I just had a long and illuminating conversation with Joe Green about his operating scheme for the large plants on his layout, and learned so much from him that I had to write a post about it. The photo above, which shows (out of focus) the three tracks representing the Scott Paper Co (just above the Roadway trailer) on my HO layout, will be referred to as we move through the subject. The main ideas are: (1) "constructively placed" vs. "off-spot" cars, (2) "open-gate" vs. "closed-gate" customers, (3) car orders vs. waybills, (4) the (sometimes conflicting) purposes of yards, and (5) ways to apply all this to a layout's operating plan (or, how to compromise between prototype and model practices so everyone has fun). I am no expert on any of this - these are just musings from a conversation between two model railroaders striving for "continuous improvement."
(1) Constructively placed vs. off-spot: If a railroad owns a car, it wants to use it as many times per year as possible, to generate a return on its investment. If a shipper has an inbound or outbound commodity, it wants to minimize the carrying costs associated with it. "Demurrage charges" developed so that railroads could charge shippers a fee for the use of a delivered car as a storage container, beyond a certain reasonable amount of free time (grace period) for loading or unloading it. This is fine if you have a small factory with a loading dock - the clock starts running on your grace period the moment the car is spotted at your loading dock. If for some reason the crew is unable to spot the car where you can get at it, it hasn't arrived yet, for your purposes, and is considered "off-spot," if it is on a nearby track but you don't have access to it yet.
But what about a situation where you are a larger factory, and you absolutely must have a certain number of cars per day shipped in and out in order to maintain full production, which is vital to your profitability? Are you willing to pay demurrage fees on cars that remain on nearby tracks (or yards) staged and waiting for your factory's "just-in-time" need? If the answer is yes, then those nearby cars would be considered "constructively placed", and the clock starts ticking on your grace period and demurrage charges. When the factory calls the railroad and says "we're ready for that car, bring it in (or take it out)!" the switcher gets over there (within a negotiated period of time) and spots it at the right spot.
So, in summary, it seems that the costs of holding an "off-spot" car belong to the (a) railroad, whereas the costs of holding a "constructively placed" car belong to the shipper/receiver (consignee, but don't get me started on all those other confusing terms and issues about who is paying the shipping charges).
(2) Open-gate vs. closed-gate customers: As I understand it, these terms are (CSX) railroad shorthand for some of the long-winded discussion above. For an open-gate customer, as soon as you deliver a car to their factory, you are done and the clock starts ticking on demurrage charges. If you park it at the wrong door, or on the wrong track, you made a mistake and it is "off-spot". If you can't get it to the right spot, because the track is full (or some other reason), you park the car somewhere nearby and hope you can get it in there tomorrow. It is still "in transit" and the clock hasn't started on demurrage charges, even though the car is right across the street from the intended receiver. For a closed-gate customer, a car being held nearby is "constructively placed" anywhere it is handy enough to be delivered to the factory as soon as the railroad gets the call that it's needed. The factory is willingly paying the demurrage charges in return for the assurance that it has what it needs "almost" on hand.
But Joe points out that there are really two "railroads" involved here - the one doing the delivering and the one owning the car. The latter is receiving the demurrage charges, and the former, well that probably depends on the specific agreement between the railroad and the customer. I just don't know enough about all this yet, clearly.
(3) Car orders vs. waybills: You can probably see where this is going. For a closed-gate customer, you can't deliver a car to the factory until they ask for it (I'm calling that a car order, but maybe they would just call it a phone call). If you have cars in the local yard with waybills billed to that factory, you have to hold them in the yard until instructed to deliver them. Once they have arrived in your yard, they are "constructively placed" and you have no choice but to store them (but at least you are making money off them). For an open-gate customer, if the waybill says take it there, you take it there ASAP, and if you have to park it nearby, it is "off-spot" and you will keep trying to deliver it every chance you get.
(4) The conflicting purposes of yards: On the prototype, some yards are meant to break down, classify, and build trains as they come and go. Other yards are meant to support nearby industries, serving both to help the local switchers sort cars and as a place to store cars which are either constructively placed or off-spot. But in model railroad situations, things are rarely that clear-cut. We end up with yards that are doing some of both. We surround our main yards with industries. And we never have enough track, especially not for storing extra cars that are not in motion.
(5) Ways to apply this to model operations: The popularity of model railroad operations is growing and evolving with each year and each modeler that gets involved. In my case, I started out thinking that if I had a car card with a waybill saying take this car to that factory, it was straightforward: (1) put the car in a train going the right direction, (2) take it out of the train at the nearest yard and give it to a switcher to deliver to the customer, and (3) deliver the thing to the customer, placing the car card/waybill in the corresponding box for that track. Job well done (although it might take three (or more) operating sessions for it to finally get there). Same thing for the reverse situation. And if there is no room for it at the customer's track, park it somewhere nearby and call it "off-spot". Some layouts are handling this by having a divider in the waybill box for each track labeled "off-spot", so you can see right away which cars on that track are supposed to be there and which are just temporarily parked there. So far so good. But, what about larger industries, like paper mills?
Here's a specific example: In/near Everett's Bayside yard (shown at the top of this blog post) I have three tracks with a total capacity of about 12 cars representing the massive Scott Paper Co. factory on the waterfront there. One of the Bayside yardmaster's job during their shift is to pull all cars out of there, and replace them with whatever comes in billed to Scott Paper. Sometimes they are so busy they never get to it at all. Sometimes they pull everything right away, and nothing comes in, so at the end of the session the plant tracks are empty. And sometimes they stuff the plant to the gills and there are still 6 cars in the yard billed to Scott Paper with no place to put them (we now know these have been "constructively placed" in Bayside yard). In several of these scenarios the plant would have been forced to shut down (totally unacceptable customer service!) and in others the yard is plugged up and not functioning well:
It seems like what we need is some sort of instruction to the Bayside yardmaster saying that "whatever you do, make sure you deliver 5 loaded woodchip cars, 3 empty boxcars and 2 tank cars to the Scott Paper Co. by the end of the session. Store anything else that comes in for Scott on your spare tracks in the yard, for next time. This way, at the next session, the next yardmaster can deliver these "constructively placed" cars to Scott right away, clearing up his yard, and then hoping the rest dribbles in from incoming trains during the session. The same sort of thing could be done for other major shippers on the railroad, such as the planned Bethlehem Steel plant in West Seattle. Now we know we can call them "closed-gate" customers. The rest of the smaller shippers, we can keep just using waybills to deliver cars to them, setting the cars "off-spot" nearby as situations warrant.
I seem to remember operating sessions somewhere (was it Al Frasch's?) where, when you started working in a town, you would find specific instructions about how to switch a certain factory, right there in the waybill box. I'm used to the idea of a "train instruction card" and a "car card/waybill" to explain the work I'm supposed to be doing, but now we are talking about adding a "switching agreement card" in the car card box (or on the fascia) that would make it clear how a specific shipper is expecting me to meet their needs. I'm going to go back and review past issues of the OPSIG's magazine "The Dispatcher's Office" and see if this has already been written up, and I just wasn't ready to understand it yet.
Finally, there's the question of how many times in an operating session do you need to switch a particular customer. If the plant is big enough, we could do like Joe Green does with his pulp and paper mill, and have two operating shifts work the mill switcher job during a single operating session, to make sure the customer's needs are met, and the mill stays in operation 24/7. On my layout's paper mill, my three tracks aren't big enough to justify that. On his layout, it makes sense:
After all, in all the fun of operating a model railroad, you wouldn't want to be responsible for shutting down the regional production of airplanes, lumber, steel rebar, or toilet paper, now, would you?
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