - Elsmere" and put them on the head 9 cars and then 11 waybills that read "PRR-Wilmington" on the rear cars.  Done.  Coming back, I put waybills that read "Reading" on the cars at the B&O and PRR interchanges and the train going back to Reading picks up those cars off the PRR and B&O.

The nice thing about that is if you are looking for a concise way to route cars, having a small footprint on a waybill, blocking may be helpful.  And 100% prototypical, even back in the 1920's.

Good article - Cool App!!

Hi Richard,

I enjoyed your article and am particularly interested in the App you've designed.  I will download it as soon as it becomes available in the December Extras. 

What intrigues me so much is that this app generates the waybill requests and is different each time.  I use 4 part waybills, and my beef with them is the repetitive nature.  I can change them out when they finish a cycle, but that's just a "fix".  I've also looked at Switchlist programs, and I've liked a few.  But my beef with them, as you say, is keeping the layout in lock-step with computer, and having to use the computer DURING the operating session as trains come and go from yards.

Your App seems to solve both these problems, so I'm anxious to give it a try.

Now, if we can just find a printer that will print single waybills on 2x3 perforated paper so we don't have to cut them out!!!

One per car

One way to do the "one per car" thing is to make two sided or top and bottom waybills.  Two sided would preserve the info at the bottom of the waybill.

For the two sided waybills, at the bottom of the visible area or inconspicuously at the top you could have the loading/unloading "timer" on move 1.  Retain the marks because they are really the only thing "active" on the second waybill.  Spot the car with move one.  Leave the waybill alone and then every session check off the timer marks on the top of the waybill.  Since the waybill is on whatever the status was when it was spotted and the destination is the place where it is spotted, it says leave me here.  It's also prototypical, since an empty spotted isn't billed until it's loaded so it's considered still an empty.  Same thing with the loads.

When the time was up, turn the waybill to move two and have the outbound waybill info, with the timer info in it.  Spot the car according to move 2, then check off the move 2 timer marks as required.  When those marks are done, pull the waybill.  

For two sided waybills there are two tricks.  The first is getting the output positioned on the page so that when its run through the printer the second time the positions on the front and back line up.  Second is that you have to change the order of the waybills on the page.  If the waybills in the first row are numbered 1-2-3-4, when you flip the page they need to be numbered 4-3-2-1.

The way I do that is to have a table for side 1 with the waybill order on it and then a table for side 2 with the reverse waybill order.  I have two print order fields, side 1 and side 2, I update the table of waybills to print with the print orders for each side and then sort by the side one field on pass and by side 2 on the second pass. 

That would give you one waybill per car with two moves and retain the load/unload timers.

Extras are up

The December Bonus extras are now up.

https://mrhmag.com/magazine/mrh2021-12/bonus-extras

Car cards vs CC&WB

If you don't want to cut out a bunch of waybills, you might want to explore "car cards" vs CC&WB.  Car cards have a table of rows with sequential destinations and columns for each cycle.  As cars are moved the boxes are checked off.  An application of these was described in the MRH articles on the Wyoming railroad.

To merge that with your system, I would have two columns dedicated to each move.  The first column would designate the arrival at destination and the second column would be the dwell.  The dwell would be blank for 2 session dwell.  The car would be spotted and the spot box checked off.  If the box in the dwell column was empty, the car would dwell for two sessions.  The next session a slash would be marked in the dwell box and the session after that, another slash added to make an "X" and the third session the car would be moved to the next destination.  If the car was to be moved on the second session teh computer would put a slash in the dwell box and only one more slash added  to make an X and then the car moved the next session.  If the car was to be moved the next session the computer would put an X in the dwell box and the next session it would be moved.  This plan would work for both loading and unloading.

You could have the computer randomly list 8-10 moves per card and with 6 columns for 3 cycles, the car card could last for dozens of sessions before it needed to be replaced.