Over the past few years as we have evolved our operation our waybills have evolved. This year we are introducing a new waybill concept. The new waybills are 4x5 laminated cards and the lower part is the size of a Smead poly pocket. This allows us to have a default waybill shown when nothing is in the pocket and we can put session dependent waybills in the pocket for particular car movement. The locomotives use this area to list the function assignments. The laminated cards should also improve operation when it is raining. Our first operating session for the spring will be in 3 weeks for RailRun. We should have about 25 operators for this event assuming the snow melts in time. Stan Ames

Those look very nice. What is a Smead poly pocket? Can you explain how you use them?

Bruce Chandler said:
Those look very nice. What is a Smead poly pocket? Can you explain how you use them?

Bruce

The poly pockets are designed to hold credit cards or business cards. I got them through Sears on-line (delivered to the local store)

http://www.smead.com/Director.asp?NodeId=1696

These clear self-adhesive pockets hold a two sided card with specific waybill routing information (To, cosignee, Route…)

You can use the default waybill or place a session specific waybill in the pocket. When the car arrives at the destination you can flip the card, remove the card, or insert a new car to route the car to its next destination. We are making our inserts taller then a credit card to make the insertion and removal much easier.

We were using stickon waybills before but the pocket approach should provide a much easier and bettor method for routing.

Stan

So these are stuck on to each car?

I’ve never operated with waybills, but I’ve certainly read a lot about them, so I think I understand the routing part. I’ve never been clear on how you determine which car goes with which train, or how many cars I should pick up for a train.

Stan, will this require each car to have a unique road number? Or is that not necessary with the way-bill?

Bruce Chandler said:
So these are stuck on to each car?

I’ve never operated with waybills, but I’ve certainly read a lot about them, so I think I understand the routing part. I’ve never been clear on how you determine which car goes with which train, or how many cars I should pick up for a train.

Bruce

We generally operate with two person crews. The engineer runs the trains and the conductor/brakeman handles the waybills and plans the run.

Our older ones were 5x7, the new ones (see above ) are smaller at about 5x5. The photo on the waybill helps the conductor spot the car easily.

We have two types of trains on our railroad. The locals/wayfreights handle all the switching on a particular route. These trains start at one of the yards. The conductor makes up the train based on which cars in the yard have a destination served by the train. Blocking of cars helps later switching operations. Any car at an industry on the route that has a waybill indicating it is to go somewhere else is picked up (to the tonnage rating of the locomotive) and cars marked for that industry left.

Our through trains generally go from one yard to another with only one or two drops/pickups on route. If the tonnage of the train exceeds a single locomotive the engineer can call for a helper.

Form 19s are used to govern train movement and we generally have a dispatcher.

If you can make it in June you could operate on both The SJR&P and Bob’s layout which use two different styles of operation.

Steve

It is not absolutely necessary that all cars have different numbers but it sure helps. For the few cars we have left with duplicate numbers we try to keep them at different areas on the layout. (These last few cars will be renumbered this spring)

Stan,
Neat idea. When the car arrives at the destination, is there a reverse side to the waybill?

Have you had any problems with your operators taking your car cards and waybills home in their pockets? Ended my outdoor experiment with cards and waybills very quickly.

Ric

The Waybills are large enough that we have not lost any yet. Also the cards stay with the cars, when a card moves the cards go with the trains and are left at the cars destination. I think that is one reason they tend to stay on the railroad. Each crew uses crafttsman screwdrivers for a variets of purposes (brake for cars, clean up points, uncoupling) and they do tend to disapear but then they show up again at a later session.

Todd

The pocket holds specific routing information and yes there is ruturn routing on the other side. Or you can take the card out and get the cars default routing. As we progress we are still evolving the routing and the pockets makes changes easy.

Bruce

You asked about crew size in another thread. We prefer 2 person crews especially for new operators. One person for the engineer and one person as the conductor/brakeman. We use form 19s for dispatching instructions so there is a lot of activity for a single person. Experienced operators often do it as a single person crew, depends on which train they are operatong.

We generally operate monthly but will arange a special session if visiting operators are in town.

Stan