Car Forwarding on the 4th Subdivision - - Part Three: Car Cards & Waybills

Adding several cars to my roster while revisiting my car forwarding techniques has led me to create several new car cards and waybills. In this post I will try to be less esoteric than my last post while explaining how I use car cards and waybills.

GN gondola brought up to standard, weathered, with a
scratch built load, and accompanied by its paperwork.

First of all, I'm using Micro-Mark's Car Routing System Starter Pack (#82916) instead of getting involved with some of the more realistic waybill systems popularized by Tony Koester among others. With this system, one starts by filling in a yellow car card and folding it to form a pocket for each piece of rolling stock. The information on the card includes kind of car, car initials, and the car's number. One can also include the AAR Code, a description, empty car return information, and, as I have done, the car's build date.

The second phase of paperwork is the waybill, in this case a "four-cycle" waybill. The waybill contains information about where the car is going and where it is coming from. The "consignee" is where it is going, the "shipper" is where it is coming from. The "lading" is the contents (including the possibility of "MTY" or empty). Based on the amount of research done, these all can be more specific or more general. Starting with these new additions to my roster, I am using two other lines on the waybill form. One addition is to use the routing line to indicate "sure spots" such as "door #2" or "loading dock track." On the via line, I will indicate how the car is entering or leaving the 4th Subdivision; at this point, whether it is going to or from the rest of the world through the Lake Terrell Yard or the NP interchange. 

As mentioned, these are four cycle waybills. That means that between sessions the waybills are turned. In my example waybill, cycle 1 is the empty gondola traveling from Lake Terrell Yard (west staging) to Nooksack Lumber and Shingle (east staging until Nooksack is added). Between sessions, the waybill is turned to expose cycle 2, which is the gondola with a load of 18' 8" X 8" timbers being shipped to Dunn Lumber in Seattle (west staging). I have not finished the third and fourth cycles, but they could be a load of pipe traveling from west staging to Slease Supply in Willow Springs for the third cycle and then returning empty to staging for the fourth cycle. In addition to the waybills I have two overlay cards that slip into the pocket in front of the waybill. One, printed on blue paper is a "Blue Flag, Do not move! Loading/Unloading" card. The other, printed on green paper, is a "Car on Hold" overlay. It signals that the car can be moved, but it must be re-spotted. These overlay cards keep the cars at their current location for an extra session. Okay, the cars are at their current location, where should the car card and waybill paperwork go?

Five compartment bill box for Willow Springs (Interestingly, two
of the cards are misfiled in this photo.)

Bill boxes, the location of the car cards and waybills when they are not moving with a train, make up the third part of this system. For many operations-based layouts, a bill box with three compartments, located at each town or industrial complex, is divided up into set-out, hold, and pick-up. I am using a different system popularized by David Popp on MRVP and explained in more depth at the Quaker Valley Railroad website. In short, each track that could potentially hold cars has a name and a compartment in a bill box. The process is fairly simple: the crew read and heed; if it reads to that track, don't pick it up; if it reads to somewhere else, it is ready for pick up. The cards go or stay along with the car. 

Car routing on the 4th Subdivision utilizes one other piece of paperwork, switch lists, that will be the topic of another post.