The system uses four types of car movements: online to online, online to offline, offline to online and offline to offline. Online is defined as an industry, team track, or yard facility as a sand house or stores building on your railroad and offline is a customer off your railroad reached via an interchange. Therefore, an online to online shipment is from one industry on the railroad to another industry on the railroad and an online to offline is a shipment from an industry on the railroad to one not on the railroad via an interchange railroad.
Car movements are controlled by a waybill consisting of a car card and a shipment card which identifies the car movement as a "Request For Empty" or "Freight Waybill." My car cards are 3x5 cards printed on 40 lb. paper enclosed in an open ended plastic sleeve into which a shipment card, half a 3x5 card printed on both sides, is inserted. The shipment card is the two sided type which has car movement data printed on both sides. As a result there are times when a second shipment card is needed to complete a car movement which is not the case with the later developed four sided waybill. I still use the two sided waybill rather than the new smaller four sided waybill very common today because my system was developed prior to these waybills coming into existence. The waybill can be simple like mine or an exact copy of a prototype. A Microsoft (MS) Excel spreadsheet was used and still is to make and print the car cards and shipment cards as well as other needed paperwork. And, I do not want to redo three hundred and seventy plus waybills.
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| Car Card |
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| Shipment Card (Click or tap on any image to enlarge) |
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| Waybill - card card with shipment card above inserted with reverse side showing. |
What information does the waybill have? First a car card is printed on 40 lb. paper for each piece of rolling stock when put in service on the railroad. The car card has the following information printed on the left side of it: car type ( BOX ), car reporting marks ( M&St,L ), number ( 53738 ), name of railroad ( Minneapolis & St. Louis ), class ( XM ), car capacity ( 50 Ton ) and at times information about car (steel, 1937 design). A home road car it has a blue line added around the outer edge.
The shipment card contains the following information: the system day with the name of the railroad where the car is coming from next to it ( this information is printed in a color section assigned to my home road and each interchange railroad to help operators quickly identify the railroad where the car originated: blue M&N, orange MILW, yellow CNW, White GN , next is the car movement, a "Request For Empty" or "Freight Waybill," To ( station and state where the car is going), Consignee ( customer) and consignee blocking number, Route ( how is the car going to get there), Car Type, Contents, and Setout ( tells operator where to place waybill after car is delivered ). The two sided shipment cards are printed in a group of three on one side of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, each is cut out, folded in half and rubber cement is used to glue the folded sides together and rolled with a wallpaper seam roller creating a shipment card.
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| Sample shipment cards (Click or tap on image to enlarge) |
We now know what information is found on the shipment card; however, we now need to know where to find that information to fill out a shipment card. I began by creating a blocking report. The blocking report identifies each industry and interchange on the railroad in each town from one end of the railroad to the other and assigns a number to it used by operators to block trains. Each town has a group of block numbers assigned to current existing industries and should allow for numbers to be assigned to industries added in the future. On my blocking report I also show door spots for industries that have them.
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| Blocking Report (click or tap on image to enlarge) |
Once the blocking report was finished I moved on to the industry report prepared for each industry. The industry report is the most important one in the system for it is the information on this report that is the basis for an industry based operating system. Before looking at the information on the report you need to choose a period (time) for which industries will ship product or receive raw materials. I chose a period of 14 days for my industries. Therefore, since my railroad operates at least once a month, if you came to each session during the year you have a unique session that does not repeat itself. On other railroads where I have helped the owner install the system they decided on a shorter period. Then research for what each industry ships and receives is done for the time prior chosen. My research for some industries was done by visiting the industry and speaking with management or employees to obtain the ship and receive information. During these visits I also found the average time a car spent at an industry for loading or unloading was one to three days. Therefore, that is the time I used in my industry reports for a car to be at located an industry. If I could not visit an industry to gather information I used various sources to obtain the information for products received and shipped. One such source is historical society with members that worked for the railroad that can help with that information. Another source is railroad manuals such as the one I have for the Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern titled “Information and Data Pertaining to Industries.” One example of the information found in this manual. It has the industry number, 3091, ( I call the blocking number) the industry name, Security Warehouse #6, address, contact person, and a description, “Unloads box cars coffee, sugar, etc., switch on south end holds six cars – placarded door on north side to unload.” In these cases I had to guess what could come in and go out in the 14 days.
Now we can look at how an industry report is filled out. At the top of the industry report is the industry name, the blocking number found on the blocking report created above, the town where it is located, the siding capacity, and the total number of days used by car movements in and out. The “total days” number is calculated by multiplying the siding capacity by the time period which in my case was 14 days. Following this information is the car movements out (ships) and car movements in (receives). Here is where the research information you gathered on the industry is recorded. Specifically the information shows: car contents, car type, route, to or from (is the customer or interchange), and the town. The report also shows the time, the number of days, a car will be at the industry and the system day you assign the car movement. On the industry report below the ship and receive information you see a chart which I use to plot the receipts and shipments of see what is to be happening each day ( operating session ). An entry on the chart consists of the system day ( an operating session) separated by a hyphen from the number that is time, the days car will be at the industry. An entry begins on the day a car arrives and advances each day until it is picked up. I can check an industry using this chart to see if the anticipated movement is there. In doing this check I can tell if the railroad and operators are working in an efficient manner. Of course, it is not necessary to fill out and this section and it does not have to be used.
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| Commander Elevator Industry Report |
Once the industry report has some car movements entered (ships or receives) a shipment card can be filled out. I will fill out one shipment car using the first car movement (first line under Ships) on the Commander Elevator industry report. The shipment car needs to be a “Request for Empty” for an empty box car from the Milwaukee Road to be loaded with grain and delivered to Lester Feed Mill in Tunnel City by the Minneapolis & Northland Railroad Company. I go to my computer, open an Excel spreadsheet which has the shipment car for the MILW setup on it and enter the information from the industry report. The completed shipment card added to car card to create waybill (that will need a second shipment card inserted for the final car move) is shown below.
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| Waybill for day 5 is a car card with side one of completed shipment card added. |
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| Waybill 2 days (ops sessions) later with shipment card turned over. (Shipment card is turned over when waybill is moved to pickup box) |
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| Waybill 1 day later (ops session) with a 2nd shipment card added to return empty car to yard.. |
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| Number of Cards in System Per Day |
You now have a collection of card cards and shipments cards that need a storage place. I store the card cards in a cabinet drawer that was designed for such cards and the shipment cards are stored in a receipt card file box. Industry reports and other reports are stored in a 3 ring binder.
After reading and digesting the material above I hope you can create a card car, a shipment card, and combine the two to make a waybill that will be used by you and your train crews for industry based car movements on your railroad. How to use the waybills to match them with rolling stock to makeup train consists and get them to their location I cover in "Operating Session - Setup - Part 2" on my blog.
Thank You for taking time to read my blog. You can share a comment in the section below if you choose to do so. Please share the blog link with other model railroaders.
Lester Breuer
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