Questions about Waybills

I get the concept behind car cards, that each car gets a car card with reporting mark and road number. I'm also including an "MTY: Return to" instruction that will be visible when there is no waybill present. 

My questions revolve more about how to use the waybill. As the example photo in the first post shows, I want the Sheridan yard switcher to pick up the loaded wood chip hopper and move it to the Sheridan Yard (all of 5 feet away!). Ideally, that operator should know which track to place the loaded car on as I have designated tracks for westbound and eastbound pickups. Since this car will generally be travelling west, should the first waybill entry show the final destination or the first destination-in real life, how would the train crew know which track to place this car on? Is that the yardmaster's job? Should the crew peek at the next entry on the waybill, or should they just know (bad idea I think) that it will be a westbound? 

It seems like when the locomotive uncouples from the train the waybill should be turned. Thus, I have the first destination being Sheridan yard. After you turn the waybill, it shows the destination as Spokane. If I showed the first destination as Spokane, I wouldn't expect the switch job to run all the way to Washington state. Does it seem correct that every time the car is dropped off by one train and picked up by another that the waybill should be turned? It does to me. 

That's all for this time. More later. 

Jim

The waybill should have the

The waybill should have the final destination on it. You need to know the industry and the location (town or city).

Micro Mark puts the industry at the top and the next line down is the location. 

The yard could be mentioned by a VIA line (VIA Sheridan Yard) underneath the destination line. A VIA line designates the intermediate location.  

The VIA line could also designate the interchange that the shipment is coming through. 

You turn the waybill at the destination when the trip is complete. 

Wether the destination is an industry or actually a staging yard. 

I usually turn the waybill at the beginning of the next session. 

I use a extra three boxes ( actually one Micro Mark 3 box unit) at the yard location to keep track of the cards belonging to the cars I am currently sorting out. Otherwise I sometimes misplace the cards while  switching. 

you are way over thinking

you are way over thinking this.  Waybills have destion not intermediate stops.  Cart to ABC, Turne waybill when it is at ABC.  Next destination is XYZ.  Wall bill is not turned tell it is at XYZ.  

Intermedia stuff as it travels along are not include on the waybill,  Those are determined by your built in layout routing.

Thanks for the replies. I was

Thanks for the replies. I was overthinking it, it's all starting to become clear now.

Jim

too much info for a waybill

When to turn the bills

When to turn the bills is always good for some discussion.  There’s no single answer that works in all situations, it depends on how the layout owner has set up operations.

One layout I operate on you are supposed to turn the bills when spotting the car at the destination (staging or and industry).  The way the operation is set up each spot is served by only one train (with a couple exceptions).  Industries off the yard, the yardmaster can either turn the bills when spotting, or not turn the bills until the end of the session to help keep track of things if he does the spotting in small increments throughout the session.  The one or two online industries that are served by more than one train a session just get switched more than once.  If you’re following the particular car it’s not realistic, but from the point of view of the train doing the switching each time it all makes sense, and it gets just a little more operation out of the same number of industries and cars.

Another layout I operated on you never flipped bills, the owner did it between sessions (the exception was for moves into staging - those had to get flipped right away since trains were re-used to represent other trains).

And I’m sure there are other ways to do it too.

If you’re just getting started I’d recommend starting with only flipping between sessions - I think it makes it a little easier to keep track of everything without getting mixed up.

Yard versus local ops

I can weigh in here, but it may muddy the water, so don't feel bound to my thoughts, I'm just putting them out there for ya.

SO, you have to think of which kind of job would be doing this work. IF this is an industry located in, near or close to a yard, the yard job or lead switcher would just spot and pull the nearby industry and set the outbound cars in the appropriate outbound cut for picking up by a road train.  On the railroad I work at, 25 miles either side of the yard is "within yard switching limits" and the yard job can go out to get cars from industries out there.  we also have a Local job that does a 90 mile patrol every night, starting at an "outpost terminal" at the far end where a large industry is located and working all of the "line of road" industries to the terminal yard, which is their 1/2way point. Then they leave that block of cars at the yard, grab a new cut of industrial cars that the yard crew has switched out for them in order of the work they have  at that yard, and work the industries back to their "outpost" home.  

Most locals, road switchers or "patrols" go "out and back" to do industry work, so you *could* just provided a simple  list of work to be done, and keep the waybills at the yard, where the "yardmaster" or "Agent" could handle the turning of the physical car-card waybill, and that yardmaster job would write down the work orders for the various crews, thus adding another job (in our model worlds, usually the dispatcher ends up being the yardmaster too).

Honestly, and it's been discussed in other car-card threads here, as a railroader I don't typically see the physical waybill like a car-card has. I can pull it up if necessary, and haz mat cars we get waybills for, but in lieu of those waybills we have "work order" instructions for our train telling us what industries want a switch, what cars they want, and where to place/pull cars at the industry.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask...prototypical operations add an excellent layer of fun to everything else fun we do!

CC&WB

I get the concept behind car cards, that each car gets a car card with reporting mark and road number.

Sorta.  People tend to get hung up on the two pieces of paper, a "car card" and a "waybill".  Really what the combination of the two is supposed to do is to represent ONE piece of paper, the railroad waybill, which has shipment and car info on it.  Back at the dawn of time, model railroaders realized  that you could make the car information on one piece of paper and the shipment information on another so you could mix and match cars and shipments without having to rewrite everything.

Don't think of it as a "car card" and a "waybill", think of it as a railroad waybill.

A real waybill tells the origin of the shipment, final destination of the shipment, what route it takes (railroad and junction point between RAILROADS), what's in the car, how heavy it is and what the billing is.  The internal routing isn't in the waybill per se, that's handled by the railroad's transportation documents.  Modern railroads have a "block", a grouping of cars that are handled the same way.  The waybill won't have the block on it, but I like to put a block code on my waybills to help the operators.

Why do you want to restrict where the yard engine wants to put his cars?  You might have a valid reason.  I want the Wilmington switcher to put the Maryland Ave, 6th Ave and H&H cars in track 1 and the DRE and float cars in track 2.  I do that because they are double ended tracks and the switcher that will spot them can work those tracks from the other end so the yard engine does have to do detail blocking, the job that spots the cars digs out his own spotters. I do that by saying so in the yard engine's "train card" or instruction sheet.

The waybill should show the final destination of the car.  If its going to an industry on your layout that would be that industry (and possibly track and spot).  If its going to an industry off line it can be that industry, or the interchange, junction or connection where it will leave your layout.

It seems like when the locomotive uncouples from the train the waybill should be turned.

The waybill gets turned when the shipment changes from load to empty (or vice versa) or the car leaves the visible layout.  When the empty is spotted at industry and the car is loaded, the waybill gets turned.  When the load is spotted at industry and emptied, the waybill gets turned.  When the car is delivered to another railroad in interchange and its going to come back via the same interchange, the waybill gets turned.  When the car goes into staging and comes back out as another shipment, the waybill gets turned.  Each position on a waybill is a separate shipment, car order or empty return.

You can do it however you want, but in most systems that isn't how it works.  You tell the crews what to do with the cars.  I give the yardmasters a sheet which shows which blocks go on which trains, I put the block code on the waybill and I color code it with a hi-lighter (its not prototypical, but it helps the operators.)  Each train gets a train card that tells what to do with the blocks.  Any car going to anyplace in Wilmington has a Wilmington block that is hi-lighted yellow.  All the Wilmington blocks start with "Wilm-".  anywhere on my layout, if you have a car with a yellow stripe on the waybill and a block code of "Wilm-****" in the via line, you know its going to Wilmington.  If you are at Wilmington and you have a car with a yellow stripe and a block code of "Wilm-****", you know the car goes to industry or interchange someplace in Wilmington, so you keep it at Wilmington.

A lot of this depends on your level of control.  If you are very highly control oriented and want to specify which track every car goes into at every step of its trip, you can certainly do that, just remember a waybill only has 4 positions, so if it takes 8 steps to get from A to B, that means you need a folded waybill with 8 positions.  Also if you rigidly limits which tracks can be used, and something deviates, it can screw things up.  If you REQUIRE east cars to go into track #1 (8 car capacity) and REQUIRE west cars to go into track #2 (6 car capacity) and the yardmaster has 7 west and 5 east, he'll have to slough cars to another track.  If you let the yardmaster decide, then he can put the 7 cars in the 8 car track an the 5 cars in the 6 car track and life is good.

Having said all that, you can make CC&WB do whatever you want.  Its very flexible.

CC&WB-2

Here is an old picture of some of my "conventional" CC&WB that I was using previously compared with the 1900 variation I am currently using (but before I added color coding). 

The white cards are the conventional arrangement.  The "moves" are numbered.  Move 1 is a loaded shipment of pig iron to the Lobdell Car Wheel Co. on the Delaware River Extension at Wilmington.  When that car is spotted and unloaded, I turn the waybill and the green stripe side shows, which directs the empty car to Reading, PA and the Brooke Iron works, Crane Track.

The manila docs are the new type waybills, patterned after 1890 era "car tickets" (memorandum waybills).  Each side is a "move" so I have a max of two "moves" per waybill.  The car card is on the left, an "outbound" shipment is in the center and an "inbound" shipment is on the right.   The outbound shipment starts with an empty car (empty car order) to be spotted at an industry (Lukens Steel Mill cast house at Coatesville), the flip side will be a loaded move of castings or pig iron.  The inbound shipment is a load of lumber going to the Wilmington Marine Terminal at Wilmington.  The flip side of that waybill will be an empty move from Wilmington back to Reading, PA.

I generate my CC&WB using an Access Database (it can also be done in Excel).  I have done and redone my CC&WB at least 4 or 5 times, not a big deal, each time adapting it to the specific situation I wanted to support.  CC&WB are flexible.

(Traditional CC&WB for 1950 era on manila paper, traditional 1950 era on white paper to support color coding, traditional design for 1900 era on white paper to support color coding (shown above), 1900 car tickets on manila paper (shown above), "Tony Thompson" 1900 car tix on manila paper (waybill has pocket and car card fits into waybill pocket), 1900 car tickets on manila paper with color coding.)

Feeling your pain

Jim,

I've been right where you are for the past year or so.  Dave was a big help, as were others here on MRH.  (Thanks all!)  FWIW, I started with a program called Switchlist, then moved to CC/WB.  I've updated them twice, after creating some and trying them out.  Below is what I ended up with.  Some operators have suggested the Route should be on top, otherwise they've been pretty happy.  The yellow is a color code that indicates the town of Nicholas WV.  Blue is Eastbound.  Purple is Westbound.  Etc.

To your specific question, currently no one turns waybills during an op session except the yardmaster and dispatcher (who runs staging).  Sometimes cars arrive in the yard, and then get sent on a local train, or an Eastbound or something, later in the session.  So the waybill needs turned.  That was the major sticking point using Switchlist, because a computer would have been needed DURING the operating session, and I didn't want that.

I have a spot on the waybill for each time a car has to be handled by a train.  Example: 1 - to Nicholas Yard from west staging, 2 - to WV Pulp & Paper from Nicholas Yard (seen below), 3 - to Nicholas Yard from WV Pulp & Paper, 4 - to West Staging from Nicholas Yard.

I originally had fewer moves, and VIA to indicate intermediate yard stops.  For example: 1 - to WV Pulp & Paper from West Staging, VIA - Nicholas Yard.  But it turned out that required some "knowledge" on the part of my operators, and was especially difficult for beginners who didn't know the layout.  So it's been much easier for me to indicate, basically "Pick up the car here, move it here."

It's been a fun journey that I'm SURE isn't over yet, so have fun!!

You can read about my adventures on my Blog, if you're interested.  https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/nac-operations-12208961

WB Moves

I think this has been mostly fairly well covered, but a few salient points:

The "move" on a waybill is the entire journey from shipper to receiver. So the destination on the waybill should be the final destination of the shipment. The yard is not a destination (some exceptions if you're delivering MOW supplies or something like that) but a way-point on the journey. Waybills are not turned during the car's journey but only after the entire trip from shipper to receiver is completed. Some people will turn it after it's spotted, but most layout owners turn waybills in between sessions only.

The destination on the waybill tells train and yard crews what to do with it - they will be always try to push it closer to it's destination.

You are correct that the engine that picks it up will not bring it all the way to it's destination, unless it's a quick transfer between loading points in the same town/station (for example, intra-plant material moves at a large industry). But the waybill isn't turned between each crew that handles it, the crew(s) use the final destination to know what to do and what track to put it on.

Each job has a defined task, and handles the car as far as it needs to.

The local job picks it up at the industry, and brings it into the yard, where it leaves all the cars it brought in. 

Next the yard job sorts out the cars delivered by the local based on where it needs to go, and what train will handle it.

The next train out takes the cars that the yard has prepared for it and hauls it to the next yard down the line.

Rinse and repeat. With each transfer the car moves steadily closer to the destination until the next train to handle it is the one that will actually drop it off at its destination.

These are the car cars and waybills that I made up for myself. Like Dave H's above, I added a block and matching colour-coded bar at the top to assist crews in sorting and routing the cars.

Differences

So, Chris does it differently than I do, which is a great example of the flexibility of the system.  You can design the cards to work the way YOU want them to.  

One of the things that effects this, in my opinion, is the size and operational style of the layout.  I note that on Chris' cards, he has a line for Route.  I did too, and this confused my beginners.  To understand the Route, you need to know all the destination towns on the layout, and off too if they represent staging.  You look to the bottom of the waybill to find the next location on the route where the car should be routed. 

I actually like this method, but my operators did not.  Partially this is because we adhere to a more relaxed operating style.  We're not trying to be prototypically accurate.  The main factor is to have fun and not be too complicated.  So we prefer to turn the waybill each time the car is moved, and on my layout a yard IS a destination on the waybill, contrary to the way Chris does it.  Neither is wrong; just different.

Also, this is how we do it on another major layout I operate with.  Having a similar system makes things easier for those who operate both, and keeps my operators coming back!

Routing instructions can be separate from waybills

Here are some examples of two-sided waybills that I use to demonstrate how CC/WB systems work to other guys who want to get into the game.

Notice that there isn't any routing information on the waybill. i think that there's enough stuff crammed onto that little piece of paper the way it is. The colored triangles in the upper left corners help identify the car's destination.

The process I use for both routing and "flipping" the waybills involves someone, normally me, going through the car card envelopes at each location and deciding which jobs will handle which cars. Those car cards with their accompanying waybills are then paper-clipped or rubber-banded together and tagged for a job with a post-it note. That way the crews don't have to make any decisions about which cars to pick up when they arrive at a location. They can just grab their pickup packet, grab the cars, and go. This process may have to be repeated several times during an operating session depending on the operating scheme of the railroad in order to make sure that cars are handed off from one job to another as necessary.

Each job also has a bullet list of which cars to set out or spot at every location on their route based on the final destination specified on the waybills. Using the example in the photo, a wayfreight that might service the town of Powers could have a bullet point that reads something like "At Powers: Spot car for Tri-State Power & Light powerplant track".

This is similar to the process that I learned during my short time working for the C&NW a gazillion years ago. When we arrived at a station, the conductor picked up a bundle of waybills from the bill box (or agent if there still was one of those guys on duty) that told him which cars to pick up and where they were located, but before we arrived at that station, the conductor had looked at the bills and wheel report for the cars he had in his train so he already knew which ones he had to set out and/or spot.

The waybills are then "flipped" at the end of the 24 hour operating session, which may or may not be on the same evening that it started. After the cars have arrived at the location shown on the Side 2, the bills are pulled and refiled for future use, and the cars are then ready to move to their "When Empty return to:" locations. Sometimes empty cars wouldn't make it all the way to their home location, but would be used to fill another car order and sent on their way to be loaded.

Having the car card envelopes with their waybills already bundled up and labeled for pickup by the specified job also helps cut down on cars being picked up by the wrong job and misrouted. This process takes a few more minutes of prep time, but is well worth it. Having one person flip the waybills at the end of the operation session also helps prevent waybills accidentally being flipped multiple times by the train crews.

Operator Aids

The blocks correspond to the different towns on the layout. (The colour-coded bars match up with the blocks and simply reinforce them and help make the most important info more visible at a glance.)

This is expanding beyond just the waybills themselves to how to convey geographical information to operators, outside of how you actually use the CC/WB.

On any layout with multiple towns or areas, regardless of how you're routing freight cars or controlling traffic, the operators should have an overview reference map (not of every track, just the main lines and a dot for each town/station) within easy access (either in their hands with their train information or on the layout fascia at each town showing the relation to other towns (or even better, both) so they can orient themselves to the layout. Good diagrams and labeling can not be over-rated. 

I've been making up a little employee's timetable document, which of course has the "timetable" listings of all the stations on the line in order (helpful to have even if you don't actually run TT&TO schedules), a railroad map, and a little blocking diagram which corresponds the blocks to the towns on the layout (but the blocks are the town names, so it's just doubly reinforcing it.)

In most cases, train operators just need to be able to determine whether a car is going east or west (or north/south if that's the way your railroad runs) in order to bring it the right direction. Yard masters definitely need to have a good familiarity with (or provided with good reference materials) in order to get things routed through the yard properly.

I have a question

I hope the OP doesn't mind but I was having a very hard time wrapping my head around operations for a small one man layout like mine which is just an L shelf with 10 ft. legs and someone described to me a blood simple system of a card for each car with a list of possible destinations. Wherever it is on the layout, you pick it up and move it to the next destination. That's basically it. Would this be close to a switchlist or is it one? It also seems like a very simple four cycle waybill or a card version of the tab on car system that John Allen used.

Just glancing over the replies here and the various iterations of waybills has made my head spin. I have some sort of mental block when it comes to understanding ops!

Sequential system

Couple different variations possible.  You make a card for each car with a sequence of where the car can go.  It can have as many destinations as there is room on the card.  As you move the car, you cross off each destination.  When you get to the last line, you print a new card.  Another option is to put a paperclip or flag clips on the edge of the card to indicate the active move.  That allows the cards to be reused over and over.

Crew aids

I provide a couple different job aids to my crews.  For my yardmasters, I have a blocking diagram for each yard that shows which blocks/color codes go on which trains.  Here is the one for Coatesville.  A northward (NWD) through freight will have one block with a mixture of green and pink color coded cars.  Pinks will be blocks of Birdsboro and Birdsboro-PRR.  Greens will be Reading, St Clair and Philadelphia.  The caboose will be on the left end of the train and the engine on the right.

On the other hand the SWD through freights will carry yellow and blue coded cars.  Blue are Elsmere-B&O and Wilm-B&O block codes.  Yellow will be all the "yard" blocks for Wilmington, plus the Kentmere cars.  Kentmere is a completely different place than Wilmington, but the local for Kentmere originates at Wilmington, so I drive all those cars to Wilmington to catch the Kentmere local.  On a SWD train, the engine is on the left and the caboose is on the right.

The page is in a plastic sheet protector screwed to the fascia so its handy for the yardmaster, but easily hangs out of the way.  I can also easily swap out updated sheets as required. 

In addition, each train gets a train card that says what to do with its cars and what to pick up or set out.  The train card is the same size as a car card and included in the car card packet given to the train.  In the briefing I also tell the crews that they will have to set out and pick up at Montchanin and Coatesville.  Having a simple plan makes it easy to describe.

An northward extra, a northward through freight, carries Readings (green), Birdsboro (pink) and Coatesville (orange).  It originates at Wilmington, and Works Montchanin and Coatesville, terminating at Birdsboro.

At Montchanin it can pick up any north blocks (green, pink or orange) and has no set out.  At Coatesville it picks up green and pink cars, setting out orange cars.  That matches the yardmaster's instructions.

The crew doesn't need to know where St Clair is, they just play "Garanimals" and match the color/block codes.  Same with the yardmaster.   Although I don't require detail blocking, separating Reading, Birdsboro and Coatesville blocks in the train, the card shows how they would be blocked, in case I have an overachieving yard crew or train crew.

dave1905 wrote: Why do you

This helped me with an "a-ha" moment. I DO want to control what yard track the car is placed on. I also have a double ended yard and am using the east end of track 4 for eastbound pickups, the east end of 5 for cars to spot west of Sheridan (they used a shoving platform for some time for these runs to avoid tying up the main with run-around moves, the west end of 4 for westbound pickups and the west end of 5 for cars to spot on the east side of the yard. Through trains that drop cars can leave them on 2 or 3 for the switcher to sort out and get in the right spot for delivery.

Reason being is it seems there should be some organization to the yard. It's not just a holding pen for cars. Early experiences with operations have shown that this will help the through trains that pick up and set out minimize the time it takes in the yard. 

I have created a "train description" with this info, but wasn't sure if I needed to duplicate the effort with the car card. It is now obvious that I don't. 

I am a bit of a control freak but try to let that slide as not everyone enjoys operating that way. I dispatchced my own layout with track warrants for the first session. Let's just say that is another practice that has some major optimazation work needed. 

Thanks again to everyone!

Jim

Yards

Exactly.

Yards are fluid things.

One train comes in with a bunch of cars and deposits them on a track. Those cars are all mixed up and need to be sorted out based on what direction their destination is in. The yard switcher couples on to the mixed up track and sorts it, by sending the cars for A to one track, B to another track, locals for C to another, and so on. Then do the same to the next un-sorted track and so on.

When a train for A is scheduled to head out, they take whatever cars are available (i.e. already sorted and ready to go) for A and head out.

Over simplified a little, but that's the operating concept for a classification yard.

"Player Aids" - Sudbury Division

Train information and "player aids" on the club layout.

Each train gets a bundle like this with a small clip board. The clearance forms at top right are used for dispatching trains on the branch line - not relevant to the current discussion of car cards and individual car routing.

Top middle is the package of car cars/waybills for the cars in the train.

Left (on the clip board) is a description of the train and what work it does.

Bottom right is a key map of the entire territory of the club layout. Copies of this map are scattered around the layout as well at each station. Sudbury (in the center of the map) is the main junction and transit point for cars being exchanged between trains and routes.

On the club layout, for destinations/origins that are "off-layout" in staging, the location is given as "via [name of staging]" so crews can easily sort out cars that need to be set off or transferred. For through trains, if there are any waybills in their train that do NOT have "via [train's ending staging yard]" as a destination, those cars are set off at Sudbury. On this layout, most local on-layout traffic is spotted at industries by locals out of Sudbury and heavy through trains just swap cars at Sudbury.

TWC

If you want control over the operations CTC or TWC is the way to go.  TT&TO is much more of a dispersed system. With a decent schedule and a reasonable traffic level, you could operated TT&TO without out writing hardly any train orders.  Run regular trains then just clear the trains with no orders and let them go.  With TWC or CTC the dispatcher controls every movement on the main track outside yard limits.  Nobody does squat without talking to the dispatcher.  With TT&TO, technically, the crew would never talk to the dispatcher.  Either way works, depends on what you are comfortable with.

"Player Aids" - Algoma Central Railway

These match up with the waybills I posted up earlier (first post on page 2).

System map and matching blocking diagram included in the timetable document that contains necessary information for operators. A train crew that is at pretty much any location on the railroad can look at the map and see which direction a car should be heading.

Notes about freight operations on this railway - all freight trains will be either originating or terminating at Hawk Junction in the middle. There's one job on the branch to Wawa/Michipicoten, one that heads north to Hearst (and a corresponding opposite number running south from Hearst) and two southbounds from Hawk Junction to Sault ("Soo") Ste. Marie that take whatever traffic is available (as most of the traffic from both of the other two branches funnels south). Hearst and Sault [Ste. Marie] are staging; there are are major interchange points with other railways at Franz and Oba and the main industries are at Wawa and Mead.

Keep it up, Chris,

And I'll have to send you a box of chocolates and an invite!  This is where we're headed, as you well know.

Blair

Building the ACR in 1980-1985 in HO.

Blair

Might have to make that happen some day.