Large Scale Central

Car Routing ideas

Operations
#1

Our layout has grown to a point where a more advanced operating scheme is likely in order.

What we are currently using is a 5x7 card system which contains all the information on the car (including a photo) and its home destination. The yard operator uses a sticky note on the card to indicate which industry the yard serves to send the car and via which intermediate point if necessary. When the car reaches the destination the stick note is removed which indicates the next destination.

During an operating session the Road Foreman will often go to the destinations and add new sticky notes for further routing.

This works but as the railroad has grown and the number of switching locations has grown the process does not have the card rotation desired without a lot of work.

What concepts do others use in car routing schemes?

Stan
http://www.tttrains.com/sjrp/

#2

Stan,

Try

www.Railop.com

It works for us.

#3

How many sidings, industries, and towns do you have? What’s your average train length?

When I first started, I had one yard, a staging area, and two towns. One of the towns had an interchange and 3 industries on 3 sidings. The other had 4 industries on 4 sidings. I had about 25 cars at the time and limited my trains to no more than 5 cars between yard, towns and staging. I decided 2 trains would be appropriate, one in each direction. I’ve since added additional industries that I use to block the passing sidings. :wink:

I used MS Word to build a setup list telling me where to put the cars at the start of a session. Then I manually created a switch list for each of the two trains. Finally, I created a Final list showing where all the cars would be at the end of the day, assuming both trains ran. This I would use as a starting point for the next operations session that I would create.

The advantage of this method is that you can control everything. If I want a car to stay with the train the whole time, it’s easy to do. I can set up different switching challenges and even specific moves within a town. Because I save it as a single document in Word, with 4 separate pages, I can use it again and again when different people come to operate. Over time I can build a set of sessions to use.

The disadvantage is that there is not as much randomness or unpredictability that I get with a computer program. Something like TrainOps will generate demand based upon factors that I set up for an industry. Thus, sometimes my train may be at full capacity, other times I may have only a few cars between towns. It’s also a lot of work to set up, as you need to make sure that each car is only moved once, if at all.

I found RailOp to be way too complex for ME and my little two train railroad. I know Ric uses it with great success, as does Fred on his IPP&W; but they may have ten or more trains running in a day.

Personally, I’d look for something that requires only one sheet of paper while operating; that’s why I like the idea of a switch list.

There are some others that I looked at: Ship It, ProTrak, Interchange, Minirail and probably some others that I’ve forgotten about. I found that most of these are designed for the smaller scale layout with several hundred cars and the ability to leave everything out between operating sessions.

For overall design I recommend http://www.gatewaynmra.org/operate.htm and http://www.opsig.org/ The OpSig has a $5 per year electronic subscription that I find very handy.

#4

I basically built a spreadsheet that lays out every car I have on the roster, the industries it can serve, and the days of the week. Here’s an older example; it’s been revised since as more cars have been added to the roster.

http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/eastbroadtop/TRRConstruction/TRRChart2.htm

The movements of each car are based on the type of car it is, its capacity, and the industry it serves. For instance, flat cars going to the Shade Gap tannery are loaded with tanbark. The tannery needs a lot of bark, so those shipments are frequent. The cars move in and out of there daily. The railroad also uses stock cars and a “dolly varden” car to transport the bark, which have a higher capacity and take longer to unload, so they stay for two days before being returned. General merchandise box cars stop at each station for a day as they progress down the line. Most of the hopper traffic is “through” traffic from the EBT to points elsewhere on the TRR, so the hopper cars in the train are usually “filler.” The coal tipples at Shade Gap and Neelyton get switched out twice a week. (I haven’t yet modified the chart to reflect the increased capacity of the larger steel cars at the tipple; probably won’t, as switching them out one day a week gets quite boring.

When I start, I pick a day of the week to start and set out the cars at the industries indicated by that day. Then I make a mark on the sheet as to which car number is being referenced by each line, so I can keep track of things. The nice thing about this system is that I don’t “need” to bring out a car for every slot. I just ignore the rows for cars that I don’t bring out. If I’m not in the mood to make a ton of trips up and down to the basement, I’ll bring out 9 or 10 cars and run with that. Currently I’ve got 20 cars total on my roster, which makes for a very crowded operating session in terms of siding capacity. Around 16 or 17 cars is my normal load.

If I want to throw in a random car movement, I just toss it in. The operating scheme calls for a number of cars to sit on the “Blacklog Interchange” track, which is where cars to and from the EBT get placed for future pick-up. I’ll just yank one from there and send it to a random destination, including points off the railroad, in which case it sits in the train taking up otherwise valuable siding space when trying to switch out the other industries. That–more than anything–plays havoc with switching out the towns.

I run one train out and back, since I don’t have the siding capacity to pass two trains. The railroad was designed for a single operator. Typically I’ll start in Neelyton and work over to Blacklog and back, though if there’s an EBT loco on the point (right now, that’s 2-6-0 #1) then I start in Blacklog, since that’s where the EBT loco would be kept.

I’d like to at some point put a similar “interchange track” at Neelyton, and keep a store of cars on that track, then build in some kind of way to rotate cars in and out of that. Always something to think about…

Later,

K

#5

The KVRwy really only holds 2 or 3 “Operating Sessions” a year. This is when all of RailOps is used and trains run to the schedule. However, we have this 5 year old Grandson, Luke, that wants to “Play Trains”. I always try to have some car movements ready for when he is here. With his aid, rolling stock is moved from locations where it was left by RailOps or to or from the basement to the 3 pre-stage storage locations for the next RailOPs session. Many of this same rolling stock is used in our “traveling show”, whether independent as the "Timesaver"or attached to the Gateway Garden Railroad Club’s layout. Then, of course, we have to figure what we are taking to the IPP&WRR each July or Marty’s in the Fall. All of this makes for a full year of Operations and, of course, all of the rolliong stock has to be returned to its last location according to RailOps, so we can continue the fun on the Operations Weekends. This is done through a simple printing of the “Car Location by City”, one of the listings pulled off of RailOps.

Our next OPs Session is a rather impromptu session on Wednesday, September 23. It is part of the Canadian Invasion It will begin around Noon and run until we get tired and hungry. Anyone interested is welcome to join us.

The Fall OPs is scheduled for the first full weekend of November. It is our 8th Fall Session. This year the dates are November 7 and 8. The “Steam Track” will be setup for those feeling the need to run in circles before they venture out on the “rails to somewhere”. Once again, it starts around Noon and runs until we decide to stop. Like other events, all are welcome, just contact me for more info.

#6

Bruce

Indeed the OPS Sig is a wealth of information. There is also a local group that sponsors a weekend long ops session (RailRun) at a number of railroads and we have learned a lot from this group as well.

This and other forums are also a great source of information and I enjoy reading about how others operate their railroads.

As our railroad has grown the operation complexity has also grown. This is both a good thing and a chalanging thing.

What worked well when we has a smaller layout does not seem to work as well as the overall complexity has expanded.

We now have 6 Yards where trains can originate, 1 interchange yard, 5 branch line and about 50 locations where cars can be set out.

Out train length varies with locomotive and type of train. Our long distance trains use K27s or 2-6-6-2s and average about 10 cars. Our locals use 2-8-0s or Shays and average about 6 cars.

Out concept is a Narrow Gauge network serving a variety of mines and towns.

In truth the railroad grew faster then our concept of operation grew. It all works fine for the first few hours but breaks down after that when multiple movements for the same car in the same session are required. What the railroad needs now is a more sophisicated form of car routing.

As we move forward we will likely integrate the car database with a routing scheduler so multiple movements of the same car in a session will be easier to plan for. Kevins spreadsheet is a good start of a possible idea to automate this process and is similoar to a system my son is trying to move me to.

We will try out some of these concepts at our next operating session on Sunday.

Stan

#7

I still have a copy of “Wagons” running. Designed by an Aussie, dates back to 1996/97, is very flexible and takes care of car requests, empties and all the rest.

I’m still trying to duplicate those ops with the “TrainOps”, but so far I haven’t succeeded.

#8

Stan,
That’s a rather large layout, to say the least.

I’d seriously recommend something like RailOps. It’s got the worlds ugliest interface, but it does get the job done and prints very nice switch lists. There’s a Yahoo group available for support. I think the other options suggested (especially mine) are just going to lead to more frustration. RailOps will allow you to add trains as folks show up to run.