05-28-2010, 01:32 AM
One prototypical way to introduce some randomness and situations in your operations and something I view as being required when using switch lists; is to maintain a record of cars placed for loading and/or unloading for each customer.
Out there in Railroad Land, customers must pay Demurrage Charges if they exceed the allowable free time to load or unload a car. Every railroad company is required to keep records of the date and time that:
1. The car is placed for loading/unloading
2. When the customer is notified that the car has been placed
3. When the customer releases the car to the railroad
4. When the car is actually pulled
In addition, the railroad company is also required to keep a record of customer requests for cars to load and the railroad must record the type of car ordered, the date and time it was ordered and by whom, and finally the date and time that the car was actually furnished to the customer.
Those are simplified descriptions and there are a lot of details involved; many of which need not be applied in our model railroad worlds. However, we can apply the basic elements of these records to enhance our operations, make up our switch lists and keep track of car movements on the layout.
Of course, adding this paper work gives you another hat to wear when operating your model railroad - you must be the Station Agent or Yard Clerk in addition to Conductor. So we'll try to eliminate all but the required elements.
As for the record of customer car orders, you could just have a printed list of your customers, what they ship/receive, what types of cars, and a typical number of each, for say a week or month. Then add some method to randomly have customers request cars to load or receive a shipment. There's where your car cards/or waybills could come into play. As Gary suggested, you could randomly pick a number of waybills and that would indicate that your customer is receiving an inbound shipment or fill your customers request to furnish a car for loading.
By keeping these Customer (Demurrage) Records for each customer, we introduce “situations”. I've made a very simplified form to duplicate this activity - one for cars placed for loading and one for cars placed for unloading. To keep it really simple, we'll use the basic Demurrage free time of 24 hours to load and 48 hours to unload to determine when cars are ready to be pulled from your customers.
The information on both forms is identical, the only difference being that one is for cars placed for loading and the other for cars placed for unloading. The form has fields for the following information:
Car Init (Reporting Marks), Number, Kind
Load or Empty
Commodity (To be loaded or unloaded)
Date/Time car is Constructively Placed, (if applicable - more on that later)
Date/Time car is Actually Placed
Date/Time car is Released
The last two times are used to determine when you would pull the car from the customers track (private track or team track). 24 hours to load (after one operating session) or 48 hours to unload (after two operating sessions) from the time that the car was Actually placed for loading/unloading.
The Constructively Placed date/time applies when the customer receives a car and is unable to spot it for loading/unloading, usually because they do not have room to spot the car or for some other reason. For our purposes, we're using that time to indicate that the car is on the track, or nearby, waiting to be spotted.
Before each session, we check our Customer Records and see what cars are ready to be pulled, based on the time actually placed and the applicable free time. Just keep in mind that the time must be equal to or greater than the applicable Free Time. In other words, if this is the next session after the car was placed, it's been 24 hrs – second session after the car was placed, then it's been 48 hours.
For each car that is ready to be pulled, we put down the Car Released date/time and note on the switch list that the car is to be pulled. Cars that are Constructively placed that can be spotted are also added to our switch list, along with any cars that must be re-spotted and any cars that we have in our train or have picked up from the interchange. Every car on a customers track must be listed with instructions as to its disposition.
When we spot our car(s) for the customer, we record the time the car was Actually or Constructively Placed. The Released time is an indicator that the car was pulled and can also be used as a reference for how long the car has been off line or last used for a shipment.
Where things get interesting is when you have customers that pretty much receive cars on a daily basis. Some will pull or spot or be Constructively placed because the customers spots are full. Other cars must be re-spotted because the Free Time has not expired (car hasn't completed loading/unloading). Since cars arrive on different days (operating sessions), you can see that not every car will move every day – just as in the real world. For variety, some cars might be ready to pull before the free time has expired, if you choose to speed things up a bit.
A couple of other elements that may add more variety “situations” come to mind too.
Privately owned cars (ACFX, UTLX, etc.) on a customers private siding are not subject to Demurrage charges, so a customer can hang on to such cars as long as they need to before releasing them. You often find industries that actually use such cars to store their product until needed. Plastics manufacturing facilites are a good example. In such cases, you might just do something as simple as flipping a coin to determine if these cars are ready to be pulled.
Large shippers will often provide the train crew with their own switch lists or switching instructions. The railroad agent will know in advance what cars you will be delivering to the customer and what cars the customer has billed out or released as empty, but as far as the work to be done at the facility, you won't know until you get there. So if you have a large customer, they could have their own switch lists. I used to deal with that at two different distilleries here. Always made my day more interesting!
I've attached the forms I made (both on a single .DOC type file) so feel free to use them if you like. Hope my descriptions of how this works gives you the information needed to put it into action.
CustomerCarRecordForms.doc (Size: 69 KB / Downloads: 127)
Out there in Railroad Land, customers must pay Demurrage Charges if they exceed the allowable free time to load or unload a car. Every railroad company is required to keep records of the date and time that:
1. The car is placed for loading/unloading
2. When the customer is notified that the car has been placed
3. When the customer releases the car to the railroad
4. When the car is actually pulled
In addition, the railroad company is also required to keep a record of customer requests for cars to load and the railroad must record the type of car ordered, the date and time it was ordered and by whom, and finally the date and time that the car was actually furnished to the customer.
Those are simplified descriptions and there are a lot of details involved; many of which need not be applied in our model railroad worlds. However, we can apply the basic elements of these records to enhance our operations, make up our switch lists and keep track of car movements on the layout.
Of course, adding this paper work gives you another hat to wear when operating your model railroad - you must be the Station Agent or Yard Clerk in addition to Conductor. So we'll try to eliminate all but the required elements.
As for the record of customer car orders, you could just have a printed list of your customers, what they ship/receive, what types of cars, and a typical number of each, for say a week or month. Then add some method to randomly have customers request cars to load or receive a shipment. There's where your car cards/or waybills could come into play. As Gary suggested, you could randomly pick a number of waybills and that would indicate that your customer is receiving an inbound shipment or fill your customers request to furnish a car for loading.
By keeping these Customer (Demurrage) Records for each customer, we introduce “situations”. I've made a very simplified form to duplicate this activity - one for cars placed for loading and one for cars placed for unloading. To keep it really simple, we'll use the basic Demurrage free time of 24 hours to load and 48 hours to unload to determine when cars are ready to be pulled from your customers.
The information on both forms is identical, the only difference being that one is for cars placed for loading and the other for cars placed for unloading. The form has fields for the following information:
Car Init (Reporting Marks), Number, Kind
Load or Empty
Commodity (To be loaded or unloaded)
Date/Time car is Constructively Placed, (if applicable - more on that later)
Date/Time car is Actually Placed
Date/Time car is Released
The last two times are used to determine when you would pull the car from the customers track (private track or team track). 24 hours to load (after one operating session) or 48 hours to unload (after two operating sessions) from the time that the car was Actually placed for loading/unloading.
The Constructively Placed date/time applies when the customer receives a car and is unable to spot it for loading/unloading, usually because they do not have room to spot the car or for some other reason. For our purposes, we're using that time to indicate that the car is on the track, or nearby, waiting to be spotted.
Before each session, we check our Customer Records and see what cars are ready to be pulled, based on the time actually placed and the applicable free time. Just keep in mind that the time must be equal to or greater than the applicable Free Time. In other words, if this is the next session after the car was placed, it's been 24 hrs – second session after the car was placed, then it's been 48 hours.
For each car that is ready to be pulled, we put down the Car Released date/time and note on the switch list that the car is to be pulled. Cars that are Constructively placed that can be spotted are also added to our switch list, along with any cars that must be re-spotted and any cars that we have in our train or have picked up from the interchange. Every car on a customers track must be listed with instructions as to its disposition.
When we spot our car(s) for the customer, we record the time the car was Actually or Constructively Placed. The Released time is an indicator that the car was pulled and can also be used as a reference for how long the car has been off line or last used for a shipment.
Where things get interesting is when you have customers that pretty much receive cars on a daily basis. Some will pull or spot or be Constructively placed because the customers spots are full. Other cars must be re-spotted because the Free Time has not expired (car hasn't completed loading/unloading). Since cars arrive on different days (operating sessions), you can see that not every car will move every day – just as in the real world. For variety, some cars might be ready to pull before the free time has expired, if you choose to speed things up a bit.
A couple of other elements that may add more variety “situations” come to mind too.
Privately owned cars (ACFX, UTLX, etc.) on a customers private siding are not subject to Demurrage charges, so a customer can hang on to such cars as long as they need to before releasing them. You often find industries that actually use such cars to store their product until needed. Plastics manufacturing facilites are a good example. In such cases, you might just do something as simple as flipping a coin to determine if these cars are ready to be pulled.
Large shippers will often provide the train crew with their own switch lists or switching instructions. The railroad agent will know in advance what cars you will be delivering to the customer and what cars the customer has billed out or released as empty, but as far as the work to be done at the facility, you won't know until you get there. So if you have a large customer, they could have their own switch lists. I used to deal with that at two different distilleries here. Always made my day more interesting!
I've attached the forms I made (both on a single .DOC type file) so feel free to use them if you like. Hope my descriptions of how this works gives you the information needed to put it into action.
CustomerCarRecordForms.doc (Size: 69 KB / Downloads: 127)
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"