Non waybill operations [verbose]
Ok, I understand that, but do you operators use only industry active? If not how to you operate realistically seriviceing industries without the industrys showing up on the waybill? Mike
Well, I am an operator, and I am in the process of devising a means of operating realistically without industries showing on the waybill. For one thing, waybills are not as important today as they once were; the waybill was a way of keeping track of what a car contained, where it was from, and where it was to go. Today, for the most part, much of this information is transmitted electronically, and the physical waybill is much less important than it once was.
From my experience, the important things about keeping operating realistically is being able to keep track of which car is which, knowing which cars are supposed to go where, and having a connection to the real world, since it is rare in prototype railroading for a railroad to transport products short distances.
So how to proceed? The first step is to choose a route, and use Surveyor to populate it with cars at various industries, and in the yard. Next you need document called a "yard check". In the golden age of railroading, yard checks were made by hand; one or more clerks had the responsibility of walking every track, writing down the number of every car in the yard, and at every industry in the vicinity. The first step in prototype operation is for you to make the same type of document, only you'll have it easier than the clerk, who had to go out and write his list in all kinds of conditions, adverse and otherwise (imagine wearing full winter gear, and writing a list as you walk down the line of cars in below zero weather, or in a downpour, and then compare it with making a few clicks of a mouse, and writing the list from your computer chair). You can use a word processing document or spreadsheet to make up your yard check, noting each industry and yard, and within each, a section for each track at the industry or yard, and within each section a line for each car, where you will note the car reporting marks and number, the car type, the Load / Empty status of each car, and the destination. This document can also be used to keep track of other information, too, but these items are the critical ones. It is customary in some places to group all cars coupled together and leave one or more blank lines where cars are not coupled, and it is also the custom in some places, if there are specified spots to place cars, to leave a line for each spot. Other places do it differently, and since the route / session is your would, you can choose. At the beginning, enter the car type, but leave the L/E status empty. Once you have the route populated with cars in the industry and the yard check, created, save your session, and your yard check document.
Now, imagine a route with one industry, which receives inbound bulk products in covered hopper cars and tank cars, and packages and ships them in boxcars. There is one connecting railroad which delivers all inbound loads (and empties for loading), and to which all outbound loads and unloaded empties are delivered. There are cars on the interchange track delivered by the connection at the start of the session: inbound loaded covered hopper and tank cars, and perhaps an inbound load of containers, and empty box cars for loading. There are inbound loaded and empty cars in the yard waiting to be ordered into the plant for unloading and emptying. There are tank cars and covered hoppers on the hopper track and two box cars on the can track being unloaded. There are boxcars on two outbound tracks at some point in the loading process.
So after generating the yard check, go through the yard check document, and assign a load empty status to each car. For cars in the yard, you can use a coin flip, or similar method, since cars in the yard will ordinarily be either loaded or empty. You can use a dice for cars at industries: roll a 1 or a 4, and the cars are loaded, a 2 or a 5 means the car is partly loaded, and a 3 or a six means the cars are empty. On an outbound track, a loaded car gets pulled, and replaced by an empty; on an inbound track, an empty car gets pulled and replaced by a loads. Typically in real life, partially loaded cars get spotted back to the same place they were pulled from, though this is not necessarily always so, and you can decide in your world whether this always, never, or sometimes happens. Although there are some places where there is a so much volume at a large industry that they have a a couple of days worth of inbounds in storage, and an empty car pulled from an unloading point is always replaced with a loaded one, it frequently happens that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the number of cars pulled and the number of cars spotted.
Remember that no one on the railroad usually has any control over what, or how many get spotted, and what or how many get emptied.
What I have begun doing to replicate this type of Prototype operation in TRS [You don't specify a version, I'm using TRS 2k6] is to select a route, and populate it with a certain number of cars in the yard, and at industries, and the locomotives I wish to run. I then save this route as a base session, and prepare a base yard check for this session. Since it seems that once a session has been opened in Driver it cannot again be opened in Surveyor (unless I just haven't figured out how to do this yet), when I want to run a session, I open the base session, make any equipment changes I wish to make (there is usually not the same number of cars received in interchange each day), and save it with a new name, which I open in Driver. This way I don't have to do the yard check all over again each time. If I want to start tomorrow with the same scenario I ended with today, I make sure the yard check is updated, open the base session, and edit it in surveyor with the car changes needed, add new cars for the interchange, and remove the ones delivered to the connection, and save it as a new base route.
ns
