If we step into the WayBack Machine, FMIG Newsletter #28 has an article by Ken McElreath on waybill operations on his layout at the time. It gives a good, concise description of how one can operate even a smaller railroad with a reasonable amount of prototypical accuracy without running a fast clock or with a dispatcher. http://www.frisco.org/vb/showpost.php?p=14481&postcount=62 Finally finished indexing Newsletter #28. Onward! Best Regards,
Here's a good article on the Gateway NMRA website for Designing Model Railroad Operations. http://www.gatewaynmra.org/designops.htm
I am resurrecting this very old thread because I have some helpful information for the group. I've been working on waybills the past couple months, and found the database over at OPSIG to be very helpful. However, bouncing between 4 different pages and only having a simple search function available is a bit of a drag, so I decided to something about that. Attached to this post is an excel file with every entry from their website packed into a single table. No more flipping between multiple sheets and sifting through searches a single line at a time. For example, I'm filling out a waybill for Meek's Lumber in Springfield, so I need to find a supplier of lumber. With the excel sheet, all I have to do is set the filter on the ship/rec column to S and then filter products to lumber and now I have a a list of only lumber suppliers from every region in one place. Hopefully this will make the tedious waybill process a bit easier Temp note: due to a server error, I'm unable to upload right now. Will come back later and try again
While we wait for some server upgrades to be completed, if anyone wants that file just shoot me a message. In the meantime, I've come up with another solution worth sharing here. I'm not claiming to have invented this idea, but I don't think I've seen it before. I've been wondering for a while what to do about storing extra waybills. My previous layout was small enough I could keep all of them in a spare bill box. My new layout has too many bills for that. My solution is a 3 ring binder and baseball card sleeves. My setup here is a 2" 3 ring binder, 100 sheets of baseball card sleeves and some tab dividers to make a quick find index of sorts. As I am writing waybills, I have mostly filled them out based on origin or destination. I do have a couple files that are based around a specific train, such as the new 132/133 service I discussed in my layout build thread. My idea is to fill out the tab dividers in the same or similar fashion to how I am filling out my waybill excel files.
Excellent idea with the note book. I use the baseball individual card holders to put the car cards and waybills in for ops sessions. Tony LaLumia
I have a similar process also. The plastic sleeves protect the cards from being banged up during an op session and keeps them clean from the potato chips ! LOL! John
Keith, Great comment on the card cards aren't married to a particular car with the exception of car type. On the restart of the Frisco Terminal "waybills "aren't married to any car other than "type" as well. Waybills are also only 2 place rather than 4 and are filed by industry , transfer or train for easy access and change.
I'll add on, I too only write up 2 position waybills. IMO, the 4 position waybills are a little more tedious to fill out due to needing extra information on them. With the sheer volume of bills I need to make to get the new layout up and running, it's just not a practical choice for me. Additionally, I feel like 2 position bills help to free up rolling stock quicker to go on to a different task, thus giving more variety.
I would like to point out that providing a plastic sleeve for your car cards/waybills is to make sure the slots on the box are wide enough to fit them in. I had to modify my cards to fit inside the plastic sleeves and modify the sleeves to fit inside the slots. I was not inclined to make new boxes to accommodate the plastic sleeves. John
If I understand you right, you have a plastic sleeve for each individual card? Not a bad idea. Could you post an example picture? The other thing I would like to point out with car card systems, is a lot of operators have larger sleeves to hold a train's worth of cards together with an engine and caboose card so the whole thing can easily be carried as a package that moves with the train through the layout. I think a 3x4 badge holder will do the job. Those wont fit in a standard bill box, most guys use binder clips to hold the package to the outside of bill box.
Here are two examples of pocket protectors that could be used for train packets. This first one has a second, exterior pocket that could be used to hold a card providing train information or consist information. Protector-Vertical-ID-Specialist-Individually The second is like those more commonly used: Wisdompro-Heavy-Pocket-Protector-Shirts
In addition to a bunch of these ID holders, I also bought a bulk pack of lanyards that'll clip right to them. Something I realized over the winter is sometimes is a pain in the rear trying to carry a throttle, coupler pick, train pack and a beverage around the layout while trying to operate. While some layouts have a place to clip a card packet at every stop, some layouts don't have that. My potential solution is to put the packet on a lanyard to allow for hands free carrying. The other item I added in the order is a bulk pack of 1" binder clips to hold card packets while they're not in use. You can clip em to a bill box, or hand em on a trim nail by using the binder clip.
