Page 7 - March April 2006

Getting started in four-cycle operations, and a bit beyond
Roger Sekera
This article is excerpted from a clinic given at the 2005 NMRA-BR convention in Swindon. I will restate some of the thoughts and views presented there – for those who missed it – and present some additional guidelines. Most of the thoughts come from about three years of operating experience here in the States and from my personal experience in getting past the first and clumsy stages with my own fictitious Clinch ValleyLines (or CVL). For the record, I model the western part of the state of Virginia in 1959 using, for the most part, the turf that was the Interstate Railroad.
One of the best primers on this topic is Tony Koester’s Realistic Model Railroad Operations, by Kalmbach, the publisher of Model Railroader (ISBN 0-89024-418-9). Another massive information base is the OPSIG group of the NMRA (www.opsig. com). Most magazines have done several articles on operations and are also a great resource.
Why should you begin to operate your layout?
The first reason is that you will begin to visualise your layout more like a transportation system than a layout. I can see that now when I look at my layout: I sense purpose. That B&O 40' boxcar spotted at the warehouse track at Roberts & Co in Wise Virginia is on spot #3 for a definite reason. And as we see later, I can look at the waybill and see where it should be today, where this car has been, and where it will go next. In short, I am much more prototypical and definitely more connected to other parts of the North American railway network.
The second reason is that you will get your layout as close to bulletproof as is possible. Nothing exposes bad planning, poor track, bad wiring or bad rolling stock and balky engines than an operating session. I now have a lot more confidence that my layout will work first time and every time.
A nice by-product is that I now have (some) control over (me) the mad pur- chasing manager. I know I do not need three more N&W boxcars because, in simple terms, there is no place for them to go on the layout. I admit this control does not always work with this purchasing fool, but at least I know.
It is also important to remember that this four-cycle car card and waybill method is basically a North American freight manage- ment system. It can be used quite adapted to passenger ops, but for the most part is a freight control management system. That said, it is a very prototypical freight man- agement system. Even today major freight firms and global logistics firms use some-
thing quite like these forms/tools to con- trol and manage the movement of goods. This system does take some time to set up, but when that’s done it is quite easy to learn and to use and has the nice advantage that mistakes – when they occur – can be easily corrected.
Basically you set up a system whereby every piece of rolling stock moves through a pre-defined four-stage cycle. You define a sequence so that B&O boxcar could be on track #2 at Roberts on day one, at the Roberts warehouse track (track #3) on day two, in the classification yard in St Paul Virginia on day three, and then off the layout into staging via Dante Virginia on day four. On day five that boxcar will be back at the same place it was on day one. Essentially you establish a logical flow for your rolling stock. Thus, if one of your crews arrives in Wise Virginia and looks at track two for Roberts Burlap, he or she can pull the waybill and car card for B&O boxcar #467007 and determine quite quickly that it is where it should be today or whether it needs to be moved along the line. Moreover, should you want to alter that cycle, either change the existing waybill or design a totally new one.
I use the forms provided by Old Line Graphics, 1604 Woodwell Rd, Silver Spring, Maryland 20906 and will use those for this article. MicroMark (www.micromark.com) also offers a full system. Both have full starter sets for about $25.00 (USD).
The most important concept in starting this is to keep it simple at first, get it to work for you, and then change and evolve as your needs grow and the ability of your crews increases. I would suggest that initially you select one town or even one industry and run a couple trains through the four days of the cycle either from a nearby yard or to and from staging. When I worked in Alexandria Virginia I could sit on a hill near the large Potomac yard and I knew that every Thursday morning the same two CSX covered hoppers would show up on a particular track – and for the most part that’s exactly what happened. There was a sense of rhythm or purpose to these movements that you
too will begin to see with your layout.
What goes on these forms?
Car card
Road name: ATSF,
C&O,CRR etc
Car No: number or last four digits if the number is large
Type: use the AAR designation symbol Empty: if there is no waybill, where does this car go
Waybill
To: Where should it be at this step? ie
what town Wise Va, St Paul Va, or Thomas West Va
RCVR: Once the car is in Wise, who gets it (what industry or location). Roberts turns out to be the only industry in Wise.
Contents: What’s in this car? Use MTY for empty or spell out that it is jute on the inbound or the finished burlap when going somewhere else.
Via: This line defines how this car moves outside of your layout. Thus how and why a 40' Northern Pacific Box car got to St Paul Virginia could be displayed here. More about this car later.
apRil 2006