There is an article on operations & shunting in the July MR that looks interesting. I've only skimmed it at my LHS!

It describes how to use coloured plastic tabs (like post-it) notes to route freight cars. Since I'm visually oriented (i.e. things make more sense to me when they're colour-coded or in diagram form, etc.), this approach appeals to me.

Just wondering if anyone else has tried this or anything similar, and if they recommend it.

Thanks!

Rob

Hi Rob,

I recall a recent short discussion about this method in another thread but I can't find it. We were comparing it to the old plastic car tab method in which a tack or other plastic component like a small piece of I beam was set on the roof of the car. The sticker method seems to have a lot of versatility and you don't have to drill holes in the roofs of cars to accommodate tacks. I'd be interested to hear about anyone trying this operations approach!

Ralph

I remember being involved in the discussion, but also don't remember where.

The beauty of the tags is that it does away with all the paper-carcard-switchlist shuffling. You look at the car and take it where it needs to go. Simple!

The downside is you have a colored tag riding on top of your finely detailed and weathered rollingstock, ruining the illusion.

It's a form of car forwarding that's been around since the 60s...very reliable and easy for folks to see. On the cover of the Jan. 77 MR magazine, they accidentally posted a picture of the featured layout, after forgetting to pull the tabs for the shot...classic old MR.

Gary S Wrote:I remember being involved in the discussion, but also don't remember where.

FedEx's thread on "situational modeling" in the operations category: http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic...9&start=30

Gary S Wrote:The beauty of the tags is that it does away with all the paper-carcard-switchlist shuffling. You look at the car and take it where it needs to go. Simple!

The downside is you have a colored tag riding on top of your finely detailed and weathered rollingstock, ruining the illusion.

And, of course, that in order to be able to read the destination for your car at a further distance than you would normally have your paperwork, you will need to come up with color, shape and letter/number codes (as in the article) for your little stickers that will make sense to you and be reasonably recognizable/readable while the car is further away from your eyes than your typical switch list or car card would be.

You are still making waybills, btw. Only your waybills are smaller and stuck to your car, instead of put into a pocket on a car card.

Smile,
Stein

It seems to me that this system is the Great John Allen's system of using colored pieces of "U" channel or "I" beam that corresponded with locations. I can remember as a young teenager wondering why someone who built some of the most incredibly detailed (at least for the time) models of railroad rolling stock could endure the sight of some clunky piece of out of scale colored garbage riding on the roof walks of his beautiful scale models. :?: :?

I shrugged my shoulders and passed over the idea as a stupid concept then and, glancing at the title and lead photo of the article in the July issue of MR, I simply sighed and turned the page.

If we want to "operate" a miniature transportation system which moves freight from point "A" to point "B," then the system of changeable car cards is probably enough of a departure from for-real switchlists as I care to deviate. It just seems to me that if you want to "play with trains," plop some out-of-scale piece of junk on the top of your out-of-the-box RTR box car and run it around for a while and then stick it in a siding where the building matches the color of the junk you've got riding on the roof! And don't forget to place an "uncoupling ramp" on that siding to uncouple those "horn-hook" couplers!

Do I sound intolerant? Well ... sorry ... I'm having a curmudgeon afternoon and thought taking a break from the world that has annoyed me so much today and spending some time enjoying reading some of the posts on Big Blue would help me chill.

I'll work harder on it ... I promise!

Now routing bil to Tolerantville! The beauty of the stickers is you could set that up easily! Just kidding bil. Actually I winced a little back in the 70's when I saw articles about objects being placed on rolling stock for operations but then I think if you're really into ops but hate paper work this may be a good way to go. I liked the idea that you could set up several destinations simply by overlapping stickers and then removing them one at a time as the car did its work. Kinda clever and only temporary so you can completely remove them for photographs and non-ops running. I imagine that once you let yourself get into the scheme it might be easy to accept the look of stickers on roofs for a while. I've read posts from some railroad employees who are also model railroaders who report that they don't wish to bring the paper headaches of the real world into their hobby. Others like to model it as close to proto practice as possible. To each their own, as always.

Ralph

I'm with biL on this one. I just can't get past having a colored object riding the roof of my rolling stock. My trains are not museum quality by far, but they give a reasonable impression of a real train and the tack, or sticker, or whatever, on the roof ruins it for me. Then again, I don't mind a little paperwork, and I plan on using TT&TO operations which will generate some more paperwork. To each modeler his own. That is one thing that makes this hobby so great.

Thanks for this feedback! I'm intrigued enough to at least try it.

So, basically, how does it work? For example, do a bunch of freight cars having a blue tab go to one siding and, say, a bunch of freight cars having a red tab get delivered to another?

Could anyone elaborate further -- thanks!

Rob

I didn't even look at the article you mention for the above reasons. However I seem to remember the old system with thumbtacks went something like this...

Each car you build and place on the layout got a small hole drilled in the roofwalk or roof near one end. This is where you place the thumbtack. Each thumbtack represented a destination... example: Blue=Baltimore, Md; red=Philadelphia, Pa; yellow=NYC, NY; Orange=Washington, D.C; white=Wilmington, DE, Purple=Alexandria, Va. RF&PRR)

A train would enters South Philadelphia yard with a mix of cars with different color tacks. All cars going south (Blue, White, Orange, Purple) get blocked, as do all cars going north (Yellow). Red cars stay here. When the train gets to Wilmington it drops off the Whites, picks up any blocked blue/orange/purples. When the train reaches Baltimore it drops off blues and picks up Oranges and Purples. Etc. etc. To make the setouts and pickups easier the cars would be blocked by color at each terminal to avoid switching out individual cars. I really don't think the thumbtack system worked for individual industries and customers as that would require too many colors of tacks and too many colors to remember by memory. Most model railroads only have a few major yards/towns so it works well in that respect.

Most of the systems I met had 2 parts to the code: a colour for the large destination (city or yard) and a letter or number for the particular industry. The thumbtack would be painted blue with a decalled A on it.
One of our guys uses the clip on the roof system with a 4 part code: long and short on one side and long and short on the other. It's ship to the long colour, then the short colour. When you see the car at the short colour location, turn the tab over.
I ran on one layout whose owner had gone through lots of operating systems: all his older cars had holes in the top side somewhere. When I operated with him, we used computer generated switch lists.

RobertInOntario Wrote:Thanks for this feedback! I'm intrigued enough to at least try it.

So, basically, how does it work? For example, do a bunch of freight cars having a blue tab go to one siding and, say, a bunch of freight cars having a red tab get delivered to another?

Could anyone elaborate further -- thanks!

It is a pretty simple idea that doesn't really take much elaboration. Simplest form is "blue tabs to blue siding, yellow tabs to yellow siding".

Version used in article was: "blue tabs to blue area, two letter code written on tab identifies the specific industry/track in area".

Author also had flags for cars to interchanges. To make it a little more interesting, he decided that he would reserve one color for his interchange (where cars enter and leave his railroad). Cars bound for interchanges get dark green tabs - cut to a triangular shape if the car is empty (so it can be borrowed for an outbound load from somewhere else on your layout if necessary).

Example:
Car will be first going to Cosgrove Chemicals to pick up a load, then to Wright oods for unloading, then returned empty to Santa Fe interchange.

Santa Fe interchange is dark green flag.
Wright foods is in the yellow area, industry code WF
Cosgrove chemicals is in the orange area, industry code CC

So he puts the following stickers on the car:
bottommost: triangular (empty) dark green (to Santa Fe interchange) - ie car can be appropriated for a load on it's way to the interchange
next, a little offset so you can see the flag under, yellow tag with letters WF (Wright Foods)
top, a little offset so you can see the flag under, orange tag with letters CC (Cosgrove Chemicals)

Everything taken into account, not all that much easier to set up than waybills. You of course save a car card (the car itself is it's own car card). But people who get overwhelmed by trying to figure out in advance a list of journeys a car will make (necessary to make waybills) will have the exact same trouble figuring out what to put on the stickers and in what order to put the stickers on the car. The stickers really are waybills - they just are smaller and potentially harder to read waybills.

It obviously can be easier if someone else has already labeled the cars for you and you just drive the trains and delivers the cars, since you only need to look at the car to see where the car goes next. And of course - either remember your color codes and industry abbreviations, or look them up as you go.

Saves you from first looking at the car to find it's reporting mark and number and then shuffle through your car cards for that train to find the right car card w/attached waybill for that car. Btw - if you have cars that looks a little different (instead of all red boxcars from the same company :-), nothing prevents you from adding a description of your car (or a picture of your car) to your car cards to make it easier to match car and car card, rather than having to read the number from the side of the car.

You won't have an easy system to keep track of how long the car has been unloading, or whether there are cars to be pulled in an area - as you would do by having various boxes (labeled e.g. "set out", "hold", "pull") in the area to keep the car cards in, and advancing the cards from box to box between operating sessions.

Instead someone just decides when it is time to peel off the top sticker. When you switch the area, to decide whether there are any cars to be pulled in an area, you don't look in the box of car cards/waybills or on your switch list - you look at all cars on all sidings in the area to see if there are any cars with a sticker that is not right for the place the car sits.

The system as described without doubt works just fine. But it is not a magic bullet.

It still takes some thinking to decide where the car a car bound for some industry will come from, and where it will go after the industry is done with it.

And, of course - you tend lose quite a bit of flavor. On a waybill you have plenty of room, so you can add information about what a car is loaded with or will be loaded with, as well as special handling instructions ("tank cars has to be spotted at the far end of the building, where the unloading hoses are" or "car must not be moved if partially unloaded" or whatever). Doesn't make any difference if what you want to do just is "put car on track/get car from track", I guess.

Smile,
Stein

Thanks, Stein. This is helpful. My layout is also quite small so a simple scheme
will probably work best. I'll reread and study your reply again. Rob

RobertInOntario Wrote:My layout is also quite small so a simple will probably work best.

Something simple probably will work just fine. One can always make things more complicated later if it gets boring.

Btw - I usually have a reasonably good memory for track plans, but can't recall how your layout looks (if I have seen it). I had a quick look around using the forum search function, but couldn't find it. Do you an overview diagram or photo of your layout somewhere in these forums or on some other web page?

Smile,
Stein, who still hasn't gotten my butt in gear and soldering feeders to those last few tracks after the summer vacation
Oh well, back to emptying out a storage room to make it a new laundry room - maybe I can make a _small_ hole in the wall and get a couple of staging shelves in there eventually .... :-)

All this talk of stickers, tabs, pins...etc, are great ideas, but what if you tried it like the real railroads do? What if you just used the car numbers that are on the cars themselves?

The railroads forward, place, pull, spot, hump, and I/C cars according to car numbers, not what stickers, tape, pins...etc are on the car. The manufacturers go through the trouble of putting a car number on each car for a reason - to identify that car. I know they can be cumbersome to see - if in N or Z scale, but it's a great way to "really learn" about your own rolling stock.

Yes Steve, but what if I have 2 cars with the same number? Ahhh, yes, this happens all the time in the model world because manufacturers simply made cars in bulk - all with the same number. Well, you can also do like the real railroads do and take that car "to the shop" to be re-numbered. It happens in the real world after these "mega-mergers". Real railroads often end up with cars with same numbers - sometimes not even the same kind of car. So, now what? They have to go to the shop for a new number. This also enhances your "other" skills as a modeler too.

As mentioned above, why place a sticker or tab on a great looking boxcar? It does ruin the overall effect of the scene. Real railroads have people on the ground (conductors trainmen etc) that "move" freight cars according to their number. To have a "realistic" model railroad, you have to be "those" people and do the same thing.

I know, it may get confusing to try to remember which cars go where and what numbers apply to what car. But folks, that's what a train list is for. A trainlist in 1 hand and your throttle in the other. Running a model train gets more involved if you add this "conductor's element" to your trip. As I have stated in previous threads, If you want to add realism to your railroad, there is no limit as to how much you can add. Yes, it's nice to pick up the throttle and "let 'er go". But what now? After you made the 1st loop, what's next? :?:

Try using the actual car numbers and a switchlist. Sure, it's tough at first to learn how to do it. But, that's how the railroads do it. It's how the real railroads "move cars". To me, it's much easier that putting tape, stickers. pins, buttons, clothespins, fishing lures, colored cotton balls...whatever, on top of nicely painted rolling stock.

In the end....just have fun.