Operations
Al and Bill are members of our Operations Committee and have spend many months developing scheduled operations on our club railroad. This article describes the influences on, history of, and how we operate on the SSP. Hopefully, this article will provide useful information to other clubs and private layout owners who want to add prototypical scheduled operations to their layouts. All the pictures in this article are thumbnails; click them to open full-size images in a separate window. -- webmaster
As the number of club members participating in Sunday scheduled operations has grown, the Operations Committee has continued to improve and expand the features of scheduled operations. Many club members have discovered the enjoyment they can drive from the challenge of operating the SSP in a more prototypical manner. In this article, we'll present a brief history of the original SSP schedule, show how it has evolved, and discuss some ideas and future plans.
Although a few members seem to have always had an interest in prototypical operations, a group of us had our appetites for operations whetted at Gary Siegal's great Louisville and Nashville (L&N) home layout in Santa Barbara. We could spend a whole article just on Gary's layout, but we'll only summarize how Gary runs his layout and the effect it has had on the SSP.
With Gary's L&N set in the rolling green hills of Virginia and Kentucky, you'd expect a lot of coal operations, and you wouldn't be disappointed. Over half of his trains are either loaded or empty open hopper coal trains. About 1/3 of his trains are mixed freight (or manifest) trains, and he rounds out the with a once-a-day passenger train. A key feature of his operations that we have adopted is the use of car cards and waybills for manifest trains but not for unit trains, such as strings of open hoppers. Also in common with Gary, our layout uses fascia-controlled turnouts. That's not strictly part of operations, but prototypically (for our era) gives the engineer control of turnouts; the dispatcher gives orders, but doesn't operate the layout. A key feature of Gary's layout, which we have yet to adopt, is the fast clock.
Some new members of the club might be surprised to find out that scheduled operations began on the SSP before the club switched to DCC. In the beginning the SSP schedule was fairly basic. Early on, we adopted a "crawl before you walk, walk before you run" philosophy. Therefore the first schedule included only train names, train departure times and train destinations. The goal was to get club members used to the idea of running trains with a purpose.
| Soon we added additional details and complexity to the schedule, to improve the clarity of the directions provided to the various "workers" and to add operational interest. These additions included train order cards (4x6 cards in a plastic sleeve) that provided the "road crews" with more information about the train's purpose and specific instructions as appropriate. Figure 1 shows the card for the St. Louis Special, which leaves Eugene, sets out and picks up cars, and eventually winds up in San Bernardino. It's next destination would be off-layout. |
We also added a yardmaster schedule for the Taylor Yard and Dunsmuir Yard yardmasters to provide them with information about train departure and arrival times. At this time, there were no specific car instructions or waybills; we made up mainline trains by picking up certain numbers of specific types of cars (10 reefers, 3 stock cars, 15 box cars, etc.). Locals or peddlers would simply switch out "like for like" cars, such as 3 reefers to be picked up from a spur replaced with 3 reefers brought out from the yard).
Although running trains with a specified departure time, priority, and consist added a prototypical flavor to the operation, something major was still missing. Also, after several sessions running the schedule as described above, the operation had become fairly routine; it was time to expand the schedule to provide some additional challenges to the operators.
The fact that any box car could be used to switch out for another box car was obviously not very prototypical. It was time to ship a specific car from one industry (on or off railroad) to another industry (again, on or off railroad) based on specific shipping instructions or waybills. We considered using the commercially available Ship It software package to maintain an inventory of car types and locations (as well as generating switch lists), but we decided that this was a little bit too much to bite off at one time. Instead, we chose commercially available waybills (car routing, "to" city, "from" city, shipper, receiver and car contents) and pre-printed car cards (road number, car number and car type) . The car card has a pocket that holds the waybill. The waybill can hold multiple orders that you use on different trains. Figure 2 shows a waybill with two sets of orders. When the waybill is in the card card, only one set of orders shows.
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When setting up for operation, we lean each car's car card against the car so that the yardmaster can pick them up as he goes. Again borrowing from the L&N, we exempted certain car types from needing waybills. These car types included all reefers, the club's strings of open hopper cars (loads and empties), and black tank cars because these cars often were run in unit trains.
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In operation, the Dunsmuir yardmaster would build the train containing CNW 84028. As he builds the train, he collects the car cards with their waybills. When the train is built and the engineer of the train arrives, he hands the engineer the train card with all of the car cards in the plastic envelope as shown in Figure 4. |
Once the engineer gets his train, he makes the deliveries indicated on the cards. Other than setouts at local industries, he generally delivers his remaining train (and any cars he picked up along the way) at either Taylor Yard or Dunsmuir Yard. As he drops off cars or reaches the final destination, he leaves the car cards and waybills in car card pockets marked for the location to which he delivered the cars, such as the planing mill in Dunsmuir. Then the yardmaster takes over. He breaks up the train and builds new trains that return the cars to their home location. In Figure 2, the "EU" in the top left corner indicates that the car should be returned to Eugene.
| To help the yardmasters and road crews keep track of their cars, a means to store the card cards and waybills in a place that corresponded to the location of the cars on the railroad was required. Removable, wooden train order and car card holders were built and installed on fascia around the railroad. Slots in the holders corresponded to the various yard tracks and industry spurs on the SSP. There was now a defined place for the waybills to go! |
As the yard crews became more familiar with the car cards and waybills, another slight problem was discovered. Since Taylor Yard is often building more than one train at a time, the yardmaster needs to remember which train is being built on which track. Sometimes, cars destined for one train inadvertently became mixed up with cars destined for another train. With the old adage of too many cooks spoiling the broth applying here, having two people working Taylor at the same time added to the confusion.
The solution was the development of the yard card. A yard card is the same width card as a car card. It has a train name printed on the top and is about an inch taller than a car card, allowing the yardmaster to use it as a separator between waybills. The yard card also has car routing information (e.g. RD for Redding, FT for Felton) printed on it. The yardmaster places the yard card for a train he is building in the rack slot corresponding to the track on which he's building the train. He puts the car cards in front of the yard card. as he builds the train, as shown in Figure 7. The yardmaster does this both for the trains he's building at the start of the sessions and for the arriving "empties" that he is putting into trains for return to home locations. Unit trains don't have car cards or waybills. The yardmaster simply lays the yard card on top of the unit train, as shown in Figure 8. Note: When the train leaves the yard, the yard card doesn't go with it; it stays at the yard for the next time that train is built in that yard.
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8. Unit coal train with yard card on top. |
| The actual number, departure times, and types of trains on the schedule have also evolved since the beginning of Scheduled ops on the SSP. While these changes have improved the general flow of the schedule and added operational interest, the changes have left the current schedule fairly similar to the original schedule developed years ago. We created a second schedule, representing a different day of the week or time of the year to provide some additional operational variety and challenges, while retaining many of the positive features of the original schedule. |
As indicated above, in developing the second schedule, care was taken to preserve the most popular and critical aspects of the first schedule. In developing a schedule, it is important to have a theme or feature that makes the schedule somewhat unique. The first schedule, almost by definition, becomes the de facto standard. Here's how the new schedule compares to the old one:
| New Features | Old Features That Are Gone | What Stays the Same | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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One problem with the current schedules is the amount of set up time required prior to the session. A big part of this problem is that the railroad essentially has to be "reinventoried" every month. This requires all cars (about 250) spread out among four fully "prestaged trains" and the dozens of industry spurs to be located and matched to their associated car cards and waybills. In many cases, a significant number of the cars need to be physically moved to a new location. This process can take 3 to 5 hours. Several potential solutions have been offered, but the most promising (and most prototypical) appears to be to have the trains and cars at the end of the first schedule be in a place where they need to be at the beginning of the second schedule and vice versa. For example, the St. Louis Special mixed freight train ends the second schedule in San Bernardino siding A or B. The Texas Forwarder begins the first schedule in San Bernardino siding A or B. Ideally, all that would be required for the set up crew to do before beginning the first schedule would be to flip the waybills on the St. Louis Special from 2 to 1.
Most of the other pre-staged trains can also be set up by the late trains in the other schedule. Two main tasks needs to be completed before we can add this feature to scheduled operations:
 | The cars that are set out and picked up by both schedules need to be better coordinated. |
| Most if not all of the waybills need to be refilled out to provide the coordination between the two schedules. Right now, we have multiple orders on the waybills, but they are not coordinated for return or forwarding operations. |
We hope to complete this coordination in the next couple of months, however another hopefully near term improvement will also have a significant affect on Scheduled Operations. This will be the availability of the subway. The subway is a large new section of trackage and yards under the layout.
The key feature of the subway that will affect scheduled operations is the planned new yard under Taylor Yard. The new yard will provide two new key features: 1) the availability of three or four new storage tracks and 2) an off-railroad location to send cars to and from both the East and West ends of the railroad. This is possible because the subway is accessible from both the San Bernardino and Klamath ends of the layout). The off-railroad location (such as Kansas City, Salt Lake City, or Chicago) will also provide a means to send and receive off-railroad way billed cars. For example, a car in Dunsmuir Yard with a waybill for KC (Kansas City) could be sent to KC North or West (via Klamath through the Modoc Line to Nevada and finally on the Overland Route to KC. The car could also be sent South to San Bernardino and take the Santa Fe to KC. The car could then be send "back" to the SSP, reentering in either Klamath or San Bernardino. This flexibility will provide more interesting and challenging opportunities in the future.
If that isn't ambitious enough, there are still a few more twists that can be added to scheduled operations. The most straightforward is to add another schedule or two. The preprinted waybills have a place for schedules 1, 2, 3 and 4 (3 and 4 are on the back). Having more than two schedules provides for more variety in that the same car isn't being shipped back and forth on successive operating sessions. One could envision starting the year with schedule 1 in January, proceeding through 2, 3 and 4 in February, March and April and then returning to schedule 1 in May and so on. All that's really required is for another "schedule champion" or two to design the third and fourth schedules. Those who have created the first two schedules are ready, willing, and able to help an interested individuals; any volunteers out there?
The final piece of the puzzle is one of the few features of the L&N that has yet to be adopted by the SSP - the use of a fast clock. While there are currently only a few fast clock fans out there, we hope that we can add this feature to SSP scheduled operations in the future. In addition to all the normal benefits of fast clock operations (more realistic time frames--hours instead of minutes, the ability to freeze time, etc.), the fast clock provides an additional benefit for a club: the ability to run through a partial schedule (due to a planned short day or unplanned railroad problems) and pick up the schedule on another day from the point at which the clock was stopped. It also avoids the problem of having to always start a particular schedule from the beginning. Lastly, the Digitrax Chief can keep the fast clock and display it on certain throttle models. A larger, external fast clock is also available.
To say that running trains in a scheduled and prototypical manner increases the fun the authors have had running trains would be an understatement. However, we've derived even greater pleasure from watching others in the club "catch the fever." For while running a train is enjoyable in its own right, participating in a scheduled operating session with other like-minded club members, can be likened to playing a musical instrument solo compared to playing in a symphony orchestra. Concerts are held the third Sunday of every month at SSP Phil Car Monic :)
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