Scenario Card Experiment!

[Ralph]

Below is an example of a filled-out scenario card. The idea is to fill out several of these cards for each industry, keeping in mind appropriate levels of traffic and types of shipments. Some cards will require more work while others need less done. You can have cards that specify no work needs be done today if you wish.

This GERN card is one of eight I made for this particular industry. In the card above it is noted that GERN is requesting two empty boxcars, but also has two boxcars loaded with bagged flux that need to be taken to Mayfield Yard. The line next to "# of Set Outs" (i.e. "From/Via:") indicates where the set outs are coming from, or in other words where I need to stage them. In this case it's from William's Yard in Kings Port.

Fill out a similar collection of scenario cards for each business, yard, or other destination. You'll end up with a stack!


Shuffle these thoroughly.

The next step in determining what work my layout needs to do is to randomly select the number of businesses/destinations that are requesting service this ops session. I've decided to use ordinary playing cards for this purpose. I'm using the cards numbered 5-10 because I thought serving fewer than five would make for an uninteresting session. I have more than ten businesses/destinations but didn't want to overload myself either. You'll notice in the photo below that I include Aces. I decided that drawing an Ace means "add one more industry to the number you selected"...just a little more random fun...I hope.