Start to plan for Operations

Here I want describe one of the possible path to organize Operations on your layout.

This is the way I found simple for me, but I understand it can not the same for everybody. I’m not a Railroad “Pro”, more a modeler that like the Operations and this I’m sure is reflected on my approach.

That said, as a modeler… I start from the track plan!

1- Start to Plan your traffic:

Well, not exactly, as my plan was designed with the fundamental railroad rule in mind: rail traffic is generated from customers and rail service must have a revenue to have a reason to be ( as any business adventure, I well know!)

So, after reading a lot about SP Coast Division ( type of traffic, type of merchandize delivered, history of some key-industries, history of some key-town along the route, timeline for main freights types to identify what-was-when, etc….) I’ve identified some subjects I like to model in the selected era and selected locale:

-   cement traffic from manufacturer to distributor

-   perishable freight traffic with typical car management (cleaning, icing, loading, pre-cooling, unloading )

-   some wood-chain industries ( not the lumber sawmills on the mountains that are simulated from staging but furniture makers, building materials resellers , crates manufacturers …)

-    food treatment chain ( canning , frosting,  packing,  stocking, transfer to trucks for door delivery…)

-    Chemical raw materials supply for food treatments and gasoline for automobiles, oil-derived products for  industries and… to run trains motive power

-    Express mail traffic and LCL ( Less –than-Carload package shipping: what in modern time is UPS-DHL and USPS delivery )

Setting these  “Given” in a list was a good start, and I’ve used this “guideline” to find good names for all industries along my track plan  and “on the outside world ( the two staging yards )” and design all service tracks ( spurs or sidings) that will do the jobs.

The result was something like this document, that shows all main buildings along the path from San Francisco to San Jose: my modeled section of the Coast Division.

Buildings list

 2- Shipper / Consignee and Lading list:

Well, after this, and sourcing from the Customer list referred above, a second document take shape.

This will list all customers ( using Excel or any different spreadsheet software give you the “sort” facility: sort by town, by lading, etc), setting also quantity of cars they weekly need.

Shipper/ Consignee- Lading & Cars count

If you’re interested to download this document and use it as form to fill with your data, I’ve put it in the Google document service as “public” ( no on line editing ) . here the direct link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuXzk2BFH4GxdEZhd1RRQ29ZM0tTLURRdFRFbFNucEE

Select “File” menu and then “Download as..” and select the format you like ( Excel or Open Office are obviously editable formats).

A good starting source for Industries names, his location and lading type, can be the OpSIG (Operations SIG of NMRA) database, that is available at their website, http://www.opsig.org, under “Online Resources,” and then “Industry Database.”

This sheet will be the basic document to plan your traffic, unrelated to which  method you may select to implement ( Car-Cards & Waybills. Switchlist, Timetable & TrainOrders, Warrants…. or any of the “electronic” alternative , JMRI  included) 

3-      Timetable

Before speak about this we’ve to prepare another “basic” : a Timetable of the “scheduled” trains, passengers trains included if you plan to have it. To do this job, I take as a good start a real Employee Timetable of a relevant year I want model. For an example of some “vintage” SP Timetables, you can source on my page here: http://enzofortuna.altervista.org/SP_doc.htm  

Here is a sample ( in progress as you see) of my ETT prepared for my layout:

Again this is available to download at Google Docs using the same procedure as above:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuXzk2BFH4GxdGZtdzE5dS1OaVB1eDE5TlpoeGtDOXc

You see that I’ve listed regular and “named” trains, both passengers and freights. In addition to these some 3^rd Class “Extras” are generated (randomly or when the OP session need some “excitement”).

Given the number of operators my layout will have “normally” , I image to split the daily time in 4 consecutive OP sessions. Anyway we will define this when the time of a first “Round Robin” become a reality!
An important "visual" addition using Excel or similar software is the ability to generate a "Traffic diagram". This helps a lot to check train meetings and timings on the line.
Here is a good sample and explanation: http://mdodd.com/virginian/string_diag.html



4-  “on hand” documents for your crew

All these activities give you an organized basis to step forward with next action: prepare documents to have “your Railroad running” in a prototyped simulation.

The traditional choices, as said, are:

-     Car Card & Waybills
an attractive prototypal approach to Waybills can be found on Tony Thompson’s blog: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/waybills-15-managing-bills.html

-     Switchlists
For example of this approach see the Robert Bowlidge site : http://vasonabranch.blogspot.com/2012/04/switchlist-move-cars-by-shuffling.html

-     Track Warrant
see for explanation the Carsten S.Lundsten site:
http://www.lundsten.dk/us_signaling/twc/index.html#TheTWForm

Any of these methods have sustainer or detractors, but I want to describe in a next post an alternative I want to follow ( at least as my first option ) given my inexperience in car traffic planning: I want try to use the Operation section of JMRI , a freeware software that maybe some of you know ( and use?) to program you DCC decoders or display CTC panels.

JMRI Operation description is here : http://jmri.org/help/en/package/jmri/jmrit/operations/Operations.shtml

So, wait ‘till I find some time to drop another update here!