Inbound and outbound

How do you work classifying inbounds?  Wen a train arrives from staging do you assign destinations in staging or when it arrives and then classify it, or do you wait to build an outbound train and then assign destinations and switch those out?

Similarly, how do you assign outbound destinations?  Do you have outbound "car orders" that drive which train they ride going back to staging?

@dave1905 If you go to this

@dave1905

If you go to this group: https://groups.io/g/carordersmrr/ there are some presentations that go over this operations approach.

The way the yard works is the yardmaster has trains to populate - any locals or other trains that originate from that yard.  For locals the car orders for the towns / industries that are serviced from the trains from that yard there are 'Unfilled Orders' that the yardmaster has - he takes cars off the inbound trains or through trains that drop off and uses those cars to fill those orders, eventually building an outgoing train.  In my case and in others that I know who use this scheme, there will be more incoming cars than you have car orders for, so those cars go on outbound tracks - however you define the rules.  Then for me I have some transfers and other trains that originate in my yard eventually terminate in staging.  The yard master builds those trains based on rules you set - it could be as simple as building a train up to XX cars.  That's where the non-prototypical aspect comes in.  Through trains and transfers, the operator has no cards to carry other than his train instructions.   If you had some sort of manifest train that originated in staging and worked industries along the way, then your unfilled orders / car order cards would be managed from staging.

Hope that makes sense.  I have only operated on one layout that uses this, so I'm giving it a try.  I have done computerized programs in the past - as an operator I prefer switch lists; as a layout owner, I don't want to manage yet another program.  Car cards have their complexity, and this car order system is easier to set up and maintain.  If I use it for a while and determine I want to change, I may consider that.

I did have to generate some paper work for this approach - the car order cards themselves (each spot on the layout has an order card), train cards - this is what gives the operator their instructions, some instructions for the yard master, and a train sheet.  Happy to share those if you are interested.

Steve

Ydm choose or switch

Thanks for the feedback, personally I use CC&WB, but am always interested in other methods.

Another option would be to make car orders for the "through" cars, then "allocate" the industry car orders to inbound trains while in staging, filling out the rest of the billing with the thru car orders.  You would end up with some through and some industry in each inbound train, but the number of car orders would equal the number of cars in the train.

When the train arrives the yard, the yardmaster still has to assign the car orders to specific cars, but only in that train and the remainder would be distributed to the thru tracks on a more predetermined basis.  It is the same concept and process more or less, just the yardmaster has a bit less leeway and his or her actions are more directed by the billing.

The cars pulled from industry could similarly have car orders assigned to drive them more towards specific outbound.  The outbounds could be non-car type specific if you wanted.

Thanks Dave - yep it's a

Thanks Dave - yep it's a balance between flexibility, more discreet directions, and usability to me.  Keep in mind technically cars don't have orders (despite the nomencalture), industries order cars similar to what a waybill would do.

One side of the card is the 'Car Order' - basically an industry ordering a car.  The other side (gets flipped once delivered) is the pickup order.  This is where you can implement the second idea you suggest, which is what I am going to experiment with.

Here's an example of some of my Pickup Order cards.  Notice the 'Forward car to' differences.  So you can route the car to a specific railroad, or some say 'ICG - SB' so it just needs to go on a southbound ICG train, and some just say Markham Yard, so the Yardmaster can route them anywhere he needs to.

I think after a few sessions I'll see how it's working and adjust as needed.

Choices

Just depends on what your crew likes.  Some may want the control to decide where each car goes, some may want to figure out a puzzle they are given (sometimes thinking inside the box is more challenging than thinking outside the box).

Nice thing is that system can be configured to work either way.