Car card and waybill essay, with examples

 A friend recently asked for "my thoughts about making waybills" to insert in car cards. I wrote him a long reply, and I've reprinted it here, in case it's useful:

The main thing is to do it gradually, one at a time. I've been really surprised at how long it takes me to do a good waybill. I always think I can bang some out in 10 minutes, and 45 minutes later, I'm still at it.

I'm using a PC program called "Shenware" to print my waybills, but Todd VonStup likes "SwitchIt" and Bill Sornsin does them on an Excel spreadsheet that he got from someone. There's nothing wrong with handwriting the MicroMark ones, either. I've done a lot of that. Of course, Tony Thompson's blog is full of how to make your waybills more "realistic", and I used his template to make a few up, and they are cool, too, but I haven't gotten around to doing more of them. It's a whole sub-hobby, I guess you could say. (BTW, I heard that Shenware was sold to MRH, but I haven't heard if they plan to release it again. I don't believe it's currently available)

So, just for starters, let's jump into these three photos for a minute.

Burr's waybills, photo 1

Photo 1 is the only photo that shows both sides of one of these 4-cycle waybills. But there are lots of my waybills printed on one side only and used simply as out-and-back "captive" moves. Especially for my cement hoppers - they just move loaded from Lonestar out to somewhere and then back in again empty. You could do that with your whole railroad and nobody would notice. So these first two images for an auto-rack (FA in the upper left-hand corner) show it moving to Pier 91's "autorack loading" (SPINS 128101 (Interbay is zone 12, Pier 91 is track 81, and the first spot on that track is 01, hence SPINS 128101)(note that this is triple information redundancy - the top of the waybill color is white, meaning it goes to Interbay, the text says Autorack loading, and the SPINS number is the specific location, if you want to have your brain work like an early computer).

Where was I? Oh, so I was being clever and wanted to split the auto business fairly between GM and Ford, so I have cycle one coming in from Pittsburgh with autos, cycle two going back to Pittsburgh, cycle coming back in from Ford in Detroit, and cycle 4 going back to Detroit. Three problems with this. (1) I was in such a hurry I didn't pay any attention to the fact that Pittsburgh was the body stamping plant, not the final assembly plant (as far as I know), so that waybill cycle should be on an auto-parts boxcar to an assembly plant in Seattle, which there wasn't one of, (2) Pier 91 was actually a Datsun importing operation, not a receiving yard for autos from Detroit, so the westbound cars should be empty and eastbound loaded, and (3) unloading and re-loading HO scale autos from an open auto-rack car is, believe me, something you only do once or twice, so you really need your waybills to keep the darn things either empty or loaded, which this waybill does not do. The third waybill in this photo is a regular bulkhead flat (FB) two-cycle waybill moving lumber to LA and back empty to BC. I have a lot of these, and lumber loads are easy to put on and off, and look great.

Burr's waybills, photo 2

Photo 2 starts with a similar FB (bulkhead flatcar) waybill which easily could be the back side of the previous one (in photo 1). This way my FB's alternate between heading south or heading east, creating some variety in moves. Then there is the FL (log bunk) loaded with logs from the CW (Chehalis Western RR) heading to Everett's Mill B (if that ever happened, which I doubt), and then on up to the Darrington Branch for more logs, which also come back loaded (on the other side of the waybill) to Mill B. The third waybill illustrates something I do a lot, which is to have cycle one be an empty car order from "anywhere", in this case then headed to Ballard, and cycle two sends it to California loaded with cement. The nice thing about starting out with an empty car order from anywhere, is when you are restaging the layout after operations, if you find a car in the wrong place, instead of moving it, you can flip the waybill back to the "from anywhere" cycle and the next crew will get it going to the right place.

This brings up an important point. Randomness. Paul Scoles set up his waybills and op sessions to complete a single cycle for all cars. Meaning that at the beginning of the session all waybills were on cycle 1, say, and at the end of the session all cars had been delivered. Then he would flip all the waybills on the layout, and the next op session would start out with all cars on cycle 2. He thought this was terrific, because if anyone knocked their car cards on the floor by accident, it would be easy enough to pick them up and put the waybills back in the pocket on the correct cycle. However, I didn't want to do it that way. Each car moves toward its destination via a series of switching moves and trains, and when a particular car reaches its final destination depends on how many operators are available for a particular op session, and many other factors. If somebody spills their car cards on the floor, so be it. The train itself should always be in blocking order, so it shouldn't be too hard to put the deck back together. I can have an op session by myself, or with 16 operators, or anything in between. When the cars reach their destination, we can leave them there until the next session. Or longer. Eventually we flip the waybills. It's random, and feels pretty realistic.

Burr's waybills, photo 3

OK, back to the last photo, number 3. The TA (tank car) waybill shows some shippers that I got from the OPSIG database, or maybe from one of the "Rails Unlimited" Shippers Guides that he sells online, and it makes me happy that it "could have" been a real move. But nobody else cares. All they want to know is where the damn thing goes on the layout. Eastbound staging? Southbound? Which train should it be in? The layout owner is the only one analyzing if the moves are realistic.

On the real BN, there were trains to Portland that interchanged with the SP (Southern Pacific), and trains to Wishram that went on the Inside Gateway to the Santa Fe. Very different set of waybills, right? But, unlike Bill Sornsin, I don't have enough room in my Interbay and Stacy St yards to make up two different southbound trains. Sad, but true. So, all the southbound waybills show the red south staging color, and nobody cares about the two totally different manifests that took place on the prototype. Maybe if you were here, being the Stacy St. yardmaster, you would get a kick out of re-blocking all the red waybilled cars to the two different trains, but more likely you would be too busy with everything else going on there to enjoy that.

OK, back to the last photo, number 3. The FB waybill illustrates a couple of things. One is the empty car order, as we already discussed. The second is the light blue second bar on cycle 2, showing that I'm trying to get this car routed on the "Fern Turn" train instead of any other northbound train that would normally pick up a blue waybilled car like this. (This hasn't really worked. Visiting operators and just too busy with first-level sorting, and, again, there aren't really enough tracks available, to keep track of which train to put cars on, beyond the obvious bold color schemes. But, I'm not giving up on this. I'm thinking about putting the name of the train type on each waybill, to help future yardmasters do their job. But it may or may not help. We'll see.) The FM waybill shows my approach to interchanging to the UP (Union Pacific). In this case, I have a Seattle lumberyard that was only served by UP switchers as a destination, so the car needs to be interchanged to the UP at Argo. But since the destination is Seattle, it won't go off to staging on a UP southbound train to Black River Jct. It will just stay in Argo and have its waybill flipped at the next session. Also note that it is supposed to be weighed. Right. I have a cool electronic weigh station at Stacy St. on yard track 8, right in front. It's been used twice, that I know of. It would be an unusual visiting yardmaster who would have any idea of what they were doing in that yard, let alone weighing a car and writing down the weight in that space provided on the waybill. Like I said, it has happened twice. Cool, though. Also note, on cycle 1 it shows a comment "UP car". So I can try to have UP cars get used for shipping to UP destinations.

That's a start on my ideas about waybills. I hope you find it worth reading! Just write out a few waybills and try switching with them, and see how it goes. I had hundreds of hand-written waybills in service long before I ever changed over to a computer-based system.

(If you look at the OPSIG YouTube channel, Eric Smith has a video on how to use "car order" card systems for car forwarding, which you might enjoy considering. I set it up for my N scale layout and am trying it out. There aren't car cards, only car order cards, and those car order cards stay at each town, rather than moving with the train. It basically keeps track of which types of cars should be spotted or pulled at each industry spot, without caring about the reporting marks. Ideal for N scale, so you don't have to read car numbers.)

One last thing. On the prototype, at the local level, inbound loads are handled differently than outbound loads. For outbound loads, an empty car order brings a car to a shipper (cycle 1), and the loaded car goes far away (cycle 2). Done. For inbound loads, the car comes in from far away and gets spotted at the local shipper (cycle 1), and then it gets picked up and stored empty at a local yard until further notice (cycle 2). Eventually it gets an empty car order and either gets sent to a local shipper for loading (cycle 3) and then sent loaded to an offline shipper (cycle 4), or sent offline right away to a distant shipper (cycle 3). So, I have a variety of 2, 3 and 4 cycle waybills, accordingly. What I've found in practice, though, is that I don't have enough room in any of the yards to afford an "empty car track" for a lot of empty cars to be just hanging around. So when re-staging I tend to advance the waybills calling for local storage on an empty car track by two waybill cycles and get them back out to staging. Another example of the "unintended consequences of trying to imitate the prototype too faithfully." (That would make a great clinic!).

Looking back at the goal: 1973 BN

 

I shot this photo almost accidentally one evening, enjoying the scene of two BN engines randomly lined up in Stacy St. yard. Examining it closer, it does a nice job of summarizing the goal of my current model railroad layout, the "proto-freelanced" Burrlington Northern, Seattle Region, in 1973. At this point in history, about half of the BN's legacy locomotives had been repainted BN green (the last wouldn't be until 1977, an RS3), and intermodal traffic was just starting to be a thing to take seriously.

In this picture, in addition to the two BN green locomotives, we see a string of intermodal flats, some tank cars, a grain car and a MILW woodchip car (most likely about to be interchanged, over in Argo yard). The trailers are from GN, NP and CB&Q, showing their interest in capturing this new intermodal traffic.

There is lots of weathering to do on the rolling stock, but at least the engine sideframes and roofs are dusted up with some pan pastels to make them more visible to both the camera and the naked eye. And the track is ballasted! There are only a few spots left on the layout with unballasted track, one of the past few years' priorities around here. Finally, the backdrop is at least painted, with a rough treeline, but of course it needs something that looks a little more like the Beacon Hill neighborhood that lives behind the Stacy St. yard. Backdrop improvements are definitely a priority for the next several years, in addition to making progress on the West Seattle expansion and, of course, more weathering!

But, looking back on the original goal, I still like it, a group of friends do too, and we are progressing just fine towards it!

Improving N scale operating reliability

N scale model railroading has evolved quite a bit over the years, and I've enjoyed having a living-room 4x8 foot layout since 1980. As I've gotten more interested in operations over the years, I kept having derailments on my mostly Peco switches, which discouraged me considerably, and kept me focused on my basement HO layout. After seeing the benefits of metal wheelsets on my HO layout downstairs (heavier weight, cleaner track) I tried installing some N scale Fox Valley wheelsets, not realizing that they were a narrower tread than required by the older Peco switches. After that made things even worse, I tried the Micro-Trains "metal wheelsets". But they have plastic axles, which would sometimes pop out of the plastic truck sideframes. And the "metal" is coated with a brown coating that looks like it would wear off over time and contaminate the rail head. I went ahead and converted most of my fleet of cars with the MT metal wheels anyway, but still would have derailments. Years went by.

Then a friend let me know that Fox Valley (now a division of ScaleTrains) made a line of "standard" tread metal wheelsets with metal axles, as shown in the picture above. He said that he converted his whole fleet to them and had no derailments, even on older Peco switches. So, I purchased some and tried them out. I noticed that their flange is much narrower than the MT (and Atlas, etc.) flanges, more like the original plastic "pizza-cutter" wheels of old. I think that as a result they really do track better. And their extra weight, low down in the car, from the metal axles, is an extra bonus, too. I think they roll a lot better, too, with the metal axle point in the plastic truck sideframes. I have now converted most of my fleet to these precision-machined wheelsets, and recommend them highly. Just make sure you pay careful attention to three variables when ordering them: the axle length, the width of the tread, and the diameter of the wheel. The ones I'm using on my mostly Micro-Trains cars are 0.540" axles, "Standard Wheels", with 33" diameter, stock number FVM 3310-100.

The other aspect of reliability I'm starting to realize is that with 12" radius curves and a 2% grade on my mainline, longer cars can cause "stringline" derailments on longer trains. I'm reluctantly starting to avoid using the longer cars now, or at least keeping them at the rear end of trains, to avoid those types of derailments. Above is a photo of one such derailment, and you can see that an empty center-beam flatcar, or maybe the long high-center-of-gravity tank car was probably the culprit. If I ever build another N scale layout, I hope to have much broader curve radii, like 18". When I designed this one in 1980, 9" radius was common on N scale layouts and I thought I was being very conservative in using a 12" minimum. Live and learn!

Ballasting Argo yard - finally!

 

Model railroad track, to look realistic, needs to have ballast between the ties. It's basically that simple. Unfortunately, the job is somewhat tedious and involves an attention to detail that I am somewhat lacking. In the case of Argo yard, it has remained bare for at least 15 years. Last week Scott, one of my regular operators volunteered to take it on, so we have some progress to report, at last.

I say at last because the yard has been in place and operating for at least ten or 15 years without ballast, waiting for us to "get around to it." Here is a photo of what the right side still looks like, waiting for us to finish the job. I painted some grey between the tracks to give the hint that someday we would get around to it.

Much less realistic, right?

The basic steps are: Paint the track and rails, apply the ballast to the track using a small brush, tap the brush handle on the rails to knock the ballast off the ties, spray with alcohol, apply a 2:1 or 3:1 mix of water and white glue, put a light oil like LaBelle #108 on the switch points and rail joiners, remove any errant pieces off the rail and ties within 8 hours or so, using a toothpick, and remove any glue that might have lingered on the tops of the rails. Polish the rails with a piece of wood and test with a locomotive to make sure everything is OK electrically. That's pretty much it. Here's a final shot of the finished product, showing that I forgot to mention removing and replacing any track labels:

Thanks to Scott for getting this going, and I hope this inspires you to finish any ballasting that you have been procrastinating on. Wait till we get the locos and cars moving on this track!! :)

The new Universal Wireless Throttles (UWT) from TCS mated with WifiTrax and NCE

Technology keeps evolving, and recently TCS released a line of "Universal Wifi Throttles" that would supposedly work with any DCC system using JMRI protocols, so I had to try them. Shown in the picture above, left to right, is the TCS UWT-50, the UWT-100, the WifiTrax model 31 Wifi signal generator built into an NCE faceplate, and an original NCE "Hammerhead" throttle several decades old. It all seems to work fine. The new throttles are wireless and easy to use, and the only limitation is that the WifiTrax network only supports 4 UWT's operating at the same time (although you can add your home network in for an additional 4). I particularly like that the LCD screens on the new throttles display the functions 0-9 (as opposed to the NCE's 0-6), which is important to me because I have all my locos set to activate the brake function on F9. When a loco doesn't move forward when asked, it's very nice to be able to see that the brake is still on.

The next picture shows the two UTP throttles side by side, for size comparison. The model 50 has a throttle knob (you can get either a potentiometer or encoder version) and the model 100 uses buttons and a thumbwheel similar to the NCE hammerhead. I like both of them a lot. The model 50 also has a button on the side that you can program to be whatever you want, but for example I could make it the brake button.

Finally, on the right is a picture showing that the new throttles easily fit inside the car card boxes that I have spread all over the layout, making them easy to keep track of as you move around the layout. I have found several of my operators have come to prefer these throttles very quickly after they tried them out.

Another great feature of adding the WifiTrax signal generator is that anyone can use their cellphone apps like WiThrottle without you connecting your DCC system to your home wifi system using JMRI. These throttles are sending commands into the NCE throttle bus without me having to set up JMRI myself. Of course, if I did set up JMRI and connect it to the layout, there would be a bunch more advantages, like the throttles would provide a readout of which function buttons control which functions, but that is for another day (month?). For now, I just wanted to quickly document that these throttles work and are already being used a lot. The new TCS DCC base station is also a very interesting new product, but I don't have one (yet) so I won't say anything more at this point. Stay tuned, though. If it works with my existing NCE throttles and boosters I might become interested...

NCE's 2021 firmware upgrade & BN C636

I just read in the May issue of the NMRA.org magazine that NCE released a chip with new firmware on it for their Powerhouse Pro (PHP) DCC command stations. I don't know how that information escaped me previously, but I immediately ordered one and just finished installing it in my PHP. I don't have any pictures to show of it, but am glad to have it done. One benefit is a quicker response on the CAB06 throttles. Another is you can deactivate the "momentum" button on the Procabs, which reduces mischief during operating sessions.

The other big news this week is Brian Elchlepp brought over two of my BN Alco 636's that he batch-weathered along with one of his. Here's a picture of THAT! :)

Upgrading the passenger E-unit fleet

I've never been a big fan of the E-units for some reason. I think it is the three axle trucks with the center axle unpowered. It seems so wrong to have an unpowered axle on a locomotive. There may have been good reasons for it, though. But the truth is that E units were the innovation that replaced steam locomotives on most passenger trains during the steam-to-diesel transition era. At least in the flatlands, where the lack of a powered axle didn't matter.

Anyway, I never bought an E unit in my life for model railroading purposes. But a few years ago my friend brought over a couple of his GN E units and let me borrow them for my passenger consists. So we naively put them on the "Empire Builder" train and ran it in to Seattle from "Chicago" (well, Skykomish). There are plenty of my YouTube videos out there with the Empire Builder speeding through that show these E units in action.

But more research found that the E units weren't used on the mountain grades - they used F units instead (with all axles powered, like I said). Out west here, they only used the E units on flat runs such as the International between Seattle and Vancouver BC. Oops.

Then, Rapido came out with E units painted for both Amtrak and CB&Q, and another friend came up with pictures proving that the CB&Q units were sometimes used out here on Amtrak's version of the International in the early BN days. Also, the GN gave up their E units before the BN merger even happened! So, what could I do but purchase the Rapido units and return the GN units to their owner?

We had grown fond of those GN units, though, so we decided to stage a goodbye ceremony to have the new shiny CB&Q E unit and some other engines escort the GN E units around the layout one final time. This grand event was captured on video and posted here. We hope you enjoy it.

The next time the International heads south from Vancouver BC, it's going to stop at the roundhouse in Everett for a locomotive change, so we can justify both of the new E units! And look for them in future videos, too. :)