(1) someplace to go (a layout)
(2) something that needs to go there (train cars)
(3) power (locomotives)
(4) crew (conductor, engineer, switchpersons, and cabooses)
(5) an operating plan (trainmaster, yardmasters, etc.)
(6) safety (dispatcher, schedules, permission to occupy track, rules, etc.)
(7) money to pay for it all (waybills, billing clerks, etc).
You knew all this. I've been thinking about the long-running feud in model railroading about which is better, switchlists or waybills (often handled as inserts into car cards, but not always). And I've decided that the reason it's hard to decide, is it depends on whose job you enjoy doing the most. If you enjoy getting out on the road and banging cars around, it's easier to have a switchlist tell you what goes where. (Assuming you can read and understand the switchlist, something I often have great trouble doing when I attend an op session)(See an example below). If you're a "why" person like me, you like to understand why you're moving those cars in that train, and you kind of enjoy the job the conductor has of trying to figure out which cars to deliver to which customers in which order. With a switchlist, you just get told what to do, and check things off with a pencil as you go. With car cards and waybills, you get to keep sorting them and organizing them and blocking your train accordingly as you go.
One of the frustrating things about computerized switchlist programs like JMRI ops is that they don't have the ability to block (order) cars in staging (as far as I know). They may give you the cars in the same order as they went in, or they may not, depending on how the previous crew blocked that train. But there you are, at the beginning of a run, with a train full of cars in a certain order accompanied by a switchlist with the cars in a different order. I don't find that fun to deal with. If I can sort the car cards in the same order as they are standing in the train, I find that fun.
When I re-stage the railroad between op sessions, I manually (by hand or with a locomotive, depending on how much time I have or fun I'm in the mood for) re-block the cars in the train (after flipping the waybills to their next destination) so that the operator of that train will receive it blocked like it would have been blocked by the yardmaster at the yard that train is coming from. (See an example of a blocked train in the photo above). I would be happy to have a computer do all that, but how is a computer going to pick up and re-order cars in my staging yards? Not to mention, what about the adding or removing of "live loads" such as lumber on flatcars, or ore in hopper cars?
So, I'm kind of stuck in my position on this question. As an operator of a train, I like to make my own decisions about how to prepare and execute my switching moves, like a conductor would do, not just have it handed to me on a switchlist. And as a layout owner, I like to give my operators trains that are set up in the right order, to make their (often quite complex) jobs as enjoyable as possible.
Another factor to consider is that railroad practices evolved from totally manual paperwork to computerized paperwork, during the 60's and 70's. So my glorified view of how fun the conductor's job was changing during the period I model, 1973. Therefore, if I have the conductor make up a switchlist based on car cards/waybills, or use a computer program like JMRI to generate switchlists and track cars, both would be "prototypical" in a sense.
I might be missing something. Maybe I haven't had enough experience operating with switchlists. What do you think about this long-standing debate?
Hey Burr and thanks for letting me know about your blog! The answer for me is "both" actually. Which is to say (as you may have gathered from my clinic), I think the ideal would be a computer program that would generate traffic (orders for cars for loading to ship & orders for commodities to be received in cars) that would then be reflected in waybills. Ideally, my crews wouldn't mind using those waybills to fill out their own switchlists (esp. since that's what the prototype conductors did), but I could fill the switchlists out myself before the session and hand them to the conductors with the accompanying waybills. EVEN BETTER, if the computer program would populate the "cells" in the switchlist with the corresponding information from the waybills it generated. Now THAT would be an ideal program!! Question is - does that program currently exist? I'm currently checking out the STS software mentioned on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum. And, just to review from my clinic, I do use switchlists currently, but I have to manually create them before each session, and not having waybills, I had to create a "car transfer form" to go with whatever cars have to be transferred from one local freight to another in order to reach its final destination. Sorry for the long comment - maybe should have done this by email. But I always like getting comments on my blog, so figured you would too. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteBurr, I find myself firmly in the car card and waybill camp for a couple of reasons, but I also understand your looking over the fence to switchlists. First, for waybills, I greatly appreciate their easy self-correction. A missed connection/spot or an inadvertent swap with a similar car corrects fairly easily. If need be, a swapped car card gets resolved by placing the first instance near the rip-track. when the other car and swapped car card are discovered (usually during staging) it is a simple matter to correct. The missed connection or spotting is even simpler to "fix" as long as the documents stay with the car. I just resolved one such swap pair yesterday while staging my RR. Second, I find managing a fleet of over five hundred cars on the RR vastly easier than doing the inevitable yard checks with a computer-based system. Finally, most of my operators, as well as me, enjoy that thinking aspect of organizing a train--being an old-time conductor. I accept the anachronism of retaining that function even with my 1984 operations.
ReplyDeleteAn alternative exists in a combined system. Both Seth Neumann and Lee Nicholas employ car clerks who maintain the car card and waybill files as they create switch lists for operating crews. Frankly, that looks too much like old-time clerical work to me, but both of those RR owners report no difficulty filling the car clerk position. Most of us would replace that with the computer, but it does work on both layouts.
In the end, I have no "solution" to offer, just that I will stay with car cards and waybills on my RR for now.
Bill Decker
Thanks for your insight, Bill. One aspect I've been thinking about is the pace of operations, how much pressure people feel (or put themselves under) to get the train out of town ASAP, as opposed to getting it blocked optimally for the next town(s). Another is the element of flexibility for a variety of crew size and skill level. Providing blank switch lists for people who want to do the conductor (or yardmaster) role more realistically, using the waybills, is easy enough to do. But I would still want to see the CC/WB's end up in the proper boxes at the end of the session. My operation is somewhat adolescent at this point, so we're still trying things out. I don't think I've ever had "enough" operators at a session so far, so I also may have built more railroad than I needed to, from an operations standpoint.
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