Between other modeling projects I have slowly been
finalizing my car cards and waybills. As mentioned before, I was intrigued by
the more prototypical waybill and especially the plastic sleeve mentioned in
Model Railroader’s Feb. 2012 issue. I did order some plastic sleeves and these
worked well with the car cards I already had once I trimmed off the fold up
pocket.
Next I turned to the waybill. Using the template provided in
Excel on the MR web site, I started adjusting boxes in the document and
removing things I did not like. The result was a 2” x 2-1/2” area to identify
the shipper, receiver, their locations, the commodity and any special
instructions. It follows the basic left-right concept of the prototype template,
but eliminates a few things to allow larger printing of the data that mattered.
I found that I could group 4 waybills in a block and by folding them I could
get all 4 steps, one at a time, to be displayable on the front, simply by
turning the waybill front to back, then folding it and doing the same again.
Kind of hard to describe but the pictures below should help. Once cut out and
folded, it was inserted into the plastic sleeve, overlaying the car card.
I printed these on white paper but used Blue print for the
variable data and highlighted the box representing the destination location as
this is usually what an operator is most interested in knowing. After doing a
few of these, I was satisfied that this would work, so I went ahead and ordered
enough plastic sleeves (vinyl actually) for the rest of my rolling stock and
set forward on the task of creating waybills.
In excel I created new sheets for different cars and
routings and printed these out, matching them up with likely freight cars. For
example paper will move in MEC boxcars, appliances
will move in my D&RGW HyCube boxcar, etc. This takes time, and can really
get to you, so it is best to do a little at a time I find. So far I have done a
little more than half of all my rolling stock. I have been keeping track of how
many waybills I create for each siding and staging track as recommended in the
article I referred you to in the last post.
One thing it quickly identifies is where I have a need for
certain freight cars, and maybe too many of another. For example, I doubt I
need any more boxcars (although it will be tough not pick up new ones that come
out) but I have no oil tank cars that I need for the MEC to interchange with
the B&M at Whitefield for the paper mill to the north. So this will help me
focus a bit on cars I should be looking for in the future.
Here are some pictures. The first shows the waybill printed
and cut out. You can se the fold lines. Also note that I used a highlighter in
the boxes for step 3 and step 4.This was something that I picked up operating
on someone elses layout. The color coding can help yard operators quickly identify
how to route cars. An orange highlight is for cars heading on the MEC to
Portland. A Green highlight is for cars heading up north on the CP. I also have
blue for southbound cars on the CP/BM and Yellow for cars destined for the CV
St. Albans yard. This can help an operator who may not be sure how a car should
be forwarded.
Next is a picture showing all phases of the car card and
waybill. You can see the plastic sleeve, the sleeve with car card and finally
also with a waybill. Above that is the waybill before and after folding.
Finally here is a look at the completed product for a number
of different car types on the layout. I color coded the car cards to help crews
identify them .
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| The car cards in their plastic sleeves with waybills inserted. |
So far I am pretty happy to have found a way to address this
need to move me closer to operations. I know once we start I will probably need
to tweek the waybills, and possibly fix some errors. But this has me on a good
start. Now, to finish waybills for the remaining cars…oh yeah, and I need to
print some car cards for the freight cars I picked up at Springfield in January…
