Main Index Introduction Layout Operations Models Scenery Tools and Cheap Things

Card Order Operation

What is card order operation, and how is it used?

The usefulness of card order operation is that it allows you to give each freight car movement a sense of purpose, just like in the real world, in a way that does not take a lot of work. Put simply, you have a card for each freight car, which always accompanies it and lots of cards, each representing a load. It takes a certain amount of work to prepare all the cards needed, but when you have done that, you will not need any other papers or a pen during operations.

The car cards must have a pocket for the load cards. Some make the pocket from clear plastic, but you can also make the cards from a single piece of paper you fold and either tape or staple shut like this:

 _______________
 |             |
 |              \
 |               \
 |                \
 |_________________|
 |_____|
 ________________
 |              |
 |            / |
 |           /  |
 |          /   |
 |_________|____|

On the left side of the card, you write down all relevant car data, type of car, reporting marks, how much and what kind of loads it takes, distinguishing marks and other notes. For example:

Ni 12.5 tons Ommk(u) 20 tons Coal
Wurttemberg 22 235 K.Sachs.Sts.E.B 59 066
Brown, two platforms Light gray
May go in passenger trains

On the right side of the card, hidden when there is a load card there, you write down what is to happen to the car when it has become empty: "Return to nearest yard" or "Return to the coal mine".

You should then make a number of load cards, common wisdom is to make at least three per car to avoid too repetitive movements. On the cards you write down destination, source, type and amount of load, what type of car it requires and any special remarks. Examples:

To: Harbour To: Coal mine To: Freight station
Fm: Coal mine Fm: Harbour Fm: Brewery
20 tons coal 5 tons dynamite 10 tons beer
Ommk(u) G, N Private beer car
May not go in Passenger trains

It is generally a good idea to let the cards reflect each other, a load of timber from the harbour to the sawmill can become a load of lumber to the furniture factory and from there a load of furniture.

All sources and destinations need not be on the layout, if you have a hidden return loop or fiddle yard, which can be represented on the cards simply as "East" or something. This is very convenient, as there are practically no limits to the traffic to such a place, whereas the cards in general should reflect the track capacity at different locations.

An operating round begins with you drawing a number of load cards from a stack. Then locate suitable empty cars and get them to where they are needed, and at the same move the empty cars since last round to where their cars say. When the empty cars are spotted where the loads are, insert the load cards into the car cards, assemble the trains, and move them to their destination. When spotted, remove the load cards and return them to the stack. Whereupon the cycle can begin again.

Tab-on-car operation

I've had experience with waybill/card systems, computer generated switch lists, and tab-on-car systems. Since I am not fond of paperwork and my tired old eyes have trouble reading the reporting marks on HO cars, I much prefer the tab-on-car system. The one I use is a variant of the system pioneered by John Allen (I think) and used on the Model Railroader employees' layout (described in MR some years ago). My system works much like the classic card system but is much easier to use.

I have been operating with this system for 10 years and have found it to be very adaptable, flexible, and easy to use by all but the most stupid of operators. The main drawback is the obvious unprototypical tab or marker sitting on top of the car. I feel that the benefits far outweigh this.

The basic idea is to have a marker of some kind on the car that indicates to the operator where the car goes. I use 3/4" "fender" washers for the tabs. A fender washer has a smaller hole than a normal washer so there is more room to put information on the tab. I use colored 3/4" round Avery labels (available at office supply stores) to color code the tabs for each town. Each tab has two sides, one representing the shipper, the other representing the consignee.

To make the tab, I affix an appropriate color label on one side and write the town code (two letters) at the top and the industry code (3 letters) at the bottom. Even though the color shows the town, some operators may be color blind or stupid and the two letters help. I use a sharp Xacto blade to cut the label out of the hole area. The other side gets a different color tab for the second industry or location.

(Note: deciding on the traffic flow is another topic. You need to figure out who is shipping what in which kind of car to whom when).

The tabs allow a car to continuously shuttle between two layout locations. If you have a larger layout, operators never notice that the same car is coming and going. On my layout, each of 300 cars will be moved by various trains to and from the tab locations. Different cars take different routes based on the particular duties of the trains servicing the locations. Cars may take from 2 to 7 operating sessions to complete one round trip. This has two beneficial results:

1. The make-up of the trains varies continuously,
2. There is a natural-feeling increase and decrease in traffic density in any one town or yard at each operating session.

I once operated on a layout with 4 locations per tab but found it needlessly confusing. Each side had two destinations and some thinking is required to figure out which is currently in effect. Having only 2 locations greatly simplifies things and doesn't detract from the apparent randomness of the system. Perhaps this would be a problem on a smaller layout.

Each car has a 1/4" piece of piano wire sticking up in a convenient place to act as a tab holder. Boxcars and such have the wire in the middle of the roof; tank cards have it on the dome; etc. If the wire is painted the color of the car, it is barely noticeable when the tab is off.

The simplest usage is to have operators move the car to the destination shown on the tab and then turn the tab over. The next operator will note the tab does not match the car's location and will put that car in his train to be moved to the next location. If certain trains have specific responsibilities, instructions need to generated for that train so that the proper cars are moved.

A refinement is to have the concept of a longer loading/unloading time, like the "work" box in the classic card system. I will have operators place a plain tab marked "work" on the car after it is spotted and the tab is turned over. The next operator will then remove the work tab but leave the car alone and the operator after that will pick up the car. This mimics moving cards from the "setout" box to the "work" box then to the "pickup" box.

If you have work tabs marked with the code for each industry, the car can easily be respotted properly if it needs to be moved in the course of switching other cars. This is a problem with other systems because you are not sure where an existing car belongs if it needs to be moved out of the way temporarily.

Another refinement is to indicate on the tab if the car is loaded or empty. When an "empty" car is spotted, it is obviously being loaded and the tab will be turned over. When a "loaded" car is spotted, it is being unloaded and the tab can be removed entirely, indicating a newly emptied car that needs to be moved to a yard or off-line staging area. When a car is required for a newly generated load, the car assignment person finds an empty car and places the tab on it.

In this case, extra markings are required on the tab: "turn" or "remove" (or "mt" and "ld") and the car type required for the load ("bx", ho", etc).

I did this some time ago but found it didn't serve much purpose other than keeping another person busy. It also made for more rules about what to do with empty cars, etc. I also found that, when there were not enough empty cars in the yards, the assignment person would need to locate tab less cars at industries not yet moved to a yard and would reassign them. Therefore, it ended up that there were never any "empty" cars going to the yards anyway.

Another trick is to mark some cars as "through" cars, which would circulate between staging yards, kind of like a work tab. Half of the cars on a through freight would have the tabs covered with a black tab indicated they stayed on that train for one cycle. When it got back to the staging yard, the black tabs were moved to the other half of the cars, allowing the older "through" cars to be switched during the next cycle. This allows longer trains without the confusion of arbitrarily not working some cars.

For cars going between on-line industries and off-line locations, I have tabs marked CS SOUTH and CS NORTH (Colorado ∓ Southern southern and northern locations). Northbound trains pick up CS NORTH and vice versa. CS N/S tabs are white to indicate the special handling. These tabs are turned in the staging yards since that is their final location.

My layout actually has two railroads, the C∓S and the Great Western. The C∓S has 5 towns with the following color codes: Denver (red), Longmont (orange), Berthoud (yellow), Loveland (blue), Ft. Collins (green), C∓S N/S (white), through (black), work (silver). The GWR uses the same colors for its 4 towns but has a white segment at the top of the tab with GW in it to distinguish them from the C∓S: Loveland Yard (orange), Windsor (yellow), Johnstown (blue), Milliken (green).

Once people get past the appearance of the colorful tabs on the cars, they enjoy the "ease of use" features of the tab system:

1. Yard work is a snap - just sort the cars by color. This is great when working against a fast clock.
2. Switching is easy since a glance tells you where the car goes.
3. It is fault tolerant - if some dummy spots a car in the wrong place, the next operator will move it to the correct location.
4. No paperwork.
5. No setup between sessions unless some "balancing" is needed to compensate for the ebb and flow of traffic.
6. Cheap - the washers and Avery labels are a lot cheaper than the cards and envelopes and boxes associated with a card system (not as cheap as computer switch lists ... unless you count the computer).
7. Easy to set up - it can take a long time to write all the info on the cards or get a switch list program working.

George L. Booth