FREMO Freundeskreis Europäischer Modellbahner eV.

23.04.2002

Operations on modular layouts

Freight movements with car cards and waybills

Many of the readers will be familiar with the principles of freight car forwarding with car cards and waybills.
This page will after a introduction into the general princibles of this system discuss the necessary adaptions to modular layouts like the ones set up during the FREMO meetings.

Introduction

The origin of the carcards and waybill system is commonly credited to Doug Smith's article "The Latest Word From Doug ... on Card Operations" in the December 1960 issue of the Modelrailroader. But several other literature on this subject has been published in the last 50 years.

It main advantanges are:

• the included selfcorrection abilities
• the easy operation on any layout regardless of size
• the possibilities to develop it from simple beginnings to very sophisticated procedures.

Its key elemements are the carcards and the waybills.

Car cards

describe each car which operates on the layout. We have developed our own design, which is available to members. This card describes on the left of the front side the car as close as possible, whereas the right side is reserved for a transparent pocket, which will hold the waybills.
If no waybill is in the pocket, a 'return empty to' instruction may be seen through the pocket.

On the back you may find a drawing or a picture of the car represented by the card.
In the US car-cards are available commercially.

Waybills

contain the instructions for the movement of the cars over the layout.

The waybill will be placed into the pocket of the carcard and the car will be moved on the layout according to the instructions on the waybill.

Operational rules

The waybills will be choosed according to certain rules, which can be adapted to the situation on the layout.
The waybills will be attached to a fitting car-card. The corresponding car has to be moved over the layout according to the instruction on the waybill and the routing possibilities of the layout.
On stationary layouts 4-way waybills are quite popular in the US and are available commercialy. When the different jobs are choosen properly, the cycle of repetition will hardly noticeable, as different cycles will take different times.
Another option would be to remove the waybills at the destination.

As long as the card/waybill combination stays near the car it will finaly reach its destination - despite detours caused by errors of the operators which might occur. Once the car has reached the destination as described on the waybill, the waybill will be turned, removed or exchanged against a new order according to the rules agreed on the layout in question. When this change is done depends on the desires of the operators - typically at a stationary layout this will be done by the owner of the layout after the operating session - on our FREMO layouts the station agent decides, when a car should considered ready for the next job.
At our meetings we will arrange for a 'start' position before commencement of the first operating session only. The following sessions will use the final distribution of cars left from the preceeding session. Usually in the middle of the second session the distribution of cars is more or less ramdomly and stays so.

Stations

are the places, where cars may be spotted. In the context of this pages it should be used a general term for depots, terminals, industrial spurs etc. At each of these places a box or slot for the car cards will hold these during the stay of the respective car at the spur.

Special conditions on modular layouts

As per definition a modular layout will be different at each meeting. A complete and consistent setting in place and time (like on Tonys Koester's Midland Road to name one well known and published example) is not possible.

• Stations may or may not be part of the layout
• The setting of the whole layout in the 'real world' may change from meeting to meeting.
• The possibilities and special features of each station are know only to the builder/operator of each participating station.
• There is not a single masterplan for the whole layout.
• The intentions of the operators may change at different meetings / sessions.

To get around these problems, we have made following general rules:

• Waybills will be issued only by operator of the station of origin/destination.
  The idea is, that the operator of the station represents the different shippers and receivers on his part of the layout.
• As counterpart (destination/origin) for the modelled stations only places outside the layout can be used in order not to interfere with above rule.
  This is also prototypical, as about 85% of the cars will leave the originating railroad and out of the remaining 15% most will go to different divisions of the same railroad - in both cases somewhere 'beyond the basement/layout'. (Figures for american railroads, but estimate equivalent figures for European prototypes)
• This off-stage destinations are just color-coded.
  The colors used by the FREMO are blue, grey, brown, black, red, yellow and green. White is used as background color for the names of the modelled stations.
  Names may add some touch of reality, but have no operational significance.
• These colours will be assigned to the fiddleyard(s) available at a meeting.
  Hidden meanings of the colours are possible.
• All waybills will be returned to the issueing station after the last session of a meeting.
• The waybills shall and can be prepared beforehand, this will increase the quality.

Connections inside the layout

As mentioned it is quite prototypical, that most destinations/ sources of the freightcars are outside the modeled layout. However, if the layout has reached a certain volume, the remaining 15% can be modeled. In order not to violate the general rules above, following methods are recommended:

• The owner of a station, which offers a certain commodity in large quantities will prepare blank waybills at home. At the beginning of a meeting he will act as a 'salesman' for these commodities in order to convinst other operators to change from buying in one of the off-stage 'colors' to the factory in 'Mytown' or to order this product on top. The waybills will be completed accordingly and shall be used at this meeting only. example 1
• Equivalent action is necessary if a modeled station has a demand of certain commodities. example 2
• You can also think about a station used as a distribution center for the modeled region. example 3

Remarks

In order not to disturb the flow of reading we have placed some remarks and further explanations at the bottom of the page.

The colors used may have a 'hidden' meaning (examples reflect situation for a layout set in the middle of Germany, you may replace with regions you are familiar with)

• black - coal - Ruhr area
• blue - water - Seaports / Scandinavia also Netherlands
• yellow - sunlight - the south - Italy/Spain/Greece/also Switzerland/south France
• red - communism - GDR/Poland/CSSR/USSR (special cars for broad gauge)
• green - Ireland/UK (smaller profile, Ferrywagon, different brake system)/ also northern France/Netherlands/Belgium
• brown - rust - Steel industry - perhaps also the Ruhr
• gray - Salt - Potasch region in the heart of Germany

As you might have noticed, the designation of the colors is not consistent and has no practical means during the operation, but hopefully will give the trains a certain flavour like strings of empty coal cars always disapear direction 'black' and returning full later. back to main text.

A modeled fertilizer factory might sale its products to the many farmers in the region.
back to main text.

A mill will buy a lot of grain regionaly.
back to main text.

A modeled tank farm can distribute all the domestic fuel and diesel for the region to the receivers with small tankcars - it has to replenish its inventory by blocks of large tankcars, which will lead to interesting operation.
back to main text.